SEO vs GEO: what has changed, and what still matters
By Anubhav, Business Head at Awebco
PUBLISHED 12 AUGUST 2026
SEO is the work of getting your pages to rank in a list of search results. GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is the work of getting your business named and cited inside the answers AI assistants write.
Both are about being found. The difference is where the finding happens. SEO competes for a position on a page of links. GEO competes for a place inside a paragraph an assistant has written on your buyer’s behalf. Most of the underlying work feeds both, which is the part that tends to surprise people.
Why this came up at all
For a long time, someone with a question typed it into Google and chose from a list. That still happens, a great deal.
What has changed is that a second habit has grown up alongside it. People ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude, and read the answer they are given. Google’s AI Overviews put a written answer above the classic results, so even an ordinary search often opens with a paragraph rather than a list.
When the answer arrives already written, the question changes. You are no longer only asking whether your page can rank. You are asking whether your business is in the answer at all.
That is the gap GEO sets out to close.
What SEO does
SEO earns your pages a position in the results.
The mechanics are well understood. Search engines crawl your site, work out what each page is about, weigh how useful and trustworthy it is against everything else on the topic, and order the results. You influence that through what you publish, how your site is built, and the credibility you earn elsewhere on the web.
The outcome is a click. Someone sees your listing, chooses it, and lands on your site, where you control what happens next.
That is worth holding on to. A ranking sends people to you.
What GEO does
GEO earns your business a mention inside the answer.
Assistants do not order a list. They read across many sources, write a response, and name a handful of businesses, products or references inside it. Sometimes they link out. Often they do not.
The outcome is different from a click. It is closer to a recommendation, delivered by something the reader already trusts, at the moment they are weighing up options. Being one of three names in that paragraph carries a weight a tenth place ranking never will.
It also changes what success looks like in your reporting. You can be helping someone decide without a visit ever showing up in your analytics.
SEO and GEO side by side
| SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| What you compete for | A position in a list of results | A mention inside a written answer |
| Where it appears | The search results page | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and AI Overviews |
| What the reader does next | Clicks through to your site | Reads the answer, then often searches for you by name |
| What decides it | Relevance, usefulness and authority on the topic | The same three, plus how easily your content can be quoted on its own |
| How you measure it | Rankings, organic traffic and conversions | Whether you are named for the prompts that matter, and how often |
| How it moves | Builds as your authority grows | Builds as your authority grows, and can shift when a model updates |
Where the two overlap
This is the useful part, and the reason the choice is not really a choice.
The signals that help an assistant decide to name you are, for the most part, the same signals that help a search engine decide to rank you.
- Content that answers a real question clearly, in the language a person would actually use
- A site that is quick, clean and easy for a machine to read
- Structured data that states plainly what your pages and your business are
- Consistent information about your business wherever it appears online
- Credible mentions and references from places that already have a reputation
Do that work and you are building for both at once. What GEO adds on top is a shift in how you shape the content, so that a paragraph can be lifted out of it and still make sense on its own.
What influences whether an assistant names you
Clarity.
Assistants quote sentences that stand alone. A definition that works without the paragraph around it travels much further than one that needs setting up first.
Structure.
Headings phrased as the question a person would ask make it easy for a model to match your page to a prompt.
Schema.
Structured data removes the guesswork. It states what your business is, who wrote the page, and what the answers to your listed questions are.
Consistency.
Your name, address, sector and services should read the same on your site, your listings and your profiles. Mismatched information makes a model less confident about naming you.
Authority.
Models lean on sources the wider web already treats as credible. Reviews, mentions, coverage and references all feed that.
Attribution.
A named author with a real professional footprint gives an assistant something it can verify.
What to do first
- 01
Find the prompts, not just the keywords. Write down the questions a buyer would actually ask an assistant before choosing someone like you. They are longer and more conversational than the keywords you already track.
- 02
Check where you stand. Put those questions to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews and record what comes back, including who does get named. That is your baseline.
- 03
Give every important page a quotable answer. Near the top, in two or three sentences, answer the question the page exists to answer, and make it work as a standalone paragraph.
- 04
Tidy your structured data and your listings. Organisation, LocalBusiness, Article, FAQPage and Person schema, and the same business information everywhere it appears.
- 05
Keep publishing on the questions you are actually asked. Depth on a narrow set of topics does more for citation than breadth across many.
Does SEO still matter?
Yes, and more than the framing of this article might suggest.
Assistants read the open web. The pages they draw from are, in large part, pages that rank. Strong SEO is what puts your content into the pool a model reads in the first place.
Classic search also carries most of the volume today, and it converts. People still search, still click, and still buy from what they find.
GEO is not a replacement. It is a second front, built largely on the same foundation, and a good moment to start while the ground is still open.
Questions we get asked
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO earns your pages a position in search results so someone can click through to you. GEO earns your business a mention inside the answer an AI assistant writes. The work behind them overlaps heavily, so in practice most businesses build one foundation and aim it at both.
What is answer engine optimisation?
Answer engine optimisation, or AEO, is the practice of shaping content so it can be lifted straight into an answer, whether that is a featured snippet, a voice result or an AI Overview. It sits in the same family as GEO. The American spelling, answer engine optimization, is the more common form online.
Is GEO the same as LLM optimisation?
They describe much the same work. GEO, LLM optimisation and AEO have all been used for the practice of getting content understood, quoted and credited by AI systems. The labels are still settling. What matters is the work underneath, which is consistent across all three.
How do I optimise for AI search?
Start by writing down the questions your buyers would ask an assistant, then check what the assistants currently say. From there it is clear, quotable answers on your important pages, clean structured data, consistent business information across the web, and steady publishing on the questions you get asked most.
How do I know whether AI assistants are mentioning my business?
Put your key prompts to the main assistants, record what comes back, and repeat it on a regular cycle so you can see movement. Rank tracking platforms are adding AI visibility reporting, which makes this easier to do at scale. The habit matters more than the tool. A baseline you revisit tells you far more than a single check.
Where does your business sit in AI answers today?
If you are curious what an assistant says when someone asks about your sector, we are happy to take a look with you. It is a useful thing to see, whatever you decide to do next.
Talk to us