GEO vs SEO: what is the difference, and which should I pay for?

If you have been pitched GEO recently, you may have been left with the impression that SEO is finished and a new, expensive discipline has replaced it. Neither is true. The two are mostly the same work seen from different angles, with a handful of genuine differences that are worth knowing so you can buy the right thing.

What each term means

• SEO, search engine optimization: making your website easy for Google and Bing to find, understand and rank, so it appears high in the list of results for the searches your buyers type.
• GEO, generative engine optimization: making your business easy for AI tools to name and cite when they write an answer. The term comes from a 2023 academic paper and has since been adopted by agencies as a service label.
• AEO, answer engine optimization: being the direct answer to a specific question, whether in an AI tool, a featured snippet or a voice assistant.

You will also hear AI SEO, LLMO and AIO. They describe the same territory. A new acronym is not a new discipline.

Where they overlap

Most of it. Google's guide to generative AI in Search says plainly that, from Google's point of view, optimising for AI search is optimising for search, and so still SEO. It also says its AI features are rooted in the same core ranking and quality systems as ordinary results.

Outside Google the link is just as direct. ChatGPT search uses its own crawler plus third-party search providers, which OpenAI says include Bing. Perplexity searches the web each time it answers. In each case, a page that cannot be crawled, is not indexed or ranks nowhere is unlikely to be read, let alone quoted.

So these foundations serve both:

• A fast, crawlable website indexed by Google and Bing.
• Pages built around the questions buyers actually search.
• Clear, specific, first-hand content rather than generic copy.
• A sensible structure, with headings that say what each section covers.
• Links and mentions from credible sites in your industry and area.

Good SEO gets you into the pool of pages AI tools choose from. GEO is what makes them choose you once you are in it.

Where they genuinely differ

Measurement has improved recently. Google Search Console now has a Generative AI performance report showing impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Bing Webmaster Tools has added an AI Performance report showing how often your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing's AI answers. ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links it sends, so those visits can be separated in your analytics.

What GEO adds on top of good SEO

If your SEO is already sound, these are the extra pieces of work that move AI recommendations.

1. One version of your facts, everywhere. AI tools compare what different sources say about you. Your name, address, phone number, services and founding story need to match on your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, review sites and directories. SEO has long cared about this for local results; GEO makes it central.
2. Presence on the sources that get cited. Ask the tools your buyers' questions and list the sources they link. Those directories, trade bodies, round-up articles and review sites are your target list, whether or not they pass much SEO value as links.
3. Answers written to be quoted. A sentence that names the service, the place and the number can be lifted into an answer intact. Your homepage and service pages should open with one.
4. Comparison and "which should I choose" content. Buyers often ask AI tools to weigh up options, and Google describes AI Mode as built for exactly that kind of comparison question. Honest comparison pages give the tools material to work with.
5. Access for the right crawlers. SEO only worried about Googlebot and Bingbot. GEO also means allowing OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, while deciding separately about training crawlers.

How to judge a GEO pitch

The field is new and full of confident claims. These are warning signs:

• Guaranteed placement in ChatGPT or AI Overviews. Nobody controls those answers.
• Special access to AI rankings. Google states that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.
• An llms.txt file as the main deliverable. Google says it does not need such files. The guide to what llms.txt is explains its limited role.
• Hundreds of AI-written pages. Google treats mass-produced, low-value pages as spam.
• SEO, GEO and AEO priced as three packages for what is largely one piece of work.

Good signs are simpler. Someone worth hiring shows you what the tools say about you today, names the sources they cite, explains which gaps cost you the recommendation, and ties the work to enquiries rather than to a vanity score. The list of questions to ask an SEO agency works just as well for a GEO pitch.

Where to put the money

Start from where you are, not from the acronym.

• Not on Google at all for your main searches: spend on SEO first. Without it, AI tools have little to find. The guide to why a business is not showing on Google is the place to start.
• Ranking reasonably, but AI tools name competitors: this is where GEO work pays, usually starting with facts, listings and the opening lines of your key pages.
• Named by AI tools, but described wrongly: correct your listings and the third-party pages being cited.
• Not sure which: test first. The free ten-minute AI test shows your starting point, and an AI visibility audit compares rankings and AI answers side by side.

Whoever you hire, have one person accountable for both, reporting rankings and AI visibility in the same monthly report. That is how M/AFZAL's Growth Partner plan is set up: two new SEO pages a month and a monthly AI visibility check, run by the same person. For the bigger question of whether search still deserves budget at all, see is SEO dead because of AI, and for the full method, the main guide to AI search visibility.