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GEO Requests Are Surging While SEO Demand Falls: What Fiverr's New Data Means for Your Business

Short answer: Fiverr's 2026 data shows that 67% of optimization specialists have seen requests for generative engine optimization (GEO) rise sharply over the past year, while demand for classic SEO declined. Brands want to be recommended by AI tools like ChatGPT, and there aren't enough specialists who know how to make that happen.

What Fiverr actually found

Fiverr's Holiday Marketing Index 2026 reached a simple but uncomfortable conclusion, as Inc. reported on September 26, 2026: 67% of engine optimization specialists said requests for GEO grew over the past year while SEO demand declined.

For decades, SEO followed a known recipe: structured metadata, clean headings, low-competition keywords. That recipe still works, but it answers a smaller question every year. People increasingly open ChatGPT or Gemini, ask what to buy or who to hire, and get one synthesized answer instead of ten blue links. Brands noticed, and they are redirecting budget toward showing up inside those answers.

Why brands are scrambling now

The timing is not accidental. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are weeks away, and holiday spending decisions are already being researched in AI tools. Fiverr expects brands to rush their AI positioning before the season peaks.

Shiri Hellmann, VP of Global Brand Communications at Fiverr, put it bluntly: "AI alone isn't enough for any retailer to succeed this holiday season, it takes outside expertise to actually make it work. Retailers are turning to specialists who know how to get recommended by AI search tools and creators who know how to earn a shopper's trust, and that combination is what's setting the successful ones apart."

The opportunity: an undersaturated market

Inc. frames this as a business opportunity, and the logic is hard to argue with. Marketing teams are shrinking. Companies hire generalists who can cover more ground, then bring in external specialists when they need depth. GEO is exactly that kind of depth, and the pool of people who can deliver it is still small.

If you run a freelance business or an agency, this is the clearest demand signal you'll get: a major marketplace says clients are asking for a service most providers don't sell yet. We wrote a full playbook on packaging these services in GEO for Agencies — the new Fiverr data means the demand side is no longer a prediction.

What to do if you run a business

1. Check how AI sees you today. Run a free AI Izkaznica check and get an A–F grade for your visibility. You cannot fix what you haven't measured.
2. Make your facts machine-readable. AI systems cite structured, consistent information: what you sell, where you are, your prices, your reviews. Messy content gets skipped.
3. Get cited before the season. AI models reuse sources they already trust. Starting in October means you might be in answers by the time shoppers decide. Starting in December means you're watching competitors get recommended instead.

Is SEO dead?

No. Search engines still send real traffic, and technical SEO is part of what makes a site readable to AI systems in the first place. But SEO is no longer the automatic first line of the budget. The specialists in Fiverr's data aren't abandoning it — they're adding GEO because that's where new requests come from.

For marketers and career switchers, that's the practical takeaway: keyword research is a smaller share of the work every year. Learning how AI chooses which sources to cite is the skill clients are currently paying for and cannot find.