GEO vs SEO: What's the Difference?
GEO optimises your brand's visibility in AI-generated answers. SEO optimises your visibility in traditional search engine results pages.
Both disciplines aim to make your business easier to find online, but they target fundamentally different platforms, use different success metrics, and require different optimisation strategies. As AI-powered search grows, businesses need to understand the distinction — and why investing in both is increasingly essential.
This guide breaks down the differences, explains where the two approaches overlap, and helps you decide how to allocate your efforts.
What Is SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of improving your website's visibility in traditional search engine results. When someone types a query into Google or Bing, SEO determines where your pages appear in the list of results.
SEO has been the foundation of online marketing for over two decades. It encompasses technical optimisation (site speed, mobile responsiveness, crawlability), on-page optimisation (keywords, headings, meta descriptions), and off-page authority building (backlinks, domain reputation, brand mentions). Success is measured by rankings, organic traffic, and click-through rates.
The model is straightforward: search engines crawl and index web pages, rank them according to hundreds of signals, and present an ordered list of results. Your goal is to appear as high on that list as possible for the queries that matter to your business.
What Is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimisation is the practice of improving your brand's visibility in AI-generated responses. When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Google Gemini a question, GEO determines whether your brand appears in the answer.
GEO is a newer discipline that has emerged in response to the rapid growth of AI-powered search. Rather than competing for a position on a list, you compete for a mention inside a synthesised answer. The AI draws from training data, real-time web browsing, and the overall consensus of authoritative sources to decide which brands to reference.
Success in GEO is measured by mention frequency, citation rate, sentiment analysis, and share of voice across AI platforms — metrics that traditional SEO tools do not capture.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Aspect | SEO | GEO |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in Google/Bing SERPs | Get mentioned by AI assistants |
| Platforms | Google, Bing, Yahoo | ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews |
| Success metric | Rankings, clicks, traffic | Mentions, citations, visibility score |
| Content focus | Keywords, backlinks, technical SEO | Authority, citations, structured data, E-E-A-T |
| Time to results | Weeks to months | Days to weeks |
| Measurement tools | Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush | AI visibility trackers (e.g. RivalScope) |
| User experience | List of links to click through | Direct answer, may never visit a website |
| Competition | Compete for position on a list of 10+ results | Compete for a mention in a 2-5 brand answer |
Five Key Differences Explained
1. Output format
SEO targets a results page where users choose from a list of links. Every result gets some visibility — even position seven or eight gets impressions. GEO targets a generated paragraph where the AI selects which brands to name. There is no "page two" in an AI answer. Your brand is either referenced or it is invisible.
This difference has a significant practical implication. In SEO, incremental improvements (moving from position eight to position five) produce incremental gains. In GEO, the gap between being mentioned and not being mentioned is binary — you are either part of the conversation or you are not.
2. How relevance is determined
SEO relevance is largely keyword-driven. Search engines match your page's content to the user's query based on keyword usage, semantic relevance, and topical coverage. You can optimise individual pages for specific terms.
GEO relevance is entity-driven. AI models build an understanding of your brand as an entity — what you do, who you serve, how you compare to alternatives — and draw on that understanding when constructing answers. This entity perception is shaped by the totality of your online presence, not just the keywords on your website.
3. The role of third-party sources
In SEO, backlinks from other sites boost your domain authority and rankings. The link itself is the signal.
In GEO, what third-party sources say about you shapes how AI models describe and recommend your brand. It is not enough for another site to link to you — the context of that mention matters. A review that says "Brand X is the most reliable option for small businesses" directly influences how an AI assistant describes you. AI platforms synthesise these external perspectives into their responses.
4. How you measure success
SEO success is transparent and standardised. Google Search Console, rank trackers, and analytics platforms provide clear data on rankings, traffic, and conversions. The metrics are well-understood and widely tracked.
GEO success is harder to measure. AI responses are generated dynamically, can vary between sessions, and occur inside private conversations that are not visible to traditional analytics. Measuring GEO performance requires dedicated tools that query AI platforms systematically and track mentions, sentiment, and citations over time.
5. Update velocity
SEO changes propagate at the speed of search engine crawling and indexing — typically days to weeks, sometimes longer for competitive terms. Ranking changes tend to be gradual.
GEO changes can propagate much faster. AI platforms that use real-time web browsing (like Perplexity and ChatGPT with browsing enabled) can reflect new information within hours. Even platforms that rely primarily on training data are updated more frequently than most businesses realise. This means GEO efforts can show results faster, but it also means your visibility can shift more quickly if competitors improve their presence.
Where GEO and SEO Overlap
Despite the differences, GEO and SEO share significant common ground. Many activities that improve your traditional search performance also strengthen your AI visibility:
- High-quality content. Comprehensive, well-structured, authoritative content ranks well in Google and gets referenced by AI assistants. Investing in content quality benefits both channels.
- E-E-A-T signals. Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness matter for both Google's ranking algorithm and AI models' source selection. Building genuine authority in your niche serves both.
- Structured data. Schema markup helps search engines understand your pages and helps AI systems extract accurate information about your brand.
- Backlinks and brand authority. The authoritative sites that link to you also influence how AI models perceive your brand. A strong backlink profile supports both SEO and GEO.
- Consistent brand information. Accurate, consistent information across the web improves both your search rankings and your AI entity recognition.
This overlap is good news. It means you do not need to build two completely separate strategies. A strong foundation in one supports the other.
How SEO Feeds GEO
There is a directional relationship worth understanding: strong SEO performance often leads to stronger GEO performance.
Pages that rank well in Google are more likely to be crawled and referenced by AI platforms that use real-time web browsing. Content that earns top-three positions for competitive queries is effectively "pre-vetted" as authoritative, and AI models give it proportional weight.
Additionally, the content that ranks well in traditional search often appears in the training data that large language models learn from. If your pages have been ranking highly for years, they have likely contributed to the AI models' understanding of your industry — and by extension, your brand.
This does not mean SEO automatically guarantees GEO success. Brands with strong SEO can still be absent from AI answers if their content is not structured in ways AI can easily reference, or if competitors have stronger entity signals and third-party endorsements. But SEO provides a meaningful head start.
When to Prioritise GEO Over SEO
For most businesses, both matter. But there are situations where prioritising one over the other makes sense:
Prioritise GEO when:
- Your target customers are early adopters or tech-savvy professionals who use AI assistants heavily
- Your industry is one where AI recommendations carry significant weight (B2B SaaS, professional services, consulting)
- Competitors are already appearing in AI responses and you are not
- You have strong SEO performance but are not seeing equivalent AI visibility
Prioritise SEO when:
- Your business depends heavily on local search (maps, directions, "near me" queries)
- Your industry has high commercial search volume that AI platforms do not yet serve well
- Your website has technical SEO issues that need resolving before you can focus on broader visibility
- Your target audience is less likely to use AI assistants for research
Invest equally when:
- Your competitors are active in both traditional and AI search
- Your business serves both general consumers and tech-savvy buyers
- You want to build resilience against platform shifts in either direction
Getting Started with Both
If you are already investing in SEO, extending your efforts to cover GEO is not as large a leap as it might seem. The foundation you have built — quality content, domain authority, structured data — already works in your favour.
The key addition is monitoring and measurement. You need to know what AI platforms are saying about your brand, just as you track your Google rankings. Without this data, you are optimising blind on a growing channel.
Track your GEO performance across 6 AI platforms — start a free 3-day trial with RivalScope.