Let's Be Honest About Where Search Is Heading
If you've been doing SEO for any amount of time, you've probably noticed something feels different lately. Traffic from informational content is getting harder to defend. Google is answering more questions directly on the results page. And your audience? A growing chunk of them are skipping Google entirely and just asking ChatGPT.
That's not a blip. That's a structural shift — and it's given rise to a term you're going to hear a lot more of: Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO.
GEO isn't SEO with a new coat of paint. It's a genuinely different discipline that addresses a genuinely different problem. But the two are deeply connected, and understanding how they relate is one of the more important things a marketer can wrap their head around right now.
So let's get into it.
SEO: What It Is and Why It Still Matters
Most people reading this already know what SEO is, but it's worth grounding ourselves before comparing it to something newer.
Search Engine Optimization is the practice of making your content rank well in traditional search engines — mostly Google, with Bing trailing behind. You do that by writing content that covers topics thoroughly, earning links from credible sites, ensuring your technical foundation is clean, and sending enough relevance signals that Google's algorithm puts you near the top for the queries you care about.
The core pillars haven't changed dramatically in the last decade, even if Google's algorithm has gotten considerably more sophisticated:
On-page optimization is still about relevance — does your page actually cover what someone searching a given query wants to know? Keywords matter, but intent matters more. A page targeting "best project management tools" needs to answer that question better than the 50 other pages competing for the same spot.
Technical SEO is the unglamorous work that makes everything else function. Page speed, mobile usability, crawlability, structured data, proper indexing — this stuff rarely wins you rankings on its own, but poor technical health can absolutely tank a site that deserves to rank.
Link building remains one of the most stubborn ranking factors in SEO, despite Google's occasional suggestions otherwise. Links from authoritative, relevant sites still move the needle. The tactics have shifted — earned editorial links, digital PR, and strategic content partnerships outperform anything spammy — but the underlying signal is still very much alive.
Content depth and topical authority have become increasingly important as Google has gotten better at understanding whether a site genuinely knows its subject area or is just churning out keyword-optimized filler. Publishing one great article isn't enough anymore. Building out a coherent library of content around a topic is what builds the kind of topical authority that leads to consistent rankings.
SEO is still worth doing — emphatically. Google processes somewhere in the range of 8.5 billion searches per day. That's not a market you walk away from. But the honest reality is that SEO's ceiling has gotten lower for certain content types, particularly informational queries where Google now often answers the question before the user clicks anywhere. Which brings us to GEO.
GEO: The New Problem SEO Doesn't Solve
Here's the scenario that GEO is designed to address:
Someone goes to Perplexity and asks, "What's the best CRM for a small B2B sales team?" Perplexity synthesizes an answer, maybe cites three or four sources, and the user gets what they need without clicking through to anyone's website. Or they ask ChatGPT, which pulls from its training data and whatever context it has access to, and recommends a handful of options — some of which may be your competitors.
Your content could be the most thoroughly optimized piece of SEO writing on the planet, and if it's not being cited in those AI responses, it doesn't exist for that user.
That's the gap GEO addresses.
Generative Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring and positioning your content so that AI systems — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, and whatever comes next — actually cite, quote, or reference you when they generate responses in your topic area.
The term itself came out of a 2023 research paper from Princeton and Georgia Tech that tested specific content strategies and measured their effect on AI citation frequency. The finding was clear: how you structure and present information meaningfully influences whether AI systems use it.
What GEO Actually Involves
Unlike SEO, which has a fairly well-defined playbook, GEO is still taking shape as a discipline. But the core principles are becoming clearer.
Being genuinely citable is the foundation. AI systems, particularly those using retrieval-augmented generation (more on that in a moment), tend to pull from sources that are authoritative, well-structured, and specific. Vague, hedged content doesn't get quoted. Content that takes clear positions, defines things precisely, and presents original data or analysis does.
Understanding how these systems actually retrieve information matters. A lot of AI tools — Perplexity being the clearest example — use a method called Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Instead of relying purely on training data, they actively crawl the web, pull relevant content, and feed it to the model as context before generating a response. For these systems, your content needs to be currently indexed, well-structured, and clearly topically relevant. It's almost closer to SEO in that way. Other systems like ChatGPT rely more heavily on training data, which is a slower, less controllable signal — but brand presence across the web still feeds into it over time.
Question-and-answer structure is your friend. AI systems are built around answering questions. If your content is written in a way that makes it easy to extract a clean, self-contained answer to a specific question, you're making the AI's job easier — and making yourself more likely to get cited. This is why FAQ sections, direct definitions, and subheadings phrased as questions work well in GEO contexts.
Brand authority across the web — not just backlinks — feeds AI visibility. SEO cares a lot about hyperlinks. GEO cares about the breadth and quality of your brand's presence across the internet more broadly — including non-linked mentions in articles, appearances in podcast transcripts, references in academic or industry publications, and coverage in major media outlets. AI models learn what's authoritative partly through the sheer weight of how often and where a brand gets mentioned. Getting covered on a major publication with no backlink still contributes to your AI visibility in a way traditional SEO would largely ignore.
Entity clarity helps. If your brand, your products, and your key subject matter experts are clearly defined as entities in your content and across the web — think Wikipedia entries, structured data, consistent naming — AI systems are better able to understand who and what you are, which makes them more likely to reference you accurately and confidently.
SEO vs. GEO: Where They Differ
It helps to be concrete about the differences here, because at a surface level they can sound like the same thing.
The "does a click happen" row is arguably the most consequential difference from a business perspective. SEO is fundamentally a traffic channel. You rank, someone clicks, they land on your site, and you have a shot at converting them. GEO is more of a brand influence channel — at least for now. If an AI recommends your product by name, the user might go search for you directly, type your URL, or just remember the name when they're ready to buy. That's a different — and harder to measure — kind of value.
This doesn't make GEO less important. It makes it a different kind of investment, with different expectations around attribution.
Where They Overlap (and Why That's Good News)
Here's the thing nobody talks about enough: a lot of what makes content good for SEO also makes it good for GEO. The overlap is substantial, which means investments in one channel often compound into the other.
E-E-A-T is universal. Google's framework for evaluating content quality — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — maps remarkably well to what AI systems appear to favor. Content written by credible people, backed by evidence, and free of vague platitudes performs well in both worlds.
Depth and originality win everywhere. Thin content that's just rehashing what everyone else has already said doesn't rank well in Google, and it doesn't get cited by AI systems either. If you're publishing original research, running surveys, interviewing actual experts, or synthesizing data from multiple sources into something genuinely new — that's valuable in both channels.
Schema markup does double duty. Structured data helps Google understand your content for rich results and featured snippets. It also makes it easier for AI systems to extract clean, structured information from your pages. Implementing FAQ schema, Article schema, and Organization schema is one of the highest-leverage technical investments you can make for both SEO and GEO simultaneously.
A strong brand matters everywhere. The accumulation of brand signals — links, mentions, coverage, consistent messaging — builds authority that flows into both your search rankings and your AI visibility. The specific signals differ somewhat, but the underlying principle is the same: be a brand that the internet clearly knows and trusts.
How to Actually Pursue Both at Once
If you're trying to integrate GEO thinking into an existing SEO strategy — which is what most practitioners are doing right now — here's a practical way to approach it.
Start by auditing how AI tools currently represent your brand. Go to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews and ask questions your target audience would ask. Does your brand come up? Is it represented accurately? Are competitors being mentioned instead? This gives you a baseline to work from and usually reveals some specific content gaps.
Expand your content to directly answer the questions AI tools are responding to. This is slightly different from traditional keyword research. You're looking for the specific phrasing people use when talking to AI — often more conversational, more specific, more intent-driven. Structure content around those questions with clear, direct answers near the top.
Build your brand's presence beyond your own site. This is where a lot of SEO-focused teams have a blind spot. Getting mentioned in major publications, contributing bylined articles to industry outlets, being quoted in news stories, building out your Wikipedia presence, appearing on podcasts — all of this feeds AI visibility in ways that pure on-site SEO work doesn't. Think of it as expanding the surface area of your brand across the internet.
Keep your content current. RAG-based systems heavily favor recent content. If you have cornerstone articles that are generating meaningful organic traffic, make sure they're being actively maintained, not just left to age. Updating statistics, adding new perspectives, and refreshing examples keeps content viable for both Google and AI retrieval systems.
Measure both channels separately. Don't try to fold AI visibility into your existing SEO dashboards — the metrics are different enough that you'll end up with a muddled picture. Track traditional SEO metrics in your usual tools. Set up a separate process for monitoring AI citation — whether that's a paid tool or a simple spreadsheet where you manually log AI responses to key queries each month.
Where This Is All Going
The convergence between SEO and GEO is going to accelerate. Google's AI Overviews are already a form of generative search layered on top of traditional search infrastructure. As they mature, appearing in AI Overviews effectively becomes an SEO goal — it just requires GEO-style content thinking to achieve it.
Meanwhile, tools like Perplexity are gaining real traction, especially with younger, tech-forward audiences. And the emergence of agentic AI — systems that autonomously research and make decisions on behalf of users — raises the stakes considerably. When an AI agent is building a vendor shortlist or recommending a software solution without a human initiating each search, the brands with the strongest AI visibility are going to have a structural advantage.
None of this means SEO is dying. It means the definition of "search visibility" is broadening, and the strategies required to maintain it are broadening with it.
The Bottom Line
SEO and GEO aren't competing priorities — they're complementary ones. SEO gets you in front of people who are actively searching. GEO gets you into the conversation happening inside the AI tools that are increasingly mediating how people discover information.
The good news is that the fundamentals of good content — being genuinely useful, clearly structured, and demonstrably credible — serve both channels well. You're not starting from scratch. You're extending a strategy you likely already have.
The question worth sitting with isn't "SEO or GEO?" It's "Is the content I'm publishing today good enough to be cited by an AI — and if not, what would it take to get there?"
That's a useful lens regardless of which channel you're optimizing for.
Quick Answers to Common Questions
What does GEO stand for?Generative Engine Optimization. It refers to optimizing your content so that AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews cite or reference you in their responses.
Is GEO replacing SEO?No — at least not yet, and probably not entirely. Traditional search still drives massive traffic, and SEO remains one of the most valuable channels in digital marketing. GEO addresses a different and growing behavior pattern. The two work best together.
How do I know if I'm showing up in AI responses?Test it manually — ask the major AI tools questions your audience would ask and see if you come up. Tools like Evertune also offer more systematic monitoring.
Does link building help with GEO?Indirectly, yes. Backlinks build brand authority and domain credibility that AI systems pick up on. But GEO also values non-hyperlinked brand mentions that traditional SEO largely overlooks — so the contribution isn't identical.
What content formats work best for GEO?Original research, expert commentary, clear definitions, and FAQ-style content tend to be highly citable. Anything that lets an AI extract a clean, standalone answer to a specific question is a good format choice.
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