What is the difference between SEO and GEO?

SEO optimises for a ranked list of links. GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) optimises for a synthesised answer written by an AI assistant such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews. The first asks "where do we rank"; the second asks "are we named, how prominently, how accurately, and are we cited".

The two share most of their foundations. A crawlable, fast site with clear content helps both, and the retrieval systems behind AI answers lean heavily on conventional search indexes. But GEO changes the emphasis in four ways:

1. Entity clarity over keyword density. A model needs to be confident about who you are, where you operate and what you offer. Inconsistent names, addresses or service descriptions across the web are punished harder than in search.
2. Citability. Pages that answer a question directly, in a paragraph that can be lifted into a response, get quoted. Pages that bury the answer under marketing copy do not.
3. Crawler access as a precondition. Google's crawler is almost never blocked by accident; GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot often are.
4. Third-party sources carry more weight. Assistants corroborate across directories, review platforms, forums and press. If the conversation about your category happens somewhere you are absent, you are absent from the answer.

Measurement is where they diverge most. A ranking is a number you can read off a results page. AI visibility has to be sampled, because the same prompt produces different answers on different runs, and summarised as visibility rate, share of voice, average position and sentiment.

GEO is not a replacement for SEO; it is an extension with new measurement and a few new requirements. That is why Seoptist runs both in one audit and merges the findings into one prioritised checklist, rather than giving you two lists that compete for the same developer time.