GEO vs SEO: what changes, what stays the same and what to do first

GEO vs SEO is not a choice between two channels. SEO gets your pages found and ranked. GEO gets your business named and cited in AI answers, and most of the groundwork is shared.

By AI Search Ranking. Published 7 October 2026. Last updated 8 November 2026. In Generative engine optimisation.

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The short answer

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the work of getting your pages found, indexed and ranked in search results. GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is the work of getting your business named and cited in the answers that AI assistants write.

GEO does not replace SEO. An assistant can only cite a page it can find and read, so the groundwork is shared. Google goes further and says that optimising for its AI features is "still SEO"2.

The two differ in what you aim at and in what you measure. SEO aims at a position on a results page. GEO aims at a place inside the answer. Our guide to generative engine optimisation covers that side in full.

GEO vs SEO at a glance

Question	SEO	GEO
What are you trying to win?	A high position for a search	A mention and a citation in an AI answer
Where does it appear?	Results pages on Google and Bing	Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude
What does the buyer do?	Types a few words and chooses a result	Asks a full question and reads one answer
What is being judged?	The page	A passage on the page, and what other websites say about you
What earns it?	Pages that can be crawled, relevant content and links	All of that, plus clear facts, evidence and mentions on the websites assistants read
What do you measure?	Rankings, clicks and enquiries	How often you are named, cited and described correctly
How steady is it?	Positions move slowly	Answers change from one run to the next

What is GEO in SEO?

GEO is the newer name. It comes from a research paper first published in November 20233. The authors described generative engines as systems that answer a question by drawing on several sources and summarising them3. They reported that their methods could raise a source's visibility in those answers by up to 40%3.

That was a research benchmark, and the assistants have changed a great deal since. Treat the figure as a sign that the work can matter. It is not a forecast for your own site.

People argue over whether GEO is a part of SEO or a separate discipline. Google treats it as SEO2. We treat it as the same aim, being found by a buyer, carried over to a place where the buyer reads one written answer.

SEO vs GEO vs AEO

You will meet other names for the same ground: AI SEO, LLM SEO and answer engine optimisation (AEO). They overlap. We use the three main terms like this:

SEO gets your pages found, indexed and ranked.
AEO shapes a page so that it can be given as the direct answer. Our answer engine optimisation service covers this.
GEO works on whether assistants name you and cite you, which depends on other websites as well as your own.

So in AEO vs GEO, the dividing line is where the work happens. AEO is mostly work on your own pages. GEO reaches beyond them.

What stays the same

Most of the groundwork is shared.

Your pages must be found and indexed. To appear in Google's AI features, a page must be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet1. Google says there are no additional requirements and no special optimisations1.
The content has to be worth citing. Google's advice for its AI features is the advice it gives for search: unique, useful pages written for people2.
You do not need special files or markup. Google says you do not need new machine-readable files or markup to appear in its AI features2.
Other websites still vouch for you. Links and mentions from trusted websites matter to a search engine and to an assistant.

If your site has technical faults, both suffer. That is why our own work starts with technical SEO.

What changes

The question gets longer. People type a few words into a search box. They ask an assistant a full question. Google says its AI features may run several related searches across subtopics to build one answer1. So a page can be drawn on for searches its owner never had in mind.

Being named and being cited are separate results. An assistant can recommend a company without citing its website. On 4 October 2026 we asked four assistants nine buyer questions and recorded every website they cited4. The assistants named a brand 263 times and cited that brand's own website in 56 of them4.

There is more than one engine. Each assistant reads different sources. In the same test, a website was cited by only one of the four assistants in 199 of 234 cases4.

Other websites carry more weight. Much of what an assistant says about you comes from pages you do not control: review sites, directories, trade press and comparison articles. SEO has always valued links. GEO also cares about what those pages say.

The result is less steady. A ranking usually moves slowly. An AI answer can change between two runs of the same question on the same day.

What we found when we tested this question

On 6 October 2026 we searched Google UK for "GEO vs SEO". We also asked ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude the question behind it: what is the difference, and does a UK business need both? We recorded each answer and every website it cited.

All four answers agreed. Google's AI Overview and the three assistants each said that GEO does not replace SEO and that a business needs both.

Ranking was not the same as being cited. Google showed an AI Overview above nine ordinary results. The AI Overview cited ten websites. None of the nine ranked pages was among them, and none was cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude either.

The sources barely overlapped. Between them the four answers cited thirty-five websites. Thirty were cited by one answer only. One website was cited by three. None was cited by all four.

Each assistant read differently. ChatGPT cited two websites, both owned by search engines: Google's documentation and Microsoft's Bing blogs. Perplexity cited twenty-one, including pages in French, Portuguese, Korean and Chinese. Claude cited eight.

This was one question, asked once, on one day. Answers change, and a different day would give different sources. It still shows the pattern we see in our larger test: the assistants can agree on the answer and disagree on whom to cite.

Does GEO replace SEO?

No. There are three reasons.

First, assistants search the web to answer. In the test above, ChatGPT and Claude each ran their own web searches before they replied. A page that cannot be found cannot be cited.

Second, Google's AI features draw on Google's own index. A page has to be indexed to appear in them1.

Third, people still search. A buyer who knows what they want still types it into Google and chooses a result.

SEO on its own is no longer enough, though. In our test, the pages that ranked on Google's first page were not the pages its AI Overview cited. If a buyer reads the answer and stops there, a ranking alone will not put you in front of them.

Is SEO dead now that AI answers come first? No. It has become the base that the newer work stands on.

The same business, seen both ways

Take a UK firm that sells payroll software. This is an example, not a client.

For SEO, the work is familiar. Make sure the product pages can be crawled. Write a page for each search that matters, such as "payroll software for small businesses". Earn links from accounting and HR websites. Then watch rankings, clicks and enquiries.

For GEO, start by asking the assistants what a buyer would ask. Which payroll software suits a company of our size? How do the main products compare? Record which products are named and which websites are cited.

Those cited websites are where the next piece of work lies. The firm needs to be listed on them, reviewed on them and described accurately on them. Its own pages need plain statements of what the product does, what it costs and whom it suits, so that an assistant has something exact to quote.

How to measure each

SEO is measured in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools: which searches show your pages, where they rank and how many clicks they earn. Search Console also has a generative AI performance report, which shows how people find your pages through Google's AI features2. Bing's AI Performance report, in public preview since February 2026, shows how often your pages are cited in Copilot and in Bing's AI summaries5.

GEO needs its own measure, because Search Console does not tell you what ChatGPT or Claude said about you. We agree a fixed set of buyer questions and put each one to each assistant more than once. Then we record four things: whether you were named, whether your website was cited, whether the description was accurate, and who was cited in your place. Our method sets this out.

Which to do first

It depends on where you stand today.

Your pages are not indexed, or the site has technical faults. Start with SEO. Nothing else works until this does.
You rank well, yet assistants do not name you. Start with GEO. Find the websites the assistants cite in your category and earn a place on them.
Assistants name you and get the details wrong. Correct the facts at their source: your own pages first, then the profiles and listings that repeat them.
Your site is new. Do both from the start. Write pages that answer the questions buyers ask, and make sure they can be crawled.

Our GEO service covers the second and third cases. If you are not sure which case you are in, book a discovery call and we will check how the assistants describe you today.

If you sell to other businesses, a handful of buyer questions often decides the shortlist. Our page for companies looking for a B2B SEO agency shows how we work on those questions in Google and in AI assistants.

Mistakes to avoid

Treating GEO as a trick. There is no file or tag that makes an assistant cite you. Google says so about its own features2.
Dropping SEO to pay for GEO. The first supports the second.
Judging by one screenshot. One answer on one day proves very little. Measure the same questions over time.
Buying mentions. Paid placements and invented reviews put your name beside claims you cannot support.

What we've seen in real audits

One audit that stays with me was for a software company selling high-value products to finance departments. The biggest problem was inconsistency. Their content contradicted itself in places, and some pages carried figures the company could not properly back up. I audited the whole site, confirmed each point with their product team, removed the inconsistencies and reworded the claims that could not be proven.

Two more things stood out. They were publishing a lot of content with no plan behind it, so I wrote one for them to follow. They also had news to announce every three or four months and were doing little with it. I wrote a plan for publishing each piece of news and using it to earn brand mentions and links.

On the pages themselves, I added direct answers to the questions buyers ask. I drew them from their own FAQs and other sources on the topic, and placed them near the top of the page.

Before this work, AI answers for the searches that matter to this business were full of competitors. Today the company's site is usually the first or second source cited, and many of the answers draw on its pages.

Together, these changes contributed to strong growth in organic traffic over the following year. More of their keywords reached the first page and first position, and form enquiries rose several times over.