SEO or GEO?

Search engine optimisation earns you a place in Google's results. Generative engine optimisation aims to get you named in the answers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI give. How different they really are, what the engines themselves say, and where the work goes for a business that lives on enquiries.

The short answer

GEO, generative engine optimisation, means getting your business cited in answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. It is mostly SEO. Google says its AI features run on its core ranking systems and need no special files, llms.txt or schema, and the AI assistants search the web before they answer. So the base is the same: a site their crawlers can read, with pages that answer the question plainly. What GEO adds is being named where AI looks for recommendations: your Google Business Profile, reviews, directories and other people's best-of lists.

By Yannis Spanenburg, founder of Proof of Pixel. Facts checked on 7 October 2026.

Side by side

	SEO	GEO
What it aims for	A high place in Google and Bing results, and the click that follows	Being cited or named inside an AI answer, whether or not anyone clicks
Where it shows	Classic results, the map pack and your Business Profile	Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Copilot
How the engine chooses	Ranks indexed pages against the search	Searches first, often several related queries at once, then cites the pages that support its answer
Crawler that must get in	Googlebot and Bingbot	Googlebot for Google's AI features, OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot
Training crawlers	Not part of search	GPTBot and ClaudeBot collect training data and can be blocked on their own; Google-Extended also covers grounding in the Gemini app
Special files and markup	Sitemaps, and structured data for rich results	None for Google: it ignores llms.txt and needs no special schema. The AI companies' crawler docs ask for none either
Content that works	Helpful pages that match the search, on a site that is easy to crawl	The same, with the answer up front and sources, quotes and figures; keyword stuffing did not help in tests
What others say about you	Links, reviews and your Business Profile	Business Profile, review sites, directories and third-party best-of lists, which AI reads and cites
Clicks (Pew, US, 2025)	A result clicked on 15% of Google visits with no AI summary	8% with an AI summary; a link inside the summary clicked on 1%
Local visibility (BrightLocal, 2026)	Google Maps named the tracked business in 66% of searches	AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT named it in 32 to 38%
Measuring it	Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools: impressions, clicks, queries	Search Console's AI report (impressions by page, country, device, date), Bing's AI Performance (citations), GA4
Opting out	noindex	Search Console's Search generative AI control for Google; robots.txt, crawler by crawler, for the others

Checked on 7 October 2026 in Google Search Central and Search Console Help, the crawler documentation of OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic, Bing's Webmaster blog and the studies listed below. Pew's click figures come from US Google searches in March 2025; the local figures are BrightLocal's, from 200,085 searches, published in September 2026.

Who should pick which

Fix the SEO first if

Your key pages are not indexed, or a crawler cannot read them
You do not rank for your own service in your own city
Your Google Business Profile is incomplete or out of date
Nobody has checked whether your CDN or firewall blocks AI crawlers

Add GEO work if

Buyers in your trade ask AI tools who to hire or where to book
Competitors are named in those answers and you are not
Your site ranks, but recommendation answers still skip you
You can earn genuine reviews and listings on the sites AI cites

Be wary if you are sold

An llms.txt file as an AI ranking fix
Schema as a guaranteed citation
Bought or fake mentions on other sites
AI rank tracking that treats one answer as a fixed position

Where GEO comes from

The name comes from a 2023 paper by researchers at Princeton, IIT Delhi and others, presented at KDD 2024. They built a benchmark of 10,000 queries and tested nine ways of rewriting a page to see which made a generative engine use it more. Adding citations, quotations and statistics lifted visibility by 30 to 40% on their main measure. Keyword stuffing, the oldest SEO trick, gave little or no gain, and on Perplexity it did 10% worse than leaving the page alone.

Lower-ranked pages gained most: citing sources raised the visibility of the page ranked fifth by 115%, while the top-ranked page lost 30.3% on average. Keep the limits in mind. It was a lab test, on an engine built on GPT-3.5 and on Perplexity, in 2023, and the engines have changed a great deal since. AEO, answer engine optimisation, and LLMO are other names for the same goal.

What Google says about it

Google's guide to its generative AI features, last updated in July 2026, answers the question head on: optimising for generative AI search is optimising for search, and thus still SEO. AI Overviews and AI Mode retrieve pages from Google's index with its core ranking systems, then run a query fan-out, several related searches on subtopics, to find more supporting pages.

To be eligible, a page must be indexed and able to show a snippet, and the site must not be excluded through the Search generative AI control in Search Console, which is set to include by default. Google also lists what you can ignore: llms.txt and other AI text files, which Google Search does not use; chunking content into small pieces; rewriting for AI; inauthentic mentions; and special schema. Structured data is still worth having for rich results, as long as it matches the visible text. It is not an entry ticket.

For local businesses Google names one thing outright: a complete Google Business Profile helps your services appear in AI responses as well as in normal results.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot

Each runs a search crawler that is separate from the one collecting training data. OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot decides whether you can appear in ChatGPT search answers; GPTBot is for training, and OpenAI says the settings are independent. A robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to reach ChatGPT search. OpenAI also says it finds pages through third-party search providers, one more way classic search feeds into it.

PerplexityBot surfaces and links sites in Perplexity's answers and is not used to train models; Perplexity-User, which fetches a page when someone asks, generally ignores robots.txt. Anthropic separates ClaudeBot, for training, from Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User, and says blocking either of those two may reduce your visibility in Claude. Google-Extended does not affect Google Search, but it does decide whether your pages can ground answers in the Gemini app.

Microsoft calls its AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools, launched in February 2026, an early step toward GEO tooling. It counts how often Copilot and Bing's AI summaries cite your pages and shows the grounding queries behind them. For local businesses, Microsoft points to Bing Places for Business.

Check more than robots.txt. Since 1 July 2025 Cloudflare blocks AI crawlers by default and asks every new domain whether to allow them, so a site can be shut out of AI answers without anyone deciding it. Our free AI crawler checker tests for this.

Who gets named when a buyer asks for the best

Recommendation questions, such as the best family lawyer in town or a dentist open late tonight, are where GEO differs most from work on your own pages, because the AI reads what others say about you. Ahrefs studied ChatGPT's answers to 750 such prompts for software, products and agencies, and found best-of lists made up 43.8% of all the page types cited, counting lists that brands write about themselves. Brands placed higher on third-party lists were more likely to be recommended.

BrightLocal's study of 200,085 local searches across ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews, published in September 2026, shows the local version. Business websites made up 42% of the 1,967,762 citations and Google Business Profiles 28.5%, with profiles on Yelp, Tripadvisor and Facebook among the rest. ChatGPT hardly used Business Profiles, and BrightLocal puts its different picks down to its ties with Yelp and Bing. Ranking in Maps did not carry over: Google Maps named a tracked business in 66% of searches, the AI tools in 32 to 38%.

The answers also move. When the same question was asked again, the businesses named overlapped by only 20 to 33% on average. So your own site still carries a lot, but what other sites say about you decides much of the answer. When we check questions like the best marketing agency in Dubai for our own business, the sources cited are mostly directories and roundups.

What AI answers do to clicks

Pew Research Center followed the Google searches of 900 US adults in March 2025. Of 68,879 searches, 18% showed an AI summary. With a summary, people clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits, against 15% without one. They clicked a link inside the summary on 1% of visits, and ended their browsing on 26%, against 16%. Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit were the most cited sources, together 15% of the links in the summaries.

Google says clicks from results pages with AI Overviews are higher quality, with people spending more time on the site, but publishes no figures for it. For a business that lives on enquiries, the aim shifts from traffic alone to being the name in the answer, and the page people check before they call.

Measure both. Search Console's generative AI report, open to every site since 31 August 2026, shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date. Bing shows citations and grounding queries. ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links it sends, so that traffic can be told apart in GA4.

How we work on it

GEO is mostly good SEO plus being named in the sources AI retrieves, so that is the order we work in. First access: robots.txt and the CDN let OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot and Googlebot in, and every page reaches them as finished HTML. Our own site is a React app prerendered to HTML for exactly that reason.

Then the pages: one question per section, the answer in the first lines, a named source or figure behind it, and the same name, services and locations everywhere. Then the places AI reads about you: a complete Google Business Profile and Bing Places listing, genuine reviews, and the directories and lists that come up for your trade and city. We measure with Search Console's AI report, Bing's AI Performance and GA4, and leave llms.txt files and AI-only rewrites out.

Questions about SEO vs GEO

What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?

GEO is the work of getting your business cited or named in answers from AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. The name comes from a 2023 research paper presented at KDD 2024. In practice it is classic SEO plus presence on the sites those tools read.

What is the difference between SEO and GEO?

SEO aims for a high position in search results and the click. GEO aims to be quoted or recommended inside an AI answer, which may bring no click at all. The foundations are shared: crawlable, indexed pages that answer questions well. GEO puts more weight on the reviews, listings and third-party lists that AI reads.

Is GEO replacing SEO?

No. Google's AI features pull pages from its index with its core ranking systems, and Google calls optimising for them still SEO. ChatGPT and Perplexity search the web before answering. What is changing is the click: in Pew's 2025 data, people clicked a result on 8% of visits with an AI summary, against 15% without.

What is the difference between GEO, AEO and SEO?

AEO, answer engine optimisation, and GEO describe the same goal: being the source an AI answer quotes. Google treats both as SEO and warns that many hacks sold under these names do not work for Google Search. Use whichever word you like, and judge the work by whether you get named, not by the label.

How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?

Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt and in your CDN's bot settings, make sure your site answers what buyers ask, then work on what ChatGPT reads about you: reviews, Yelp and similar directories, and third-party best-of lists for your trade and city. In BrightLocal's 2026 study ChatGPT hardly used Google Business Profiles, so do not rely on yours alone.

Do I need an llms.txt file for AI search?

Not for Google: its guide says Google Search ignores llms.txt and similar files, so they neither help nor hurt there. The crawler documents of OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic ask for crawler access and do not mention llms.txt. Add one only if it costs you nothing; it is not where citations come from.

Does schema markup help you get cited by AI?

It helps machines read your page and earns rich results in Google, so keep it, and keep it matching the visible text. But Google says no special schema is needed for its AI features, and the AI companies' crawler documents do not name schema as a way in. Schema makes you easier to read; it does not guarantee a citation.

Will blocking GPTBot remove me from ChatGPT?

No. GPTBot collects training data, while OAI-SearchBot decides whether you appear in ChatGPT search answers, and OpenAI says the two settings are independent. Perplexity says PerplexityBot is not used for training at all, and Anthropic separates Claude-SearchBot from its training crawler, ClaudeBot. Google-Extended leaves Google Search alone but covers grounding in the Gemini app.

How do I measure visibility in AI search?

Use Search Console's generative AI report for impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance for Copilot citations, and GA4 for visits, where ChatGPT traffic arrives tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com. Then ask the questions your buyers ask, more than once, because the businesses named change between runs.

Can I keep my site out of Google's AI Overviews?

Yes. Since 31 August 2026 every site can switch to Exclude under Settings, Search generative AI, in Search Console. It usually takes a few days and is not used as a ranking signal for the rest of Search. You then get no impressions or traffic from those features, while other sites can still answer the question. For a business that wants enquiries, that is rarely a good trade.

Does GEO work for local businesses like clinics and law firms?

Yes, and local is where presence on other sites matters most. In BrightLocal's September 2026 study, business websites were 42% of AI citations and Google Business Profiles 28.5%, with profiles on review sites and directories among the rest. Your site, your profiles and your reviews need to tell the same story.

Should I pay for a GEO tool or a GEO agency?

Only for work you can check. Google says no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems, and AI answers shift between runs, so treat any AI ranking as a sample. Pay for crawler access, better pages, reviews and listings; walk away from llms.txt as a fix, guaranteed citations and bought mentions.