GEO vs SEO: what changes when AI answers first.

For twenty years the goal was simple: rank on page one. Now a growing share of searches end before anyone sees page one. Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini read the web, then write an answer that cites a handful of sources. Generative engine optimisation — GEO — is the work of being one of those sources.

What stays the same

Almost all of SEO still matters. Assistants find pages through search indexes, so crawlable, fast, well-structured pages are still the price of entry. Links and mentions still signal authority. Content that genuinely answers the question still wins.

What changes

• Answers beat pages. Assistants quote passages, not whole pages. A clear two-sentence answer near the top of a page is more quotable than a long introduction.
• Entities beat keywords. Assistants need to be sure who you are. Your name, category, location and offer should be stated the same way everywhere — your site, your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, directories and reviews.
• Evidence beats adjectives. Specific numbers, dates, prices and named methods are cited far more than claims like “industry-leading”.
• Structure is a signal. FAQ, Organization and Service schema, clean headings and an llms.txt file make your pages easier for machines to read.

How to measure it

Keep a list of the 20 questions your customers ask before they buy. Once a month, ask them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google, and record who gets named and linked. It's manual, it's imperfect, and it's still the clearest view of whether you're winning the new first page.