What’s AI saying about you? Insights from Lego Group.

You might have heard about generative engine optimisation – the latest opportunity in the world of AI search.

Often abbreviated as GEO, this essentially means optimising your website content to appear favourably in the ever-increasing conversations people are having with generative AI tools.   

To investigate, we set up an experiment using generative AI to research a business and analyse the results. We decided to investigate on Lego Group – a well-known brand with global reach and a huge digital presence.

But first, a little context

Generative search is a huge shift in the way we find things on the internet. And GEO has great potential to increase traffic to your digital channels. However, there are a couple of things to consider before you go all-in with your strategy.

Most people still find things through Google

Despite the growing use of generative engines, when it comes to search, Google remains dominant with 94% of global search market share. While people use AI for plenty of reasons, the most popular generative AI tool, ChatGPT, accounts for only 0.25% of searches.

Zero click searches continue to rise

With AI-driven answers appearing at the top of search results, people can often get detailed information without clicking through to a website. This means that while audiences may never require a visit to your website directly, a decrease in traffic isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Experimenting with Lego Group

We used a range of different generative engines to research Lego Group, including Perplexity, Chat GPT, Gemini, Copilot and Waldo.

By asking questions someone might have before working with Lego, we wanted to compare responses, understand the sources that generative engines pull from, and gain some insight about what this means for our GEO content strategies.

“What can you tell me about the Lego Group?”

Starting with an easy question to kick things off, all the tools structured their response into subsections such as company history, products, innovations, operations and impact.

Perplexity’s answers came from sources including Wikipedia, LinkedIn, lego.com, and Encyclopaedia Britannica. Specialist tools such as Waldo went a step further, by offering workflows that built out a series of follow up questions from the initial question.

This demonstrated the importance of ensuring accurate information about your business, no matter where it is on the internet. If it’s wrong, you need to fix it.

“Tell me about Lego's responsible business commitments”

This is where the AI tools really started to perform, finding deeper information and organising it into easily digestible answers. For example, Chat GPT structured its answer into different overarching categories that defined responsible business.

In addition to the Lego website and sustainability statement, this information was found from recent articles on niche news sources, ESG Today and ESG News. This highlights the continued importance of digital PR for any search strategy, including GEO. If there are multiple sources, you will want to ensure they’re all aligned.

“Has there been any negative press about Lego’s sustainability initiatives?”

Each of the Gen AI tools picked up on a story which highlighted an abandoned plan to produce Lego bricks from recycled bottles. The story is validated across various sources, which were new to the conversation and not referenced previously. Copilot tended to answer the questions most succinctly.

Lego’s response to the story is included in the results, and this highlights the importance of being part of the conversation around your brand.

What we learnt

The experiment uncovered and confirmed a few key points to consider for your own content and GEO strategy.

1. Responses from the different engines are similar – cross reference if you like, but it’s fine to just pick the tool you like using most, and go with that one.
2. Don’t overlook the value of zero click searches – people are finding this content even if it never ends in a visit to one of your channels.
3. Consider the questions people will ask – both negative and position, and use this to develop content across all channels and digital PR.
4. Do your own audit – use this as source material for content you want to create and look for the things you want to go back to correct.

By understanding how AI search engines work and the type of results they produce, businesses can better tailor their content to meet user needs and stay ahead in the digital landscape.