GEO vs SEO: what is the same and what actually differs
GEO, generative engine optimization, is the work of getting cited in answers from language models. SEO is the work of ranking in a list of links. They share roughly eighty percent of their foundation: content has to be fetchable, readable and understandable. The difference is the goal. SEO wants a position, GEO wants a sentence inside somebody else’s answer, and that rewards different things in how the text is written.
What is identical between GEO and SEO?
If somebody sells GEO as something entirely new, ask them which of these is not already SEO:
- Content must be in the server response without requiring JavaScript.
- The page must load fast enough to be fetched completely.
- Structured data helps the machine understand what the page is about.
- Heading structure and canonical addresses have to be sound.
- The content has to actually be good and answer a real question.
Where is the dividing line, point by point?
| SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | The page | The passage |
| Goal | A position in a list | A sentence in an answer |
| Measurement | Position over time | Sampled answers |
| Crawlers | Googlebot, Bingbot | GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot |
| Rendering | JavaScript usually fine | Several crawlers run none |
| Clicks | Go to your site | May not happen at all |
| Foundation | Same technical requirements | Same technical requirements |
What genuinely sets them apart?
Three differences are real. The first is the unit: a search engine ranks pages, a model cites passages. That means a paragraph has to carry itself without surrounding text. The second is that there is no position to measure, only presence in an answer that varies between phrasings and occasions. The third is access: the crawlers are different from the search engines’ and are governed separately in robots.txt.
Why is there no ranking in GEO?
In search there is an ordered list and a position to track over time. In a generated answer there are only the sources the model happened to choose, and the choice varies with how the question was phrased. So tracking has to be sampled: the same questions, at intervals, with the answers kept. Anyone promising you a GEO ranking report is measuring something that does not exist.
Is llms.txt worth adding?
llms.txt is a proposed standard where a text file describes what the site contains and links to the most important pages. Support varies between vendors and it is not established the way robots.txt is. It takes half an hour to generate from data you already have, so the trade-off is easy. But the larger effect comes from content being present in the HTML and written in self-contained passages, not from the file itself. Be sceptical of anyone saying otherwise.
What should you do first?
In this order, and step one gets you further than people expect:
- Check the content exists without JavaScript.
- Admit the AI crawlers in robots.txt.
- Rewrite the twenty most important passages so they survive without surrounding text.
- Add structured data to the page types that lack it.
- Set up tracking of crawler visits in the server log.
Common questions
Is GEO something other than SEO?
Roughly eighty percent is the same work: content has to be fetchable, readable and understandable. What differs is the unit and the goal. SEO optimises a page toward a position in a list. GEO optimises a passage toward being quoted inside somebody else’s answer. Which means an agency selling GEO as an entirely new discipline is either simplifying or reselling SEO at a higher price.
Can you measure your GEO ranking?
No, and that is worth knowing. In a generated answer there is no ordered list, only the sources the model happened to choose, and the choice varies with how the question was phrased. Tracking therefore has to be sampled: the same questions, at intervals, with the answers kept. Anyone promising a GEO ranking report is measuring something that does not exist.
Should we stop doing SEO and focus on GEO?
No. The foundation is shared, so work on technology, structure and content pays off in both. Ordinary search also still accounts for the majority of traffic for most B2B companies. Treat GEO as an addition to how the text is written, not as a change of channel.
