What is GEO, and how is it different from SEO?

GEO (generative engine optimization) is the work of getting AI assistants and AI search engines to find your business, understand it and cite it with accurate facts. The difference from SEO is the goal: SEO aims for a place in the list of results; GEO aims for a place inside the answer the AI writes.

We mean ChatGPT, Gemini, Google (AI Overviews and AI Mode), Perplexity, Claude and Copilot. GEO does not replace SEO. It builds on it, because when these engines search the web, they answer from what they find in a search index. We checked every fact in this guide on 25 October 2026.

Where does the term GEO come from?

From an academic paper: “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, by Pranjal Aggarwal and five co-authors. It was posted on arXiv on 16 November 2023 and accepted to the KDD 2024 conference.

The authors present it as a framework to help content creators improve their visibility in generative engine responses. In their benchmark, some changes to the text increased that visibility by up to 40%.

That 40% is a lab result, not a promise. A later benchmark, C-SEO Bench (NeurIPS 2025), found that most methods for “optimizing” text for AI were largely ineffective and often hurt the document’s ranking. Classic SEO strategies did better.

What else is SEO for AI called?

It goes by several names, and in practice they mean the same thing. Wikidata, the open database linked to Wikipedia, lists GEO, AEO, LLMO, AIO and AI SEO as aliases of one concept.

What else is SEO for AI called?

Name	What it stands for	Where you’ll see it
GEO	Generative engine optimization	The original academic term, from 2023
AEO	Answer engine optimization	Mostly English-language marketing writing
LLMO	Large language model optimization	Technical writing
AI SEO	The plain description of the work	When a business looks for help in everyday terms

Because “GEO” on its own is easily mistaken for geolocation, we spell it out the first time: generative engine optimization (GEO).

How does an AI decide which businesses to name?

When an assistant searches the web, it roughly follows these steps.

Google explains that AI Overviews and AI Mode may use a query fan-out technique: they run several related searches across subtopics and data sources to build a single answer.

Each engine draws on an index. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT uses its OAI-SearchBot crawler to surface websites in its search features. Microsoft documents that Copilot sends queries to the Bing search service to ground its answers in web data.

When an assistant doesn’t search, it answers from what it learned in training, and that data may be out of date.

How is GEO different from SEO?

In the goal and in how you measure it, not in the technical foundation. Google says it plainly: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.”

For Google, the page only needs to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet. You don’t need special AI files or new structured data either.

How is GEO different from SEO?

Aspect	SEO	GEO
Where you appear	In the list of results	Inside the AI’s answer
What you’re after	Ranking and clicks	Being named, cited with a link and described correctly
What Google gives you	Search Console: queries, impressions and clicks	Search Console (all sites since 31 Aug 2026): impressions in AI features; the announcement mentions no clicks
What Bing gives you	Bing Webmaster Tools: search performance	Bing Webmaster Tools: citations in Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries
What you measure yourself	Little	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude: no dashboard, so you measure with a fixed set of questions

An SEO mistake is also a GEO mistake. If your robots.txt blocks OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI says your site won’t appear in ChatGPT search answers (at most, as a navigational link). We cover this in detail in our guide on whether your website is blocking AI.

What does GEO work include?

Serious GEO work reviews four layers, in this order, because each one depends on the one before.

1. Access. AI crawlers can get in, and the important text can be read without relying on JavaScript.
2. Business facts. Name, category, location, prices and opening hours, identical on your site, your Google Business Profile and directories.
3. Citable content. One page per real customer question, the answer in the first lines, tables and a visible date.
4. External sources. Press, directories, comparisons and reviews that the AI consults when it talks about your sector.

A typical case: a language school publishes its timetable only in a PDF, and a directory still shows its old phone number. If someone asks an AI for language schools with Saturday classes, that fact isn’t on the website and the number quoted is the old one. The work starts there: put the fact in text, on its own page, and make it match everywhere.

How much traffic does AI send today?

Not much in visits, and it’s worth knowing before you invest. According to SE Ranking, which analysed 101,574 websites in Spain:

• 0.30% of web traffic in Spain came, on average, from AI platforms between January and April 2026.
• 70.49% of that AI traffic came from ChatGPT.

But many recommendations are read inside the chat, with no click. That’s why GEO is measured by presence in answers, not only by visits.

What isn’t GEO?

• It isn’t promising rankings. Nobody controls what an AI answers. If someone guarantees you’ll appear in ChatGPT, ask them how they measure it.
• It isn’t manipulating answers. In their 28 August 2026 version, Google’s spam policies include “attempting to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search”.
• It isn’t publishing hundreds of near-identical pages. One useful page per real question beats ten variants.

Frequently asked questions

Where should you start?

First, find out how AI tools see you today. In a few seconds and with no commitment, our free diagnostic tells you whether their crawlers can get into and read your site. What they say about your business and which facts are wrong is what we measure in the full diagnostic.

If you already know you have a problem, why ChatGPT doesn’t recommend your business covers the most common causes, and how to appear in Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode explains what Google asks for. In services you’ll see how we work month by month: making the changes, measuring them and keeping them up to date.

Sources

Accessed 25 October 2026. Grade: [A] official primary source or peer-reviewed paper; [B] open database or industry study with a published method.

• [A] Aggarwal et al., “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, arXiv, 16 Nov 2023, accepted to KDD 2024.
• [A] Puerto et al., “C-SEO Bench: Does Conversational SEO Work?”, NeurIPS 2025.
• [A] Google Search Central, AI features and your website, updated 10 Dec 2025.
• [A] Google Search Central Blog, Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console, 3 Jun 2026, note of 31 Aug 2026.
• [A] Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search, updated 28 Aug 2026.
• [A] OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI crawlers.
• [A] Microsoft Learn, Data, privacy, and security for web search in Microsoft Copilot, updated 18 Aug 2026.
• [A] Bing Webmaster Blog, AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools, 10 Feb 2026.
• [B] Wikidata, Q134083964: generative engine optimization.
• [B] SE Ranking, AI traffic in Spain in 2026 (in Spanish), 17 Jun 2026.