AXENOR
SEO (search engine optimisation) earns your page a ranked link in Google's results, and success is a click. GEO (generative engine optimisation) earns it a citation or a mention inside an answer written by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews, and success is being named. GEO is built on SEO, not instead of it: Google calls optimising for its AI features "still SEO". AEO (answer engine optimisation) is the narrowest part of GEO: being the one answer to one question.
| SEO | GEO | AEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The goal | A high position in a list of links | A citation or mention inside an AI-written answer | To be the answer to one specific question |
| Where it shows | Google and Bing results | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | AI and voice assistants |
| Unit of success | A click | A citation or a mention | A recommendation |
| What moves it | Relevance, links, technical health | All of that, plus answer-first pages, a clear business identity, mentions elsewhere, freshness | Question-and-answer content, a confirmed identity |
| How it is measured | Rankings, clicks, traffic | AI-feature impressions, Copilot citations, a fixed set of buyer questions | Whether you are named for a question |
| Google's view | The foundation | "Still SEO" on Google's AI features | Also part of SEO |
Picture a Limassol law firm with page-one Google rankings for its practice areas. A founder in London asks ChatGPT which Cyprus law firms handle cross-border M&A for technology companies. Three firms are named, this one is not, and the founder emails one of the three. That is GEO vs SEO in one scene: visible in the list, absent from the answer. How firms earn the mention is in how professional services firms get cited by ChatGPT.
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO targets a list and GEO targets an answer. With SEO, a person types a query, Google or Bing returns ranked links, and the person picks one. The work is to be relevant, crawlable and trusted enough to sit near the top.
With GEO, a person asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Mode a question. The engine retrieves pages, writes a reply and cites a handful of them. GEO is the work of being among those sources and among the businesses the reply names.
The term comes from a 2023 paper by researchers at Princeton and other universities, published at KDD 2024. Of the nine edits it tested, adding quotations lifted visibility in generated answers by 41%, adding statistics by 33% and citing sources by 28%. Keyword stuffing lowered it by 9%.
What is GEO in SEO?
In SEO, GEO means generative engine optimisation: the part of search work aimed at AI-written answers. It has nothing to do with geo-targeting, which serves content by location, or geotagging, which adds coordinates to a page or image. Both still get called "geo", so when an agency offers you GEO, ask which one it means. This guide is about the AI one.
Is GEO replacing SEO?
No. GEO depends on SEO, and Google says so in writing. Google's guide to optimising for its generative AI features (updated 10 July 2026) states: "From Google Search's perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO." Its page on AI features adds that "there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary."
Other engines need the same foundations: OpenAI's crawler documentation says sites that block its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers". A page no engine can crawl cannot be cited by any of them. GEO is SEO with a different finish line.
If GEO is still SEO, why treat it separately?
Because AI answers changed what a ranking is worth, and a high ranking no longer guarantees the citation.
- Fewer clicks reach the list. Pew Research Center found in July 2025 that users clicked a result on 8% of visits to a results page with an AI summary, against 15% without one.
- The top result earns less. Ahrefs measured a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page when an AI Overview appears (December 2025 against December 2023, published February 2026).
- Ranking and citation are pulling apart. 38% of pages cited in AI Overviews rank in Google's top 10 (Ahrefs, March 2026), against about 76% in July 2025, on a changed method. For ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot, the overlap with Google's top 10 is about 8% (Ahrefs, August 2025).
Google's guide explains part of the gap: its AI features use "query fan-out", "a set of concurrent, related queries", so an answer draws on pages that answer the follow-up questions too. SEO wins your main query. GEO work makes your pages the answer to what comes next.
What does Google say you do not need for GEO?
Four things sold as GEO that Google's guide says its search does not use or require:
- An llms.txt file or other AI text files: "Google Search itself doesn't use them." Our llms.txt guide covers where one can still help other engines.
- Chunked content: "There's no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it."
- A target word count: "There's no ideal page length."
- Special schema: "Structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup you need to add."
The guide also tells anyone considering third-party "AEO" or "GEO" services to read its advice on evaluating SEO help. That is why we sell GEO inside SEO work. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot retrieve differently from Google, and that is where the extra work below earns its place.
What does GEO add on top of SEO?
Pages built to be quoted. A direct answer of 40 to 90 words at the top, headings phrased as buyers' questions, tables for comparisons, a short block of takeaways. Semrush studied more than 300,000 URLs in February 2026: cited pages were 32.83% more likely to carry clear summaries and takeaways, and 22.91% more likely to have strong section structure.
A business identity engines can confirm. Being a known entity means the same name, address and phone number everywhere, a complete Google Business Profile and, where it can be earned, a Wikidata entry. In September 2026 Axenor Consulting checked 20 accounting, law and corporate-services websites in Cyprus: one firm had a Wikidata entity and none had a Wikipedia article.
Mentions elsewhere. Ahrefs analysed 75,000 brands in May 2025: brand mentions across the web correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks, three times as strong.
Freshness. AI assistants cite pages that are on average 25.7% fresher than Google's organic results, and ChatGPT lists the newest sources first (Ahrefs, July 2025). We hold our guides on a 13-week refresh cycle, which is why this one changed in September.
Where do AEO and AIO fit in SEO vs GEO?
AEO is the narrowest part of GEO. AIO (AI optimisation), LLMO (large language model optimisation) and "AI SEO" are other names for GEO itself, not separate disciplines.
AEO aims at the moment an engine gives one answer to one precise question. It runs on question-and-answer pairs phrased the way a buyer asks an assistant, and on depth, which is why topical authority is built in clusters. Of the 20 Cyprus firms we checked, none carried FAQ markup on its homepage, three linked to an FAQ at all, and nine had no structured data at all.
One correction to the June version of this guide: we called FAQ schema a high-return change for citations. A controlled test by Ahrefs in May 2026 tracked 1,885 pages that added schema against 4,000 that did not, and citations in ChatGPT and AI Mode did not move beyond chance. Markup helps an engine confirm who you are. The questions and answers on the page are what it quotes.
How do SEO, GEO and AEO work together?
As layers. SEO alone keeps you visible on Google. Add GEO and you are cited in AI answers too. Add AEO and you are named as the answer to specific questions. Each layer feeds the others: mention work builds the authority SEO depends on, and question-and-answer pages are easier to rank and to quote. Our retainer for a Limassol tax and advisory firm recorded 1,019 impressions inside Google's AI features in August 2026, across 34 of its 57 pages. The case is on our work page.
What does our own Search Console show for "geo vs seo"?
Demand we were failing to meet. In the 90 days to 18 September 2026, Google showed this site about 620 times for "geo vs seo" and about 40 other wordings of the same question, at average positions from 50 to 97: page five to page ten. Nobody clicked. The exact phrase "geo vs seo" brought 305 of those impressions at position 88.7, and "seo vs geo" 55 at position 69.1.
The June page answered a different question: its title named three terms, and it reached the two-term comparison people type in its second section. This version, published on 25 September 2026, answers "geo vs seo" in its first line and its title. We will publish whether the positions move.
Should a Cyprus business invest in SEO or GEO first?
First check whether engines can read your site at all. Our AI readability check shows what ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google can read on a page: crawler access, the text before JavaScript runs, structured data and the sitemap. Then pick your case:
- You already have solid SEO. Start with GEO. Add a direct answer to your ten strongest pages, add questions and answers to your service pages, put Organization markup in place, and make your name, address and phone number match everywhere. It is two to four weeks of focused work, and the scope of our GEO and SEO consulting services and SEO and AI search engagements.
- You are starting from nothing. Build both together. They share one structure: a direct answer at the top, headings phrased as questions, a short FAQ. For a business that serves one town, begin with local SEO in Cyprus.
- You already have both. Add the AEO layer: 20 or more questions per main subject, a monthly check of which questions you are named for, and a look at who is named where you are absent.
Key takeaways
- SEO earns a ranked link. GEO earns a citation inside an answer. AEO earns the single recommendation.
- Google calls optimising for its AI features "still SEO", and says they need no llms.txt, no chunking and no special schema.
- 38% of pages cited in Google AI Overviews rank in the top 10. For ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot the overlap is about 8%.
- Brand mentions correlate with AI visibility three times more strongly than backlinks.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between GEO and SEO? SEO optimises for a ranked position in a list of links, and success is a click. GEO optimises for being cited inside an AI-written answer from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews, and success is a citation or a mention. They share the same technical foundations and differ in page structure, freshness and the weight given to mentions on other sites.
What is GEO in SEO? GEO stands for generative engine optimisation, the part of search work aimed at the answers AI engines write. It is not geo-targeting or geotagging, which are about location. Google treats it as part of SEO: its guide says optimising for generative AI search "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO".
What is the difference between SEO, GEO, AEO and AIO? SEO targets the list of links. GEO targets citations inside AI-written answers. AEO is the narrowest part of GEO, aimed at being the single answer to a specific question. AIO (AI optimisation) and LLMO (large language model optimisation) are other names for GEO, not separate disciplines.
Does SEO still matter now that AI search is growing? Yes. Google states there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and its AI features run on the same crawling, indexing and ranking as ordinary search. OpenAI says sites that block its search crawler will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. A site with weak SEO is hard for every engine to find.
How does GEO pricing compare to SEO pricing? In Cyprus, GEO is usually sold inside an SEO retainer instead of as a separate line, because the audit, the pages and the technical fixes are shared. The GEO share of the work is restructuring pages to be quoted, identity and mention work, and reporting on AI visibility.
How do I measure GEO and AEO? Use the generative AI report in Google Search Console for impressions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools for Copilot citations, and a fixed set of buyer questions asked each month in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. Record whether you are named and who is named instead.
Is GEO worth it for a small business? Yes, if buyers in your field ask AI engines for recommendations. Engines do not rank answers by company size. A small firm with clearly structured pages, a consistent identity and a handful of independent mentions can be named ahead of a larger firm with a static website.
