“I noticed that I, as a consumer, am prompting and not searching. That was the biggest realization, the moment I said, okay, now I’m there.”
Marietta Robitza wears two hats at Slopelift: Head of SEO, “which is now GEO as well,” and Chief Knowledge Officer. She joined when the agency was six or seven people crammed into a single room, started out writing SEO texts, moved into technical SEO through an era of three-to-five relaunches a year, and grew into leading the entire SEO practice, a role she now shares with her colleague Anja because, as she puts it, the team got too big for one head.
For this episode of People of AI Search, we sat down with Marietta to talk about the moment SEO became GEO for her, why the client panic of last year has faded, which KPIs actually matter now, and why Slopelift’s contrarian bet on affiliate links paid off.
Prompting, not searching
About a year ago, Slopelift decided: we’re going toward GEO. Was there a trigger moment for you?
There was, but for Marietta personally, it only arrived this year.
“Last year we were starting to monitor AI Overviews and started tracking prompts. But I never really had the feeling that I, as a user, was in the AI universe. Only this year I started noticing that I, as a consumer, am prompting and not searching. That for me was the biggest realization, the moment where I said, okay, now I’m there.”
The panic has subsided
How are clients thinking about AI search right now?
“They’re still trying to figure out what impact AI search has on their users and their traffic, and they’re monitoring that, which is good. But the initial panic that started last year has subsided. They’re not as panicky anymore, which is also good, because in my opinion it’s not necessary.”
What drove the panic in the first place? Not the data, says Marietta. The media.
“Everybody was talking about it like crazy, before clients even measured the impact. And then they saw: actually, we didn’t lose any clicks. We don’t have publishers as clients, and I know publishers really struggled. But e-commerce shops were not that affected in the beginning.”
One thing has changed for good, though: “Every client now knows what GEO is. A year ago, that wasn’t the case.”
New KPIs, same goal
How do your clients measure success now? Is it still traffic-led?
“They still use the classic KPIs, but they’re adding new ones. From the SEO perspective, we don’t think it makes sense to look at ranking positions anymore. They’re so volatile. We’re trying to steer clients away from that.”
The KPIs Marietta wants every brand watching:
- AI referral traffic: “because it puts everything into perspective a little bit”
- Engagement and conversion rates of AI referral traffic: for clients who can measure it
- Prompt mentions and citations: “I’m still not sure what we’re going to do with this data, but the goal is to combine it all into one comprehensive analysis”
And at the end of the day: “For every business that has sales, sales and conversions still count. Citations triggered by informational queries are interesting, but they don’t drive the sales. It’s a mix at the moment.”
The first question for every new client
A new client comes to you in 2026 and asks: what’s the best practice in SEO right now? Where do you start?
“I’d probably ask them if they’re measuring their AI traffic in any way. That’s the most important starting point: to find out what role AI channels play for their users. Because it’s so different for different target groups. That’s where everybody should start.”
And the biggest challenge for most brands, tech or content?
“Lots of clients are still very limited in what they can do on their websites. They have their big shops running and can’t interfere with a lot of the processes. So there are still lots of technical limitations, and that limits what we can do. Then we shift to content. On the on-page side we’re usually quite free to optimize, and clients can really use that as leverage.”
The affiliate hype we skipped
Was there a belief from last year you’ve since changed your mind on?
Rather than a reversal, Marietta credits a deliberately cautious start.
“Last year we saw that lots of the citations on ChatGPT were affiliates. And we did not recommend our clients buy tons of affiliate links. We said: if you have those cooperations, see where you’re at, see what the contracts look like.”
“I think this has paid off. The AI visibility has improved without buying tons of affiliate links. It was definitely worth starting the monitoring early on and seeing where it leads.”
The agent generation
Looking ahead, what does the future of search bring for Slopelift?
“Excited or panicked?” she laughs. Both, it turns out.
The near-term wildcard is regulatory geography: “A major change would be if Google comes to Europe with everything they announced at I/O. If search really changes like that, it will be a huge impact for us. But as we know, we don’t always get to see those changes here so soon.”
The long-term shift is generational: “We employ lots of younger colleagues who grew up with technologies we didn’t have. The way they search and use the internet is so much different. I’m really excited to see how the next generation that grew up with agents is going to use the internet. Because that’s going to shape how it evolves, ultimately.”
Advice for the next generation of SEOs
What should someone starting out in SEO double down on?
“The most important quality a key account can have at the moment is thorough consulting and data analysis. Of course, the on-page and technical skills should be there, but in the end, you don’t need to know how to write structured data anymore, because every AI can do that.”
“To understand the client’s business model, to understand their target group, and to get a feeling for what AI search means to them: that’s a very hard quality to learn. And that’s the human in the loop we all try to have.”
One last prompt
We end every episode with the same question: what’s the thing you built with Claude that you’re most proud of?
“It was the first time I combined different data sets from different tools and had them analyzed, and really got a very comprehensive analysis that would have taken hours to do manually. That was the moment I thought: okay, wow. If all of our team can use it like that, we’re going to be so much faster and so much more efficient.”
People of AI Search is our interview series with the practitioners shaping how brands show up in AI answers. Want to know how visible your brand is in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews? Start monitoring with OtterlyAI.
Connect with Marietta: Marietta Robitza on LinkedIn
Learn more about her agency: Slopelift
