What's the difference between GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and SEO?

If you landed here searching GEO vs SEO, you probably have a proposal in front of you with two lines, one for SEO and one for GEO or AEO, or you've read that GEO is the new SEO. Google defines SEO as helping search engines understand your content and helping people find your site and decide whether to visit it.⁠^{[7]Google Search Central. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide} AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) add one question: which part of your page ends up cited in the answer a generative engine writes. SEO, AEO and GEO don't compete for the same budget. They stack, and the order matters.

What each one wins

With SEO you win a position. The paper that named GEO puts it this way: in SEO, a website's visibility is measured by its average ranking across a set of queries, and generative engines, which blend several sources into a single answer, need different metrics.⁠^{[6]arXiv (Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan and Deshpande; KDD 2024). GEO: Generative Engine Optimization} A generative answer has no third place. It has cited sources, with more or less text, earlier or later.

Microsoft describes it from inside the search engine. AI search still ranks, but ranking whole pages matters less than which pieces earn a place in the final answer.⁠^{[1]Microsoft Advertising (Krishna Madhavan). Optimizing Your Content for Inclusion in AI Search Answers} Google, for its part, shows links to the sites that support its answers in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and warns that AI Overviews only appear when its systems judge they add something to classic search, so they often don't show at all.⁠^{[8]Google Search Central. AI features and your website}

For a store, the prize changes shape: from a link the shopper picks out of a list to a mention among the sources of an answer they may not even read to the end. Both can happen to the same product page at once, and it pays to know which one you're looking at.

GEO vs SEO: getting in and getting cited

The two lines you keep hearing are both true. The GEO paper says traditional SEO methods don't apply directly to generative engines.⁠^{[6]arXiv (Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan and Deshpande; KDD 2024). GEO: Generative Engine Optimization} Google says optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO.⁠^{[2]Google Search Central. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search} They're talking about different steps.

Getting in is SEO. Google's AI features rely on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which Google also calls grounding: its core ranking systems retrieve pages from its index, and the answer is built from them.⁠^{[2]Google Search Central. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search} Even the engine in the academic experiment started there: it built each answer from the top five sources Google returned.⁠^{[6]arXiv (Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan and Deshpande; KDD 2024). GEO: Generative Engine Optimization}

Getting cited is where GEO works. The paper's methods rewrite a source that is already among the retrieved ones so the answer uses more of it. What the authors didn't measure was the effect on rankings: they say they didn't evaluate it and only note that it's less likely to affect them.⁠^{[6]arXiv (Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan and Deshpande; KDD 2024). GEO: Generative Engine Optimization} And one SEO habit doesn't survive the experiment: keyword stuffing brought little or no improvement in generative answers.⁠^{[6]arXiv (Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan and Deshpande; KDD 2024). GEO: Generative Engine Optimization} The figures for each method are in the glossary's GEO entry.

That's why the order isn't a matter of taste: what isn't retrieved can't be cited.

What they ask of your product pages

The base is the same for both, and Google spells it out: to appear in its generative AI features, a page has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet, and the site has to be included in those features in Search Console.⁠^{[2]Google Search Central. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search} The same guide asks for content that isn't a commodity, with a viewpoint of its own.⁠^{[2]Google Search Central. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search}

What generative engines add, according to the people who build them:

• Claims backed by data and sources. Bing recommends supporting what you say with examples, data and cited sources,⁠^{[5]Microsoft, Bing Webmaster Blog. Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview} and in the academic experiment the methods that lifted a source's visibility the most were citing sources, adding quotations and adding statistics.⁠^{[6]arXiv (Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan and Deshpande; KDD 2024). GEO: Generative Engine Optimization}
• Clear structure. Bing asks for clear headings, tables and FAQ sections,⁠^{[5]Microsoft, Bing Webmaster Blog. Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview} and Microsoft says its assistants can lift a question-and-answer pair word for word.⁠^{[1]Microsoft Advertising (Krishna Madhavan). Optimizing Your Content for Inclusion in AI Search Answers}
• Letting each crawler in. OpenAI warns that sites that block OAI-SearchBot won't appear in ChatGPT's search answers.⁠^{[9]OpenAI. Overview of OpenAI Crawlers} Which crawler each assistant uses, and how to allow it in robots.txt, is covered in the guide to what AI crawlers see in your store.
• The catalog as a feed. Google says Google Merchant Center feeds can help your products show up both in AI responses and across the rest of Search,⁠^{[2]Google Search Central. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search} and OpenAI's ACP lets ChatGPT receive catalog data that is already structured.⁠^{[10]OpenAI. Agentic Commerce Protocol}

They disagree on two points:

• Chunking content. Google says there's no need to break it into small pieces for AI to understand it.⁠^{[2]Google Search Central. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search} Microsoft explains that assistants like Copilot break content into smaller pieces, and advises against walls of text.⁠^{[1]Microsoft Advertising (Krishna Madhavan). Optimizing Your Content for Inclusion in AI Search Answers}
• FAQs. Google stopped showing the FAQ rich result on May 7, 2026,⁠^{[11]Google Search Central. Latest documentation updates} and Bing still recommends FAQs so its AI systems can use your content.⁠^{[5]Microsoft, Bing Webmaster Blog. Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview}

For a store, one way out works for both: headings that say what's underneath, tables for what gets compared, and real questions with their answers. Google doesn't require it, and Bing asks for it.

Structured data, engine by engine

Google doesn't hedge: structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special markup from schema.org to add for its AI. In the same breath it recommends you keep using it as part of your SEO strategy, because it helps you qualify for rich results.⁠^{[2]Google Search Central. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search} In its documentation for online stores it adds that this standard, machine-readable format can make Google's understanding of your content more accurate,⁠^{[12]Google Search Central. Structured Data for Ecommerce Sites} and for its AI features it asks that structured data match the visible text on the page.⁠^{[8]Google Search Central. AI features and your website} Valid markup doesn't guarantee that match: that's the difference between validating the markup and verifying what's published.

The others tell it from their side. Microsoft writes that schema.org markup helps search engines and AI systems understand your content, turning text into structured data that machines can interpret with confidence.⁠^{[1]Microsoft Advertising (Krishna Madhavan). Optimizing Your Content for Inclusion in AI Search Answers} OpenAI receives a store's catalog as structured data, through ACP feeds.⁠^{[10]OpenAI. Agentic Commerce Protocol}

Put another way, markup isn't a trick for getting cited. It's the machine-readable version of what your product page already says, and several engines say they read it. The llms.txt file is a separate discussion, and it has its own comparison: llms.txt, sitemaps and structured data.

How each one is measured

SEO is measured in Search Console's Performance report: clicks, impressions, CTR and average position, by query, page, country or device.⁠^{[3]Search Console Help. Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup} Since June 16, 2026, that report also includes what happens in AI Mode.⁠^{[11]Google Search Central. Latest documentation updates}

For the generative side there are two reports, and they don't count the same thing: Bing counts citations, Google counts impressions.

• Google. Search Console's generative AI performance report gives your pages' impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, grouped by page, country, date and device. Since August 31, 2026, it's available to every site.⁠^{[4]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)}
• Bing. AI Performance, in Bing Webmaster Tools since February 10, 2026, counts how often your content is cited as a source in Copilot, in Bing's AI-generated summaries and in some partner integrations, with the cited URLs and the grounding queries that led to them.⁠^{[5]Microsoft, Bing Webmaster Blog. Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview} On June 16, 2026 it added search intents (commercial among them), topics and a citation share metric (Citation Share), which Bing describes as an observational metric, not a ranking system.⁠^{[13]Microsoft, Bing Blog. New AI Visibility Insights in Bing Webmaster Tools: Intents, Topics, Citation Share, Compare}

For the other assistants there is no report: you run the same query several times, on different days, and note which sources each one cites. How to do that with some method is in the GEO entry.

AEO vs GEO in AI search

The short answer: for Google they're the same thing. Its guide defines both terms together, as names for work focused on improving visibility in AI search experiences.⁠^{[2]Google Search Central. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search}

Bing has picked one of the two words: it presents AI Performance as a first step toward GEO tooling.⁠^{[5]Microsoft, Bing Webmaster Blog. Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview} Microsoft, on its advertising platform's blog, doesn't commit to either. "Whether you call it GEO, AIO, or SEO," it writes, what matters is still visibility.⁠^{[1]Microsoft Advertising (Krishna Madhavan). Optimizing Your Content for Inclusion in AI Search Answers} Other names circulate for similar work too, such as AI SEO or LLMO.

What GEO has of its own is an academic origin, with a benchmark and metrics designed for composed answers.⁠^{[6]arXiv (Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan and Deshpande; KDD 2024). GEO: Generative Engine Optimization} For a store, the name changes little: if a proposal treats AEO and GEO as two separate services, ask what each one does that the other doesn't.

Pick where to start

You don't choose between SEO and GEO. You choose the order.

• Start with SEO if your product pages aren't indexed or can't show a snippet, if crawling is blocked, or if the site isn't included in Search Console's generative AI features. Without that, Google can't show your pages in its AI features.⁠^{[2]Google Search Central. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search}
• Add the generative layer once that base holds: search crawlers let in, copy with data and sources, structured data that matches the page, and the catalog in feeds. To check one product page in detail, the guide to auditing a product page's structured data goes step by step.
• Hire a separate AEO or GEO service only if it tells you what it does beyond SEO and how it will measure it. Google, in its guidance on third-party advice, mentions tools "promising improvements for AI experiences and search formats (also known as 'AEO' or 'GEO' tools)", reminds you that it doesn't evaluate third-party services, and says good advice qualifies its claims as opinion based on data or experience, or backs them up by citing official Google Search guidance.⁠^{[14]Google Search Central. Google Search's Guidance on Third-Party SEO Tools & Advice}

To keep going, the AI search reading path puts the terms in this comparison in order, along with the ones behind them.