Just to make everyone scratch their heads a little more, in the last week Google themselves revealed in new documentation that “optimising for generative AI search is optimising for the search experience, and thus still SEO”. So, what exactly is GEO, and is it going to unravel everything businesses have spent years building online?
We break down everything there is to know about GEO below 👇
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the process of optimising your website and content so AI tools like OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Overviews can discover, understand and reference your brand in AI-generated answers.
While traditional SEO focuses on getting your website to rank as a clickable link on page one of the search results pages, GEO focuses on getting your brand mentioned, quoted or linked directly inside an AI-generated answer.
Generative AI platforms use sophisticated large language models (LLMs) to understand natural language and generate responses. These engines pull information from various sources and synthesise it into one coherent answer, aiming to provide users with the most relevant and contextually accurate information possible.
The more context the user gives, the more tailored and personalised the response becomes. Unlike traditional keyword-based searching, AI-powered search is conversational. Users are asking more detailed, nuanced questions and expecting immediate, personalised answers in return. This level of convenience is incredibly appealing to users, but it also creates a new challenge for businesses: how do you make sure your brand becomes part of those AI-generated answers?
Programs like ChatGPT have been around for a few years now, but as the technology becomes more advanced, and more widely adopted, businesses are starting to recognise its potential as a major digital marketing channel, much like social media when it first emerged.
Google has always been the search engine of choice. Even if you tried to use Bing, it doesn’t deliver results quite the same and you soon find yourself back on Google. However, there’s a lot of friction these days with the myriad of ads, pop-ups and widgets.
Users have become more impatient and expect information immediately. People no longer necessarily want to click through multiple websites, dodge pop-ups, reject cookie banners and scroll through pages of ads just to find a straightforward answer to a question. That friction is one of the reasons AI-powered search experiences are growing so quickly.
Google recognised this shift early, which is why AI Overviews are now appearing prominently at the top of many search results. Rather than requiring users to visit several websites, Google attempts to summarise the answer instantly within the SERPs. Meanwhile, tools like ChatGPT and Copilot allow users to ask detailed, conversational questions and receive direct responses without carrying out a traditional search at all.
One of the biggest differences between traditional SEO and GEO is how users search. Where traditional SEO focuses more heavily on keyword phrases and short search terms, GEO is built around conversational language and more natural questions.
For instance, using our client, Tuin, as an example, traditional SEO might target a keyword phrase like:
“best summerhouse UK”
Whereas GEO considers much longer, conversational prompts, such as:
“Find me a summerhouse that’s well-suited to a small garden in the UK. I want it to be somewhere I can relax in the day but to also entertain friends and family.”
So, if you’re wondering how to write your content so it appears in generative AI responses, GEO tends to like:
It’s important to bear in mind that the above points also support SEO, so whichever discipline you’re focusing on, you’ll also be helping the other. Which leads us onto our next point…
Despite all the excitement surrounding AI, organic search still massively dominates online discovery. Google continues to handle billions of searches every single day, and referral traffic from traditional search still far outweighs traffic from AI platforms.
More importantly, many AI-generated answers still pull heavily from websites already ranking highly in organic search results. In fact, studies are increasingly showing that pages appearing in AI Overviews are frequently already positioned well within Google’s top results. This demonstrates that AI systems still lean heavily on trusted, authoritative web content.
So while GEO is certainly changing the way visibility works online, it isn’t replacing SEO altogether. It’s extending it.
As everyone runs around like headless chickens, shouting “GEO! GEO!” and adding “AI expert” to their LinkedIn bios, we’re here to tell you that if you’ve got your SEO strategy nailed, you don’t need to worry about GEO – you’ve already done the work that needs doing. This is the part many marketers are overlooking in the rush to rebrand everything as “AI optimisation”.
AI systems are not inventing trustworthy information out of thin air. They still rely heavily on many of the same trust and authority signals search engines have valued for years. In fact, most AI tools still depend on traditional search indexes and authority signals underneath the surface. After all, where do they get their information from in the first place?
If your SEO is weak, GEO becomes incredibly difficult. If your website is slow, your content lacks structure, your brand presence is inconsistent or your authority online is poor, AI systems are far less likely to trust and reference your business.
Generative AI assesses a wide combination of factors, including:
In other words, the exact same things strong SEO strategies already focus on.
The only slight difference between SEO and GEO is that if you want to improve your chances of coming up in generative AI responses, you need to make sure your brand has consistent messaging across all platforms. AI systems don’t just look at your website in isolation. They assess your wider digital footprint to determine whether your business consistently represents the same expertise everywhere it appears. That includes:
The more consistent your messaging is across all platforms; the more confidence AI systems have that your business is credible and trustworthy.
Again, though, this isn’t really separate from good marketing practice. If your digital marketing strategy is already aligned across SEO, PR, content and social media, much of this work should already be happening naturally.
We’ve actually seen this first-hand with one of our clients, HECK Food, who launched their Lucky Bride’s Sausage based on a growing social media trend of burying a sausage the night before your wedding. Through a combination of SEO, content marketing, social media and PR activity, they quickly became strongly associated with the topic online, and shortly afterwards appeared within Google’s AI Overview as one of the originators of the trend.
That visibility didn’t come from “gaming” GEO. It came from strong, joined-up digital marketing. The businesses succeeding in GEO are rarely abandoning SEO. More often, they’re simply refining and strengthening what they were already doing well.
Find out more about how years of joined-up marketing supported their AI search visibility here.
Yes, GEO does introduce some additional considerations, such as conversational phrasing, extractable content and stronger entity recognition. But, fundamentally, the same principles still apply. Just as with any other area of digital marketing, you shouldn’t abandon one channel to chase another.
SEO, GEO, PPC, PR, social media and content marketing all work together to strengthen your online presence and visibility. So, no – SEO isn’t dead. If anything, GEO is proving just how important good SEO has always been.
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