The market for AI applications and AI intelligent agents continues to rise, and "GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)" has become one of the hottest keywords in the secondary market recently. Around the new marketing form of "making brands easier to mention, cite, and recommend in big model answers", there has been a dense fluctuation in the stock prices of related concept companies. However, multiple companies have also indicated in their announcements that their business is still in the early stages of exploration, and their commercialization path and profitability certainty are limited. At the same time, some companies' fundamentals are not strong, and they even have significant loss expectations under expansion investment, amplifying the tension between market enthusiasm and operational reality.
1、 Intense stock price fluctuations: Companies relay to 'cool down', emphasizing that mature profits have not yet been formed
Driven by conceptual emotions, multiple companies have experienced consecutive increases and a wave of "abnormal announcements". Taking Zhewen Internet as an example, the stock price has accumulated a significant increase in the short term. The company has continuously issued abnormal announcements and reminded that the relevant GEO business has not yet formed a mature profit model, and there is uncertainty in market recognition and profitability. Currently, no revenue has been generated.
Similar 'risk warnings' are not isolated cases. People's Daily Online, Xinhua News Agency, and others have also made it clear in their announcements or responses that they are not currently involved in GEO business or related businesses have not yet generated revenue, reminding investors to pay attention to the gap between conceptual speculation and actual business.
From the perspective of trading structure, this type of market often has two characteristics: firstly, it has a new narrative, large space, and is easy to form a consensus of funds; Secondly, the business implementation is still in its early stages, and the verification chain of "revenue profit cash flow" has not yet been fully implemented, resulting in greater fluctuations.
2、 The hot concept cannot hide business pressure: the short-term conflict between expansion investment and profit statement
While the "new narrative" brings valuation elasticity, some companies have also disclosed more stressful performance expectations in their announcements. Chinese online prompt states that due to increased promotion investment in overseas short drama business, related costs may not be fully covered by revenue in the short term, and the company expects a significant loss range in net profit in 2025.
This reflects a more general reality: when the market labels a company as "AI application/intelligent agent/GEO", the stock price may quickly price "future", but the income statement still prices "present". If a company is in the stage of investment for growth, short-term performance fluctuations will be more significant, and investors need to distinguish between "concept heat" and "business realization".
3、 What is GEO: Marketing Migration from SEO to "AI Answer Portal"
Simply put, the goal of GEO is not to rank content higher in traditional search results, but to have brands, products, or services mentioned and cited more frequently and prioritized in the responses generated by large models. In other words, when the user's "information portal" shifts from the search box to the dialog box, the optimization object also shifts from webpage ranking to model answers.
This is also why many institutions view GEO as a structural evolution of SEO in the era of generative AI:
In the past, it was "click to redirect" - users saw the link and clicked into the website;
Now it's' direct answer '- users may no longer click, brand exposure occurs in the answer.
4、 Institutional perspective: Long term space is promising, but the current stage is more like "running methodology"
For the market space, securities research reports generally believe that as big models become new traffic entry points, new supply side forms of advertising and content marketing will emerge, and GEO may benefit from traffic growth and commercial exploration.
However, on key issues such as "how to do it, how to measure it, and how to charge", multiple institutions have also emphasized that GEO is still in the early stages of development, more focused on brand building, and all parties are still verifying the methodology. Due to the "no click" feature in AI search/AI assistant scenarios, GEO is difficult to directly bind with conversion metrics like traditional advertising. A more realistic path may be to first quantify "visibility and citation", and then gradually explore commercial closed loops.
5、 Three reminders for the market and industry: Don't mistake "new entry points" for "quick profits"
Firstly, separate trends from cash flow. The migration of entry points may be a long-term trend, but the pace of commercialization and industry structure are still in the formation stage.
Secondly, separate "concept stocks" from "ability stocks". The announcement states that "failure to generate revenue/immature profit model" does not mean no opportunity, but it means greater short-term volatility and uncertainty, requiring stricter verification indicators (customer numbers, renewal rates, ARPA, gross profit, etc.) to track.
Thirdly, separate "exposure" from "effect". GEO was more like a brand building tool in the early days: increasing its frequency and semantic position in AI responses; A truly replicable business model often goes through a long chain of verification from visibility to credibility to conversion.
GEO does provide a significant industry signal: when generative AI becomes the information gateway, marketing logic and content distribution systems will be rewritten. But when it comes to the secondary market, the more "new narratives" there are, the more hard indicators such as "revenue, profit, cash flow, customer retention" need to be used to calibrate expectations. In the stage of rapid concept diffusion, risk warnings in announcements and pressure changes in performance forecasts often determine whether a company can truly emerge from the "concept cycle" more than slogans.
