GEO vs SEO, what changes for your website

Where did GEO come from?

The name comes from a 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, published at KDD 2024. They rewrote web pages in different ways and measured how much an AI engine used each one. Their best methods raised a page’s visibility in answers by up to 40% in their tests. [1]

Read that number with care. The main tests rewrote one page at a time, chosen at random, on a research engine built on GPT-3.5 and the top 5 Google results, with a smaller check on Perplexity. A second test rewrote all five pages at once. There, every method tested left the page ranked first in Google with a smaller share, and the paper concludes that GEO “is especially helpful for lower ranked websites”. [1]

What does Google say about GEO?

Google’s answer is that SEO still applies. Its guide says the best practices for SEO stay relevant because its AI features “are rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems”. A page has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. [2][3]

Google speaks for Google’s systems. The research paper measured answer engines in general. Both can be true at once, and that is the real difference between the two words.

What do GEO and SEO have in common?

• Text in the HTML itself. Google runs a page’s scripts. Most AI crawlers did not when last measured, so text that only appears after scripts run can be invisible to them.
• A robots.txt that lets search and AI crawlers in.
• One page per topic, with a clear title and heading.
• Text that answers the question people actually typed.

Where do GEO and SEO split?

In Google’s AI Overviews, brands mentioned often across the web show up more. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands. Mentions correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, backlinks at 0.218. That is a correlation, not proof of cause. And Google warns that chasing inauthentic mentions “isn’t as helpful as it might seem”. [7][2]

AI answers also change between runs. Ask the same question twice and you can get different businesses. So GEO is measured in samples, never in one screenshot.

Schema markup is one place where the two get confused. It helps search engines understand who you are. Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages that were already cited often in Google’s AI Overviews and then added schema. It found “no major uplift in citations on any platform.” In AI Overviews, their citations fell 4.6% against matched pages, a small but statistically significant drop. [8]

Can GEO replace SEO?

No. Google’s AI answers draw on pages that are indexed and eligible for snippets, which is the SEO foundation. ChatGPT search reads the web through OpenAI’s crawler and outside search providers. Drop SEO and you lose the pages AI engines would quote. [3][9]

Is SEO dead now with AI?

No, but clicks are changing. Pew Research tracked 900 U.S. adults in March 2025. When Google showed an AI summary, they clicked a regular result in 8% of visits. Without one, they clicked in 15%. [10]

So people still search and still click, just less often when an AI answer sits on top. A good page now has two jobs. It should earn the click below, and be the source quoted above. The basics still decide whether you are found at all.

What should a small business do first?

1. Check that Google, Bing and the AI crawlers can reach your site. Our free check does this for you.
2. Fix the basics on your key pages: a clear title, one main heading, and a first paragraph that says what you do and where.
3. Add the questions customers ask, with short answers, as text on the page.
4. Get your business named on sites your customers trust, like directories, review sites and local press.
5. Measure both. Watch Search Console for Google, including its Generative AI performance report, and ask AI engines your customers’ questions every month.

For the AI side step by step, read the AI search optimization guide and how to get your business recommended by ChatGPT.