GEO vs SEO at a glance
The short answer: for Google they’re the same work, and outside Google GEO adds crawler access and answer checking. The table puts the two side by side.
| SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank a page for a query and win the click | Be one of the sources an AI answer uses, and be described accurately |
| Where you show up | Lists of results | Inside AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and similar answers |
| Who picks the source | The search engine’s ranking systems | For Google, the same ranking systems; for other engines, their own search crawlers and models |
| Crawlers to allow | Googlebot, Bingbot | Googlebot, plus OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot |
| Unit that competes | The page | The passage that gets quoted, and what’s said about your brand across the web |
| How you measure | Rankings, clicks, sessions | Search Console’s Generative AI report for Google; logged answers to fixed prompts elsewhere |
Different end goals
SEO optimises to rank a page for a query. GEO optimises to be the source an AI engine uses when it answers a question. SEO wins the click; GEO wins the mention inside the answer, which the reader may see before any click.
Measurement differs too, though less than it used to. SEO counts positions, clicks and sessions you can read in analytics. For Google’s AI features there’s now a Generative AI performance report in Search Console, rolled out to all sites by August 31, 2026, which shows impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode (Search Console Help). Other engines offer no equivalent report, so you check them by asking your target questions on a schedule and logging the answers.
Same foundation
Both rely on content that answers the searcher’s question, a technically sound site and real trust signals. For Google this is literal: its AI Overviews and AI Mode retrieve pages from the Search index using its core ranking systems, and Google says AEO and GEO are, from its perspective, still SEO (Google Search Central). To be eligible as a supporting link, a page has to be indexed and allowed to show a snippet. Google lists no extra technical requirements (Google Search Central).
So you can’t do GEO for Google without the SEO basics underneath, and much of an audit for one is an audit for the other.
Where Google's view stops
Google speaks for Google Search. Other engines crawl with their own bots, and each has its own robots.txt name:
- OpenAI uses OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search. Sites that opt it out won’t appear in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still show as navigational links. GPTBot is a separate token for model training (OpenAI).
- Perplexity uses PerplexityBot to surface and link sites in its search results, and says the bot isn’t used to crawl content for AI foundation models (Perplexity).
- Anthropic uses Claude-SearchBot for search and ClaudeBot for collecting training data. Blocking Claude-SearchBot may reduce a site’s visibility in Claude’s search results (Anthropic).
A robots.txt file written years ago for Googlebot, or a firewall rule that blocks unfamiliar bots, can leave a site ranking in Google and missing from these engines. That check is pure GEO work; classic SEO never needed it.
Where the work actually diverges
Past the shared foundation, the day-to-day splits. SEO tunes title tags, internal links, page speed and backlinks to move a ranking. GEO adds three jobs.
The first is the crawler and firewall check above. The second is wording: stating facts plainly, naming the source of each figure and keeping key answers in the page text. In the original GEO paper, adding citations, quotations and statistics made sources more visible in AI answers, while keyword stuffing didn’t help (arXiv 2311.09735). The third is what’s said about you elsewhere. Google notes that its AI features can show what’s said about products and services in blogs, videos and forum discussions, and also that chasing inauthentic mentions isn’t as helpful as it might seem (Google Search Central). The off-site job is earning real coverage and keeping your facts consistent on profiles you control. Planting mentions doesn’t count.
SEO mostly improves pages you own. A real share of GEO happens off your site.
When to weight one over the other
They're layers, not a choice — but the emphasis shifts with your situation. Lean SEO-heavy when you're not yet ranking for your core terms, run a transactional or local business where the click is the conversion, or compete in a query set where AI answers barely appear. Lean GEO-heavy when you already rank well but AI answers skip you, when buyers research your category by asking chatbots, or when competitors are getting named in AI answers and you aren't. If you're invisible in the index, fix SEO first — there's nothing for a model to pull from. So the order is usually SEO to get found, GEO to get cited.
Why you need both
SEO alone can leave you ranking in Google but missing from engines whose crawlers you block or whose answers name competitors. GEO without SEO has nothing to stand on, because Google’s AI features pull from the same index and every engine needs a page worth quoting. Run them as one programme: SEO to get found, GEO to check that the engines can reach you and describe you correctly. When you compare agencies, ask how they handle both; the GEO agency ranking is a place to start.