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GEO vs SEO: what's the difference?

By Ben Tabas, Intrica Research · Updated

Answer

SEO earns a ranked link and a click in search results, while GEO, or generative engine optimization, earns a mention or citation inside AI answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. Google's AI features guide, last updated Dec. 10, 2025, says a page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear as a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode. GEO builds on that SEO base.

Where the term GEO comes from

Pranjal Aggarwal and five co-authors named GEO in a paper first posted to arXiv on Nov. 16, 2023 and accepted to KDD 2024. They report that GEO methods can boost visibility in generative engine responses by up to 40%, measured on their own benchmark of queries.

Agencies now use GEO, AEO and LLM SEO for overlapping work. Each one aims to get a brand into the answer an AI engine writes.

How GEO and SEO differ

  • The goal. SEO aims for a top position and a visit. GEO aims for the brand's name or link inside the answer.
  • The signals. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found, on May 26, 2025, that branded web mentions correlated 0.664 with AI Overview mentions, against 0.218 for the number of backlinks.
  • The measurement. AI answers change from run to run. SparkToro reported on Jan. 28, 2026 a less than 1 in 100 chance that ChatGPT or Google's AI gives the same list of brands in two responses.
  • The crawlers. ChatGPT search reads sites through OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI's crawler page, checked Oct. 28, 2026, tells sites to allow it in robots.txt to appear in ChatGPT search results.

What stays the same

Google's AI features guide, last updated Dec. 10, 2025, says there are no additional requirements or special optimizations needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. It also says you need no special schema markup and no AI text files.

So the SEO basics carry over. A page has to be crawlable, indexed and clear about the question it answers before any AI engine can quote it.

How to add GEO to an SEO program

  1. Check that AI crawlers can reach your pages, starting with OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot.
  2. Pick the buyer questions you want to be named for and record what each engine answers today, over several runs.
  3. Rewrite key pages so the first two sentences answer the question with a sourced fact.
  4. Earn mentions on the sites engines already cite for your topic, then measure again with the same questions.

How Intrica measures AI answers

Intrica asks a fixed set of questions, checks each engine separately, repeats the runs and reports results in buckets.

See the data →

See whether ChatGPT and Google's AI name your company today, the starting point for any GEO work.

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Sources

  1. GEO: Generative Engine Optimization · arXiv (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024), June 28, 2024Supports: Origin of the term GEO and the reported visibility gain of up to 40% on the authors' benchmark.
  2. AI features and your website · Google Search Central, Dec. 10, 2025Supports: No extra requirements, schema or AI text files to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode; pages must be indexed and snippet eligible.
  3. An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied) · Ahrefs, May 26, 2025Supports: Correlations of branded web mentions (0.664) and backlinks (0.218) with AI Overview brand mentions.
  4. NEW Research: AIs are highly inconsistent when recommending brands or products · SparkToro, Jan. 28, 2026Supports: Less than 1 in 100 chance of the same brand list in two responses, across 2,961 runs.
  5. Overview of OpenAI Crawlers · OpenAI, Oct. 28, 2026Supports: Checked Oct. 28, 2026: OAI-SearchBot must be allowed in robots.txt to appear in ChatGPT search results.

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