SEO vs GEO: do you need both?

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“Our SEO company says everything’s fine. Now someone’s trying to sell us GEO. Do we actually need it, or is it the same thing with a new name?”

I hear some version of this question almost every week. It’s a fair one. The industry has produced a pile of new acronyms in a short time, and most of the articles explaining them are written for marketers, not for the person paying the bill.

This guide is for the person paying the bill. It explains what SEO and GEO each do, where they overlap, where they don’t, and how to decide what your business needs. By the end, you’ll know which questions to ask whoever looks after your search, and what to measure so you can tell whether it’s working.

If you’re completely new to the term, start with What is GEO? A plain-English guide for business owners, then come back here.

1. What’s the difference between SEO and GEO?

SEO (search engine optimisation) is the work of getting your web pages to rank in search results, so people click through to your site. GEO (generative engine optimisation) is the work of getting your business named, described correctly and cited inside AI answers from tools like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity.

The easiest way to see the difference is to look at what the customer sees.

With classic search, the customer types a question and gets a list of links and a map. Your job is to be near the top of that list, then win the click.

With an AI answer, the customer asks a question and gets a written reply. It might name three businesses and explain why. It might cite a handful of sources. There’s often no list to be near the top of. You’re either in the answer or you’re not.

Here’s how the two compare in practice:

	SEO	GEO
The goal	Rank a page in the results	Get named and cited inside the answer
Where it shows up	Google and Bing results, the map pack	ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot
What the customer does next	Clicks a link or calls from the map	Often nothing. They read the answer and act on it
What wins	Relevant pages, links from other sites, a technically healthy website	Clear facts about you, mentions and reviews across the web, pages that are easy to quote
How you measure it	Rankings, clicks, calls, enquiries	How often you’re named, what’s said about you, which sources get cited

A quick note on the letters. You’ll also see AEO (answer engine optimisation) and LLMO (large language model optimisation). For a business owner, these describe much the same goal as GEO: being the answer, not just a link. Don’t let anyone sell you three separate services for one job.

2. Is GEO replacing SEO?

No. Google is still where most searches happen and where most website visitors come from. AI tools are growing fast, but they send far fewer people to websites. GEO is a second front, not a replacement. The businesses that do best treat them as one strategy with two measures of success.

Look at the numbers side by side. Google processes more than 5 trillion searches a year. Ahrefs estimates that ChatGPT now handles about 12% of Google’s search volume when you count only the prompts that are really searches. That’s big. But the same analysis found Google sends around 190 times more traffic to websites than ChatGPT. Google accounted for nearly 40% of all traffic to the 76,000 websites Ahrefs tracked. ChatGPT accounted for 0.21%.

So why bother with GEO at all? Because the click is shrinking, even on Google. When Google shows an AI Overview at the top of the results, fewer people scroll down to the links. An Ahrefs study of 300,000 keywords found that the presence of an AI Overview was linked to a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page, using data from December 2025.

That means a business can hold the number one spot and still get fewer calls than it did two years ago. The ranking is still there. The customer just got their answer before they reached it.

There’s another reason, and it’s harder to see. When someone asks ChatGPT “who’s the best accountant for small businesses in Johannesburg?”, they’re not browsing. They’re asking for a shortlist. If you’re not on it, you’re not in the running, and you’ll never see that you lost. That’s why the self-check in Is your business showing up in ChatGPT? is worth ten minutes of your time.

3. How much do SEO and GEO overlap?

A lot at the foundation, less at the top. A crawlable website, accurate business details and genuinely useful content help with both. But ranking on page one doesn’t guarantee an AI mention. The link between Google rankings and AI citations has weakened, and it’s weakest for standalone AI assistants like ChatGPT.

The research here moved quickly, so it’s worth being precise.

In July 2025, Ahrefs found that 76% of pages cited in Google’s AI Overviews also ranked in Google’s top 10 for the same search. At that point, it looked like AI Overviews mostly repeated the search results. Rank well, and you’d probably be cited.

By March 2026, Ahrefs reran the analysis on 863,000 keywords and 4 million AI Overview links. This time, only 38% of cited pages ranked in the top 10. Roughly 31% ranked between positions 11 and 100, and roughly 31% didn’t rank in the top 100 at all. Ahrefs notes that part of the drop comes from better measurement, since its tools now pick up more citations per answer. It also points to a real change: Google’s AI appears to lean more on the related searches it runs in the background, not just the one the customer typed. Search Engine Journal covered the study, along with a separate BrightEdge analysis that put the overlap even lower, at about 17%.

Standalone AI assistants are further removed again. When Ahrefs compared citations from ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity with Google and Bing’s top 10 results for the same questions, the average overlap was about 12%. Perplexity was the closest to search results, with nearly a third of its citations ranking in the top 10.

Here’s what that means for you, in plain terms:

• Good SEO is a head start, not a finish line. Pages that rank are more likely to be found by AI. But AI also pulls from pages that rank for related questions, from review sites, from directories and from videos.
• The shared foundation matters most. If search engines can’t read your website, AI tools that rely on search can’t either. If your business details are wrong on your own site, they’ll be wrong in AI answers too.
• What sits on top of the foundation is different. SEO leans on your own pages and the links pointing to them. GEO leans much more on what the rest of the web says about you.

4. What does GEO add that SEO doesn’t cover?

GEO adds four things classic SEO often skips: building mentions of your business on other trusted sites, making sure your facts are consistent everywhere AI looks, writing pages in a way AI can quote, and measuring what AI actually says about you across several engines.

1. Mentions beyond your own website. Traditional SEO chases links. GEO also cares about being talked about, even without a link. In an Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, mentions across the web were more closely linked to appearing in AI Overviews than backlinks were. For a local business, that means reviews, directory listings, local news, “best of” lists and industry sites. We cover how this works in The 5 signals that decide whether AI recommends you.

2. Consistent facts everywhere. AI tools assemble a picture of your business from many sources. An old address on one directory, a service you stopped offering on another, and a different phone number on your Facebook page can all end up in an answer. Classic SEO checks your site. GEO checks what the whole web says.

3. Pages that are easy to quote. An AI engine doesn’t show your page. It lifts a sentence or two from it. Pages that answer a question directly, name specific things and give checkable details get quoted more often. How to write content AI actually quotes walks through the method.

4. Measuring answers, not positions. A ranking report tells you where your page sits. It can’t tell you whether ChatGPT recommends you, what it says, or who it recommends instead. GEO measurement asks real customer questions across several AI engines, many times, and records the results.

There’s also a point about focus. A 2026 study by Semrush and Growth Memo tracked more than 1,000 categories inside ChatGPT. Brands were far more likely to be named in categories close to their real expertise than in categories further away. AI rewards being clearly known for something. A plumber who writes about plumbing gets further than a plumber who writes about everything.

5. Do you need both, and how should you split your effort?

Most businesses need both, because customers use both. The split depends on how your customers search. Local service businesses should keep their Google Business Profile and local SEO at the centre and add GEO on top. Businesses that sell advice, software or considered purchases should shift more effort toward GEO sooner.

There’s no single right ratio, and anyone who quotes you one without looking at your market is guessing. What I can give you is a way to think about it.

Your business	Where customers mostly look	Where to start
Local service business (plumber, dentist, electrician)	Google’s map pack and “near me” searches, then reviews	Local SEO first. Then GEO for comparison questions like “who’s the most reliable…”
Professional services (accountant, lawyer, consultant)	Google, referrals, and increasingly AI for “who should I use” questions	Both at once. These buyers research, compare and ask AI for shortlists
Online store	Google Shopping and search, product comparison sites, AI for “best X for Y”	SEO for product and category pages. GEO for buying guides and comparison questions
Software or B2B	Research-heavy. AI tools are often part of the shortlist process	GEO carries real weight early. Keep SEO for the pages that convert
New business with a thin website	Nobody yet	SEO basics first. There’s nothing for AI to find until the foundation exists

A useful rule of thumb: the more a customer researches and compares before buying, the more GEO matters. The more a customer needs someone nearby, right now, the more the map pack matters. For the second group, How “near me” search really works in 2026 explains what decides who shows up.

One more thing. Don’t pay twice for the same work. A lot of what’s sold as GEO, like fixing your business details, cleaning up your listings and improving your content, overlaps with good SEO. Ask any provider to show you which parts of their plan are new and which parts your current SEO should already cover.

6. How do you measure SEO and GEO?

Measure SEO with rankings, clicks, calls and enquiries from search. Measure GEO with how often AI names you across real customer questions, whether it describes you correctly, and which sources it cites. Track both monthly, because AI answers vary a lot from one day to the next.

For SEO, the tools are familiar. Google Search Console shows which searches you appear for and how many people click. Your Google Business Profile shows calls, direction requests and website clicks. Google Analytics shows what visitors do once they arrive.

For GEO, the measures are newer. The five we use are presence, prominence, accuracy and sentiment, citation strength, and competitive gap. The 5 signals that decide whether AI recommends you explains each one. The short version: ask the questions your customers ask, in several AI tools, several times each, and record whether you’re named.

You can also see some AI traffic directly. In Google Analytics 4, visits from ChatGPT usually show up with chatgpt.com as the source. Perplexity shows as perplexity.ai. The numbers will be small for most businesses. That’s expected.

Is being cited worth it if AI sends so few clicks? There’s early evidence that it is. Seer Interactive studied 3,119 searches across 42 organisations. Brands cited inside Google’s AI Overviews earned 35% more organic clicks than brands that weren’t cited. Seer is careful to say this doesn’t prove the citation caused the extra clicks. Stronger brands may simply be cited more often. Either way, being in the answer and being chosen tend to go together.

What to do this week

• Run the 10-minute AI check from Is your business showing up in ChatGPT? and note how often you’re named.
• Compare that with your Google rankings for the same five questions. If you rank well but AI rarely names you, you’ve found your GEO gap.
• List the sources AI cites for your competitors. Those are the sites where you need to be present.
• Check your business details on your website, Google Business Profile and your top three directories. Make them identical.
• Look in Google Analytics 4 for chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai as traffic sources.
• Ask your SEO provider one question: “Which parts of our plan help us get named in AI answers, and how will we measure it?”

Frequently asked questions

Is GEO replacing SEO?

No. Google still sends far more visitors to websites than any AI tool. Ahrefs found Google sends around 190 times more traffic than ChatGPT. What’s changing is that fewer searches end in a click, so being named inside AI answers matters more each year. Think of GEO as an addition to SEO, not a replacement.

What does GEO stand for in marketing?

GEO stands for generative engine optimisation. It’s the work of getting your business named and cited in answers written by AI tools like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity. It’s different from “geo” in the sense of geotargeting, which means showing ads or content to people in a particular location.

Is GEO the same as AEO?

For practical purposes, yes. AEO means answer engine optimisation. Both describe the work of becoming the answer, rather than just a link in a list. Some people use AEO for featured snippets and voice answers and GEO for AI chat tools, but the underlying work is largely the same.

If I rank first on Google, will ChatGPT recommend me?

Not necessarily. Ranking helps, but the link is weaker than most people assume. Ahrefs found that citations from AI assistants like ChatGPT overlap with Google’s top 10 only about 12% of the time on average. AI also relies on reviews, directories, articles and other mentions of your business.

Can I do GEO without SEO?

Not well. AI tools that search the web depend on being able to find and read your website, and many rely on search engines to do it. If your site is hard to crawl or your business details are wrong, GEO work has nothing solid to build on. Get the SEO foundation right first.

How long does GEO take to show results?

Fixing wrong facts about your business can show up in AI answers within weeks. Building presence, through reviews, mentions and quotable content, usually takes months. That’s similar to SEO. The difference is that AI answers vary more from day to day, so you judge progress over several months of tracking.

Should I hire separate providers for SEO and GEO?

Usually not. The two share a foundation, and splitting them often means paying twice for the same work. What matters is that whoever you hire measures both: your rankings and clicks in search, and how often AI names you and what it says.

Want to know where you stand in both?

Most businesses are stronger in one than the other, and the gap usually isn’t where they expect. Our free audit shows you where you rank, where AI names you, and where the two don’t line up.

Book a free discovery call and choose the audit that fits: AI Visibility & GEO, SEO, or Local Business SEO. No pitch until you’ve seen the gap.

Book a discovery call

Related reading

• What is GEO? A plain-English guide for business owners
• The 5 signals that decide whether AI recommends you
• How “near me” search really works in 2026

About the author

Bantu Nonyukela is the founder of SearchLimelight. He has spent ten years in SEO, after starting out as a front-end developer, and is a Toptal-verified SEO expert. From Cape Town, he helps small and medium businesses in South Africa, the US, the UK and Australia get found in search and named by AI. Connect on LinkedIn

Sources

• Ahrefs, “ChatGPT Has 12% of Google’s Search Volume but Google Sends 190x More Traffic to Websites,” February 2026: ahrefs.com
• Ahrefs, AI Overviews and click-through rate, December 2025 data: ahrefs.com
• Ahrefs, AI Overview citations and top-10 rankings, March 2026, reported by Search Engine Journal: searchenginejournal.com
• Ahrefs, “Only 12% of AI Cited URLs Rank in Google’s Top 10 for the Original Prompt”: ahrefs.com
• Ahrefs, “An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied)”: ahrefs.com
• Semrush and Growth Memo, ChatGPT topical focus study, 2026: semrush.com
• Seer Interactive, AI Overviews and CTR, September 2025 update, reported by Search Engine Land: searchengineland.com