GEO vs SEO: what changes when buyers ask AI

Short answer: SEO gets a page ranked in a list of links. GEO gets a company named inside an AI-written answer. They share a foundation (crawlable, indexed, useful pages), but GEO leans far more on what other websites say about you, and it is measured by how often you are named, not by a rank.

Side by side

Where they overlap

AI tools that search the web pick pages from search results, so pages that are not indexed are invisible to both. ChatGPT's search draws on web search indexes: one February 2025 analysis found 87 percent of SearchGPT citations matched Bing's top results, and later studies show its overlap with Google growing. Getting indexed and well understood by both Google and Bing is therefore the shared foundation.

Google itself says the best practices for appearing in its AI features are the same as for Search: no special markup or AI files are required.

Where they differ

1. Other people's pages matter more

A 2025 study found AI search engines cite earned media (independent reviews, articles, directories) much more heavily than Google's results do. For a B2B company this means the comparison articles, review sites and directory listings in your category often decide whether you are named, and what is said about you.

2. Ranking well on Google is not enough

Ahrefs found that on average only a small share of AI citations come from Google's top 10 results for the same question. A page can rank and still not be the one an AI tool quotes, and the reverse.

3. Answers are probabilistic

Ask the same question twice and you may get a different list. SparkToro found the same brand list came back less than once in 100 tries. So GEO is measured as a rate (named in 12 of 30 answers, for example), and a single screenshot proves nothing.

4. Crawlers behave differently

AI crawlers generally do not run JavaScript, so content that only appears after scripts run can be missed. You also need to allow the AI search crawlers themselves: OpenAI says that if you block OAI-SearchBot, your pages are not shown in ChatGPT search answers.

How to split the effort

• Keep doing SEO for indexation, technical health and the pages buyers search for. It feeds GEO.
• Add GEO measurement: a fixed set of buyer questions, run repeatedly on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI, tracking mention rate, accuracy and cited sources.
• Shift some effort to sources: correct outdated third-party facts and earn accurate coverage where AI already looks.
• Write for quoting: specific facts, numbers with sources, and plain comparisons on your own pages.

New to the term? Start with what GEO is. For a step-by-step list, see how to get mentioned in ChatGPT.