SEO vs. GEO: what is the difference, and what does your business need?

Short answer: SEO (search engine optimisation) works to rank your pages as high as possible in the list of search results. GEO (generative engine optimisation) works to get your company named as a source in AI answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews. GEO does not replace SEO, it builds on it: Google states that its AI features rely on the same ranking systems as normal search. What GEO adds is a sharper focus on direct answers, consistent facts and confirmation from other sites.

In conversations with clients we hear the question in two versions: “Is SEO dead now?” and “Do we need a separate GEO agency?”. The answer to both is no. This article shows where the two disciplines overlap, where they really differ, and how a small or medium-sized company can cover both without paying twice.

What is SEO?

SEO covers everything that makes a website easy for search engines to find, understand and rank. The goal is a high position for the searches your customers type in, and as a result clicks on your website.

• Technology: pages that can be crawled and indexed, fast load times, clean URLs, a sitemap.
• Content: one page per topic, matched to the search intent, with clear headings.
• Authority: links and mentions from other websites, reviews, a well-kept Google Business Profile.

Success is measured in rankings, impressions, clicks and, in the end, enquiries. Google Search Console shows all of that for free.

What is GEO?

GEO stands for generative engine optimisation. The term comes from a 2024 study by Princeton University and other researchers. It describes the work of being quoted or recommended as a source in answers generated by AI. You will also see AEO (answer engine optimisation) and LLMO; in practice they mean the same thing.

For most commercial and local questions, AI systems search the web live while answering, read a handful of pages and build their answer from them. Whoever is among those pages and offers a passage that is easy to quote gets named. ChatGPT alone had 900 million weekly users in February 2026, according to OpenAI. More on how the systems pick their sources in our guide Get cited by ChatGPT.

SEO and GEO compared

What SEO and GEO have in common

Most of the work is the same. In May 2026 Google published its own guide to its AI features. The message: they are based on the core ranking and quality systems of Google Search, so SEO best practices remain relevant. To appear, a page has to be indexed and eligible for a snippet. Special AI files or extra markup are not needed.

• Crawlability: what a crawler cannot reach does not appear anywhere.
• Content in the HTML: an analysis by Vercel and MERJ found that the major AI crawlers do not run JavaScript. Text that only loads afterwards stays invisible to them.
• Clear page structure: one topic per page, meaningful headings, a clear answer at the top.
• Trust: reviews, a real address, named authors, references.

Put simply: a website with weak SEO will not be quoted in AI answers either. That is why SEO is the first step for every GEO project we take on.

Why a top ranking alone is no longer enough

When an AI summary sits above the results, fewer people click. The Pew Research Center analysed 68,879 Google searches by 900 US adults in spring 2025:

A link inside the AI summary itself was clicked in about 1 % of visits. Ahrefs found a similar trend: for informational searches with an AI Overview, the click rate of the first result was 34.5 % lower in March 2025 than expected without the feature. Google disputes such studies. Still, the direction is clear: for questions that the AI answers well, the visit no longer happens on your website, but the decision about which company gets named does.

At the same time, a good ranking no longer automatically means being quoted. In its March 2026 update, Ahrefs found that only around 38 % of the pages cited in AI Overviews ranked in the top 10 for the same search. The rest came from further down, partly because Google splits a question into several sub-queries. Pages that answer a precise sub-question have a chance even without a top ranking.

What GEO asks for on top of SEO

Where SEO thinks in pages and search terms, GEO thinks in questions and quotable passages. In our GEO checks for Austrian companies, these points make the difference:

• The answer first: every page and every section opens with one or two sentences that answer the question completely. Only then come the details.
• Concrete facts: prices or price ranges, timelines, areas served, number of projects, qualifications. The Princeton study measured about 41 % more visibility in AI answers when statistics were added; that is a lab result, but it matches what we see.
• Headings as questions: phrased the way customers ask, for example “What does a website cost in Austria?”.
• The same facts everywhere: name, address, services and prices identical on the website, Google Business Profile, WKO Firmen A–Z and directories. Contradictions make a model unsure.
• Mentions on other sites: reviews with text, trade articles, lists like “agencies in Vienna”. AI answers often draw on exactly these pages when they put together a recommendation.
• Open doors for AI crawlers: allow OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot in robots.txt and in the firewall or CDN.

You will often see llms.txt mentioned. Google says its Search ignores the file, and no major AI provider has confirmed using it for citations. We create it automatically because it costs nothing, but it is not a lever.

How to measure SEO and GEO

Our free GEO report runs a first prompt test for you: it asks ChatGPT with web search and location Austria, shows whether you are named and who is recommended instead.

Where to start

1. Check the basics: are all important pages indexed? Look at the “Pages” report in Search Console.
2. Open the doors: robots.txt, firewall and CDN settings for Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot.
3. Rebuild the pages: one page per service and location, the answer in the first sentences, concrete facts, content in the HTML.
4. Align the facts: website, Google Business Profile and directories with the same name, address and services. Our Google Business Profile guide helps.
5. Build confirmation: ask happy clients for reviews with text, one trade article or interview per quarter.
6. Measure monthly: Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, referrals and a fixed set of ten customer questions.

Steps 1 to 3 are classic SEO and pay off for both. Steps 4 and 5 matter for SEO too, but weigh more heavily in AI answers. Expect a few weeks for changes on your own website and two to three months for mentions on other sites. Nobody can guarantee “position 1 in ChatGPT”; anyone who promises it is selling you a myth.

Written byChristoph SpeiserProject lead & sales

Meet the team →