If you've invested in SEO over the past few years, you've been playing the right game — for the old rules. SEO still matters. But a new discipline has emerged alongside it, and most business owners haven't heard of it yet.
It's called GEO: Generative Engine Optimisation. And it's about something SEO was never designed to address.
What SEO actually does
Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of making your website rank higher in Google (and Bing) search results. It works by improving the signals that search engines use to evaluate pages: keyword relevance, backlinks, page speed, mobile usability, structured data, and dozens of other technical and content factors.
When SEO works, your page appears near the top of a results list. A customer searching for your service sees your link, clicks through, and lands on your website. From there, it's up to your site to convert them.
SEO is a well-understood discipline with established tools, metrics, and practitioners. It's also increasingly insufficient on its own — because a growing share of customers never open a search results page at all.
What GEO actually does
Generative Engine Optimisation is the practice of making your business appear in AI-generated answers. When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini for a recommendation, GEO is what determines whether your business gets named.
GEO doesn't work through rankings. There's no page one. AI tools don't return a list of links — they return a synthesised answer, usually naming two or three businesses they've determined are credible and relevant. Getting into that answer requires a different set of signals than SEO.
SEO gets you ranked. GEO gets you recommended. They're not the same thing.
Where SEO focuses on your relationship with a search algorithm, GEO focuses on your relationship with AI training data and real-time retrieval. The question isn't "does Google think this page is relevant?" — it's "does AI have enough evidence to trust and recommend this business?"
Key differences
Understanding the practical differences between SEO and GEO helps you see why doing one doesn't automatically give you the other — and why both are now necessary.
GEO: Appear in AI-generated shortlists and recommendations.
GEO: Trust signals, named practitioners, cross-platform consistency, FAQ content.
GEO: A synthesised answer naming 2–3 businesses directly.
GEO: 60–90 days to appear in AI answers after fixing key signals.
Do you need both?
Yes — but the priority is shifting. Google still handles the majority of searches, and SEO remains valuable. But AI search is growing fast, and the customers it sends convert at a significantly higher rate than organic search visitors. They've already been pre-qualified by the AI's recommendation.
The good news is that GEO and SEO share some foundations. Clear, well-structured content helps both. Consistent business information across platforms helps both. Strong reviews help both. The difference is in the specifics: GEO requires trust signals that SEO doesn't prioritise, and vice versa.
If you're already doing SEO, adding GEO is an incremental investment — not a complete rebuild. The businesses that will struggle are those that assume their existing SEO work covers AI visibility. It doesn't. The signals are different, and the gap is measurable.
- Add structured data (schema markup) for your business type, services, and location
- Create dedicated pages for each major service with full descriptions and FAQs
- Ensure your business information is consistent across all directories and platforms
- Build review presence on at least two platforms beyond Google
- Test what AI actually says about your business across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity
See your GEO score alongside your competitors
GetCited runs a 5-day AI Referral Scan — testing 50+ queries across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity to show exactly where you appear, who appears instead, and what's missing.