It seems like every other week there’s a new acronym designed to make marketing managers lose sleep. The current champion is GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization. If you’ve been hanging around LinkedIn or sitting in on strategy meetings lately, you’ve probably heard the pitch: traditional search is dying, and if your brand isn’t being "cited" by ChatGPT or Perplexity, you basically don't exist.
I’ve talked to plenty of business owners lately who are genuinely worried. They see the rise of AI-driven search and feel like the old rules of SEO—the keywords, the backlinking, the technical audits—are suddenly obsolete. They’re pivoting hard, pouring budgets into "GEO" specific strategies because they want to be the one source an AI bot picks to answer a prompt.
But here’s the thing that might be a bit of a wake-up call, or maybe just a relief: GEO and SEO are, for the most part, the exact same thing.
What are we actually talking about with GEO?
Before we get too deep into why they're the same, we should probably look at why people think they’re different. GEO is essentially the practice of optimizing your content so that it shows up in the synthesized answers generated by AI search engines.
Think about how you use Google today versus how you might use Perplexity or the new ChatGPT search. In the old days (meaning, like, 2023), you’d type a query, get a list of blue links, and click one. Now, you’re increasingly greeted by a wall of text—an AI Overview—that answers your question right there on the results page.
This is the "Zero-Click" reality. Statistics from 2025 show that over 60% of searches now end without a single click to an external website. People get their answer, they’re satisfied, and they move on. Companies are pivoting to GEO because they realize that if they aren’t the source the AI is quoting in that summary, they’ve lost the user entirely.
The "New" Rules That Aren't Actually New
When you look at the "best practices" for GEO, they sound suspiciously familiar.
To win at GEO, you’re told to:
- Use clear, authoritative headings.
- Structure data with Schema markup so machines can read it.
- Provide direct, factual answers to specific questions.
- Establish "E-E-A-T" (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
If that sounds like the SEO checklist from five years ago, that’s because it is. AI engines don't pull their answers out of thin air; they pull them from the index. If Google’s traditional algorithm thinks your page is the most authoritative result for "how to fix a leaky faucet," there’s a very high chance the AI model will use your content to generate its summary.
I think we often overcomplicate things because "Generative Engine Optimization" sounds more futuristic and expensive than "making sure your website doesn't suck." Perhaps we like the new terminology because it feels like a fresh start, but the engine under the hood is still built on the same principles of clarity and trust.
Where the "Zero-Click" shift actually matters
Now, I don't want to be totally dismissive. There is a slight shift in intent. In traditional SEO, we often wrote "filler" content to keep people on the page or to hit a certain word count. With GEO, that fluff is a liability.
AI models are looking for "chunks" of information. They want a 50-word paragraph that perfectly encapsulates a concept so they can scrape it and cite it. If you’re buried in a 3,000-word "ultimate guide" that doesn't get to the point until page four, the AI is going to skip you and find someone who lead with the answer.
The Human Element: I caught myself doing this the other day. I was looking for a specific technical spec for a camera. I skipped three high-ranking blogs because they started with "In the fast-paced world of photography..." and went straight to the AI summary that just listed the sensor size. I didn't click a single link.
This is the scary part for businesses. You can do "good GEO," get cited as the primary source by Gemini, and still see your web traffic drop. It’s a bit of a paradox. You’re winning the "authority" game, but losing the "traffic" game.
Is it a mistake to choose one?
So, back to the original question: are companies right to concentrate on GEO over SEO?
Honestly, I think the distinction is a bit of a false choice. If you ignore SEO to focus on GEO, you’re likely going to fail at both. You still need the technical health and the backlink profile for the AI to "trust" you enough to cite you in the first place. You can’t optimize for an AI engine if the search engine hasn't even bothered to index you.
However, there is a mild contradiction in how we measure success now. We used to live and die by "Sessions" and "Click-Through Rate." In a GEO-heavy world, we might need to start valuing "Brand Mentions" or "Citation Share." It’s an adjustment in perspective, more than a change in the actual work of writing content.
The Bottom Line
Good SEO is good GEO. If you are writing for humans—truly writing to answer their questions clearly, citing your sources, and using a logical structure—you are already doing 90% of the work required for AI search.
Don't get distracted by the shiny new acronym. Focus on being the most helpful resource on the internet for your specific niche. Whether a human clicks your link or an AI bot reads your paragraph to a user over a smart speaker, the goal remains the same: being the answer to the question.
