AI Won’t Rank You. It Will Retrieve You. Or Ignore You. | Gaetano Romeo | Ep. 215

AI Won’t Rank You. It Will Retrieve You. Or Ignore You.
What if everything you know about SEO is already obsolete? Not dying, not declining, but fundamentally transformed into something most marketers have not caught up with yet? That is the opening premise of this conversation with Gaetano Romeo, Head of Global Digital Marketing at EasyVista and OTRS Group, and one of the most forward-thinking voices in international digital marketing today.
Gaetano started his career as a tourist guide in Palermo, Sicily, earned a Master’s degree in Euro-American Languages and Literature graduating 108 out of 110, and stumbled into SEO in 2003 when a frantic agency owner grabbed him and demanded to know why their website was not showing up on Google. That moment, as Gaetano describes it, was like a light switching on. He moved to Berlin, joined the early startup scene at StudiVZ, the German precursor to Facebook, then built his career across Zalando, Groupon, and Nespresso before landing in Milan where he has lived for sixteen years. Today he leads a ten-person international team across Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and the United States, lectures at two Italian universities, has written six books, and was just named to the HockeyStack AI x GTM 50 as the only Italian on that list.
From Content Marketing to Evidence Engineering
The central idea Gaetano brings to this episode comes from his technical paper, Retrieval-Augmented Authority. His argument is that AI systems no longer optimize for content quality the way search engines traditionally did. They optimize for retrieval compatibility. If your content cannot be easily retrieved, verified, and grounded by an LLM, it will not be cited, regardless of how well-written it is.
He calls the building blocks of this new approach atomic evidence fragments, discrete, self-contained pieces of content that AI systems can pull cleanly without ambiguity. The goal shifts from ranking to being retrievable, and that distinction changes everything about how content teams should write, structure, and distribute their work.
GEO vs SEO: A Reality Check
Gaetano is clear that SEO is not dead. What has changed is the goal. SEO was always about ranking on Google. GEO, generative engine optimization, is about getting cited inside large language models, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. These are different objectives that require fundamentally different approaches.
He is equally clear that the shift is not as advanced as the industry hype suggests. Most searches still happen on traditional engines. E-commerce in particular is nowhere near ready to move its marketing investment into GEO. The conversation around GEO matters, but leaders should get ready for the future without abandoning the present.
Cultural Nuances Are Not Optional
One of the most practical sections of this conversation covers what really breaks multilingual digital strategies. Gaetano is direct: the technical side of managing multilingual SEO, canonical tags, hreflang, site structure, is relatively straightforward. What is hard is the cultural and linguistic nuance.
He gives concrete examples. Brazilian Portuguese sounds aggressive to European Portuguese speakers. The word for car differs between Spain and nineteen other Spanish-speaking countries. A call to action like get your copy now works in the United States but alienates Northern European audiences who want time to decide and resent being pushed. Add GDPR compliance requirements on top and the complexity multiplies fast. For any company managing content across multiple markets, these nuances are not edge cases. They are the difference between a campaign that converts and one that offends.
Leading Multicultural Teams: Adapt or Fail
Gaetano manages people from Italy, Portugal, Germany, France, Spain, and the US. His advice for leaders taking on truly international teams is counterintuitive. He says the standard advice to just be yourself is wrong. You cannot be yourself in the same way with a German colleague as you can with an Italian or an American. The cultural gap is real, the generational dynamics are real, and the stereotypes cut both ways.
His approach is to lead with respect first, demand respect second, and use language as a bridge wherever possible. Speaking even partial German or French signals cultural investment to team members from those countries in a way that transcends hierarchy.
What the Language Industry Needs to Hear
The closing exchange of this episode is the one the localization industry should replay. When Robin asks what advice Gaetano would give language service providers wrestling with AI translation and positioning, his answer is immediate: stop being a vendor and start being a partner.
He does not need five cents per word. He needs someone who will tell him that the content he wants to translate is wrong for the UK market and better suited for Canada. He needs strategic guidance, cultural intelligence, and a seat at the table, not a price per unit. The vendors, he says, are everywhere. The partners are not.
LinkedIn Algorithm Update: Saves Beat Likes
As a bonus segment, Gaetano shares an early look at his upcoming new LinkedIn algorithm book. The platform’s new Breeze 365 algorithm has deprioritized likes entirely. A save is now ten times more valuable than a like. Dwell time matters. Comments matter. And critically, your content must align with your profile description or LinkedIn will not distribute it, regardless of engagement.
Likes, he concludes, were always vanity metrics. The platform has finally stopped pretending otherwise.
Gaetano Romeo on LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/romeogaetano/ | EasyVista | https://www.easyvista.com | OTRS Group | https://otrs.com | Watch Episode 215 on YouTube | https://youtu.be/_N9Kky5zDIU | Listen on Simplecast | https://localization-fireside-chat.simplecast.com/episodes/ai-wont-rank-you-it-will-retrieve-you-or-ignore-you-gaetano-romeo-ep-215 | Book your LFC episode | https://calendly.com/robin-ayoub/localization-fireside-chat-podcast-recording | Join the AI Exchange | https://luma.com/o3lvll4i