Geolix.ai Joins Airwallex to Show Why Ranking #1 on Google No Longer Puts a Brand in the AI Answer

SINGAPORE, Sept. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Andy Guo, founder of Geolix.ai, a generative engine optimization (GEO) firm working with brands that sell into overseas markets, joined Airwallex, the global payments and financial infrastructure platform, on Friday, September 11, 2026 for a live session on how overseas buyers now discover and shortlist suppliers through AI answer engines. Guo appeared alongside Kathy Shi, Head of GEO for China at Airwallex, under the title “From SEO to GEO: How Brands Going Global Seize the Next Growth Wave.” In the session, Guo shared the firm’s cross-engine measurement data and the four-layer framework it uses to move brands from cited by AI to recommended by it.

Geolix.ai works on how brands appear inside AI answer engines: it runs the questions real buyers ask across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and other engines, measures where a brand actually stands, and directs spend from there, without bulk content generation or paid mention placement. Its work concentrates on B2B categories with high contract values, long decision cycles and a real cost to choosing wrong, among them cross-border payments, fintech, SaaS and enterprise services. Buyers in those categories do not order from an ad; they compare security, price, capability, market fit and customer references before they commit, and AI now sits inside that step.

The session addressed a gap Geolix.ai says it now finds in the majority of brand audits it runs: companies that rank well in traditional search, and are entirely absent from the answer an AI gives the same buyer. As ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity settle into the research phase of B2B purchasing, the old sequence — search a keyword, click a website, evaluate — is being replaced by one in which the buyer asks an AI for a shortlist before ever visiting a vendor’s site. Research published this year by software review platform G2 found that 51% of B2B buyers now ask an AI before they search Google, up from 29% a year earlier, and that 69% say the AI’s guidance changed the vendor they had originally intended to choose.

For companies entering unfamiliar markets, Geolix.ai argues, that node sits in the most expensive part of the funnel. Advertising and SEO budgets still carry buyers to the edge of a decision; but when the buyer turns to an AI in the middle of that decision, the model may not know the brand, may misstate what it does, or may name only its competitors.

What Geolix.ai finds when it audits a brand

“What a company actually has to manage is three things: whether AI knows you, how it understands you, and when it is willing to recommend you,” Guo said. The failure modes across Geolix.ai’s client audits, he added, are consistently the same few: the model has never heard of the brand; it knows the brand but recommends a competitor; it misstates the product, market or capability; or its picture of the company is simply out of date. “So the first step in GEO is not to publish content. It is to find out what you currently look like through the eyes of the model.”

Guo is equally direct that GEO does not replace SEO. Search optimization determines whether a brand’s information can be found; GEO determines what happens after it is found — how the model interprets it, organizes it, and whether it ultimately puts the brand forward. The upside Geolix.ai targets sits in the questions where no brand has been named yet. “If a user asks which of A or B is better and you show up, that is brand defense. But if a user only describes their situation — we’re a SaaS company preparing to enter Southeast Asia, which cross-border payment solution should we use — and the model recommends you with no brand prompt at all, that is genuinely new customer discovery.”

Measured first, then built: the Geolix.ai method

Geolix.ai’s practice is deliberately measurement-led. The firm runs the questions real buyers ask across multiple engines — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity — and reports, per engine and per intent, whether the brand is mentioned, where it ranks, how it is described, and which sources the model drew on. Those readings feed the four-layer model the firm uses to locate the actual gap: Discover (can the model find and crawl you), Understand (does it grasp who you serve and how you differ), Validate (is there enough third-party evidence for it to repeat your claim), and Recommend (has it formed a stable enough preference to shortlist you).

The distance between the third and fourth layer is where Geolix.ai says most programs stall. Its monitoring has tracked a brand whose website content was cited in 22.9% of relevant AI answers while its brand mention rate sat at 6.9% — the model was willing to use the company as a reference document, but not to name it as a supplier. “Citation tells you whether your content is useful,” Guo said. “Recommendation tells you whether your brand is worth choosing.”

The firm also pushes back on the reflex to flood the web with AI-search content. In a controlled test, Geolix.ai published four pieces addressed to a single identified intent gap; ChatGPT’s citation rate for the client’s website rose from 9.7% to 26.7%, and brand mention rate from 2.2% to 8.3%. “What that shows is not that four articles are magic,” Guo said. “It is that every action has to know which gap it is closing.” Models, in the firm’s account, respond to logical relevance, consistency across sources and density of evidence — not to volume.

Reporting GEO without the vanity metrics

Geolix.ai reports results in three separated layers rather than one blended number: visibility (is AI mentioning and recommending you), behavior (branded search, direct traffic, key page visits), and business (MQLs, SQLs, pipeline, revenue). “You can’t claim revenue from a visibility lift, and you can’t write GEO off because a month produced no revenue,” Guo said. Clients receive those readings as an ongoing dashboard rather than a one-off audit, on a cadence of daily trends, weekly movement and quarterly review. More at https://geolix.ai.

What the session covered

Guo walked through how buyer discovery journeys have changed, how to move from keyword volume research to intent and prompt research, how owned content, customer stories, media and third-party review platforms reinforce one another, how internal SEO, content, PR and social teams should share a single intent map, and how to build a GEO measurement framework that runs from visibility through to business results. Kathy Shi presented how Airwallex has connected SEO and GEO into a single growth loop internally, with Guo responding.

“Advertising gets you seen, PR builds your voice, sales closes the deal,” Guo said. “But when the buyer stops in the middle and asks an AI, whether that model describes your brand correctly — and well — is becoming a decisive node in the efficiency of the entire funnel.”

Session details

From SEO to GEO: How Brands Going Global Seize the Next Growth Wave

Friday, September 11, 2026, 7:00 PM

Hosted by Airwallex

Speakers: Andy Guo, Founder, Geolix.ai; Kathy Shi, Head of GEO China, Airwallex

About

Geolix.ai a Singapore-based GEO (AI Marketing) agency helping brands expand into global markets. It covers both Western and Chinese AI search across nine major AI engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, DeepSeek, Doubao, Qwen and Tencent Yuanbao, and applies those readings to intent research, gap diagnosis and third-party source work; results are reported in three separate layers: visibility, behavior and business outcomes. The firm does not use bulk content generation or paid mention placement (https://geolix.ai). Airwallex is a financial platform for global businesses, providing business accounts, cross-border collections and payouts, foreign exchange and embedded finance through a single platform and API.

Company: Geolix.ai
Contact Person: Holland Sun
Email: hollandsun@geolix.ai
Website: https://geolix.ai
Telephone: +65  8741 5380
City: Singapore

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cf731bee-261d-4cdb-af0c-2227d797f04e