When Google rolled out AI Overviews in early 2024, many enterprise brands experienced drops in organic traffic from traditional search results. Fastly, a content delivery network company, faced the same challenge; they needed their content to appear where buyers were now looking for information. They asked Obility to guide their content efforts and position their brand inside Google’s AI results.
The Strategy
Obility’s approach to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is a concentrated effort to make content authoritative, structured, and fully aligned with how AI tools surface information.
To help Fastly, we:
- Obility identified gaps in Fastly’s content and recommended creating a Learning Center as a place to publish content built for people and AI, based on competitive analysis.
- Completed content pillar research and mapped out a long-term content strategy.
Content pillar research is the process of identifying and structuring core themes (pillars) to build a SEO and content strategy.
- Each pillar covers a high-value topic that gets broken into multiple pieces such as blogs, guides, and case studies, that link together to build authority in that topic area.
- Structured answers around common search phrasing, including “what is” definitions and comparisons.
- Optimized existing and new assets that perform both in SEO and GEO, to drive traffic as search continues to evolve.
- Tested and implemented content themes to track which formats consistently appeared in AI Overviews and LLM citations.
Learn more about how we approach GEO
The Results
Over a five-month period, Fastly’s presence in Google AI Overviews grew from 17 to 139 citations.
An increase of 718%.
Key takeaways:
- The majority of AI Overviews featured content from the client’s Learning Center and Blog, confirming Google recognized these resources as authoritative.
- Coverage included both top-of-funnel queries (definitions, “what is” content) and high-value competitive terms such as “fastly vs akamai” and “fastly vs cloudflare.” These results ensure the brand is visible during early research as well as critical solution comparisons in the buyer journey.
- After a 5-month focused strategy sprint, the client has appeared in 139 AI Overviews, and that number continues to rise.
What This Means
Generative Engine Optimization is now central to maintaining and growing visibility in Google’s evolving search experience. By focusing on authoritative, structured content, brands can capture more share of voice in AI Overviews and offset potential traffic declines.
Read more about the impact of AI Overviews on B2B businesses.