GEO vs SEO
Written by Kirill Zubovsky
GEO vs SEO is a split in the job, not a split in the page. SEO gets a URL crawled, indexed, and eligible to rank. GEO makes a passage on that URL clear enough for an answer engine to quote and name. Google’s own guide says that for Google Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, the second job is still SEO.
The two jobs, on one URL
Search used to mean a list of links. The work was to get on that list. The list is still there. Beside it, a person can ask Chat GPT, Claude, Perplexity, or an AI answer on Google, and get a paragraph back. Sometimes the paragraph names a site. Sometimes it names no one. What Is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)? is the definition we use: generative engine optimization is the work of being that named source.
A URL that cannot be fetched fails both jobs. A URL that ranks and never states an answer can win the list and lose the quotation. A URL that states an answer and blocks the crawler wins neither. The page you want listed is the page you want quoted. Write it once.
| Question | Google Search | Chat GPT, Claude, Perplexity |
|---|---|---|
| Who has to be able to fetch the page? | Googlebot. Blocking it blocks Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. | OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, and PerplexityBot. Training bots are a separate switch. |
| What does the company say you must add? | Nothing beyond ordinary SEO. No special file. No special schema. | A public page their search crawler may fetch, with the answer in the text. |
| Does an llms.txt file change this? | Google says Google Search ignores it. It neither helps nor hurts those rankings. | It is a map for agents that choose to read it. It is not a citation switch. |
| How do you tell whether it worked? | Search Console: indexing, queries, and Google’s generative AI report. | Ask the question and see whether your URL is named. A monitor watches prompts. Neither is a guarantee. |
What Google says about GEO
Google’s guide to its own generative AI features, last updated 10 July 2026, answers the acronyms directly. AEO means answer engine optimization. GEO means generative engine optimization. From Google Search’s perspective, optimizing for those features is optimizing for Search, and is therefore still SEO. The guide tells site owners to be wary of third-party GEO advice that does not match that document.
The earlier AI features page, updated 10 December 2025, says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimizations. A supporting link has to be indexed and eligible to show in Google Search with a snippet. Meeting that bar does not mean Google will crawl, index, or serve the page. Indexing is not guaranteed.
The same July guide names the tactics it wants people to ignore for Google Search. Do not invent machine-readable files, AI text files, or Markdown in the hope that Google will treat them as a ranking input. Google says it does not use llms.txt. Do not chop a page into fragments because a model prefers chunks. There is no ideal length. Do not rewrite a page into a special dialect for the model. Do not buy inauthentic mentions. Do not add a special schema.org type for AI answers. Structured data is not required for generative AI search.
What Google does say to do is the older work, aimed at a person. Publish something only you would know, not a restatement of ten other posts. Use headings a reader can follow. Keep the important words as text, not as a picture of text. Make the page crawlable, internally linked, and tolerable on a phone. If you use a model to draft, the result still has to meet Google’s spam policies, including the rule against scaled content that exists to manipulate rankings.
Where the jobs actually diverge
Google’s “this is still SEO” sentence covers Google Search. It does not cover Chat GPT, Claude, or Perplexity. Those products keep their own indexes and their own user agents. OpenAI says a site that disallows OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link. Anthropic says disabling Claude-SearchBot may reduce visibility in Claude’s search results. Perplexity says to allow PerplexityBot if you want the site in Perplexity’s results, and that this crawler is not collecting text to train a foundation model. The tokens, and the consequence of blocking each one, are on AI crawlers and robots.txt.
That is the part a Google-only SEO program misses. A page can be indexed by Googlebot and invisible to OAI-SearchBot, because a robots.txt group or a firewall treated “AI bots” as one switch. The reverse is also possible. Allowing a training crawler is a separate decision from allowing a search crawler. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google each publish the distinction. Copying one company’s opt-out onto another company’s bot does not do what the label implies.
The writing still overlaps. An answer engine can only quote a sentence that exists. A first paragraph that states the answer gives a person who clicked a reason to stay, and it gives a model a passage to lift. A title that matches the H1 serves the list and the quotation. An author and a date help a person decide whether to trust the page, and they give a citation a name. None of that is a private GEO dialect. It is a page that says something.
What to do on the page
- Pick one real question and one URL. Do not publish a near-copy for every variation of the question.
- Put the answer in the first paragraph, in words a person would use.
- Use the question, or the term, as the title and the H1.
- Add the parts a careful reader needs next: the contrast, the steps, the limits, and the sources.
- Name the author and show a date a person can see.
- Link the URL from the homepage or from a page that already gets visits.
- Leave Googlebot allowed. Decide search crawlers and training crawlers separately.
- Mark up only claims a person can read on the page.
Google’s guide is explicit that a pile of pages, one per fan-out query, is a bad idea. Fan-out is Google’s own technique: the model issues related searches while it builds an answer. Manufacturing a thin URL for each of those searches is the pattern Google calls scaled content abuse. One strong page can be relevant to a query that does not repeat its H1 word for word. Write the page you would want to read.
A worked example of one query as one page is How to show up in ChatGPT. The anatomy, without tying it to a single product name, is How to write a page AI search can cite.
What DiscoSEO means by the split
DiscoSEO’s report is about 100 actions for one site. About 50 are classic SEO for Google. About 50 are GEO, so Chat GPT and the other answer engines have a passage to quote. The price is $99, one time, on Pricing. Delivery is about 15 minutes. There is a 30-day money-back guarantee. No subscription is required.
The split is a reading of the same URL. It is not a claim that Google runs a second ranking system called GEO, and it is not a claim that the GEO half outranks a page Google considers unhelpful. Google’s guide says no third-party tool has access to Google’s internal ranking or AI systems. DiscoSEO does not guarantee rankings or citations. The report is the list of changes. A daily watch of prompts is a different product, compared on Best AI SEO tools.
Where to read next
The company figures and the Pew click study are on GEO statistics. How Google describes AI Overviews and AI Mode is on Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. The file some agents read, and the reason it will not move a Google ranking, is What is llms.txt?.
Questions
Is GEO different from SEO?
On the page, they are two readings of one URL. SEO is crawl, index, and rank. GEO is a passage an answer engine can quote and name. Google says that for Google Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, that second reading is still SEO. Chat GPT, Claude, and Perplexity are separate products with their own crawlers.
Does Google require GEO tactics for AI Overviews?
No. Google’s documentation says there are no additional requirements and no special file or schema. The page has to be indexed and eligible for a snippet. Indexing is not guaranteed. Google also says llms.txt neither helps nor hurts Google Search.
Should I stop doing SEO and only do GEO?
No. A site that abandons the list of links gives up visits that still come from classic results. A site that never states an answer can rank and still have nothing worth quoting. Do both on the same URL.
See both halves on your URL
The free scan reads a public homepage. The $99 roadmap is about 50 SEO actions and 50 GEO actions for that site, one time. DiscoSEO does not guarantee rankings or citations.