GEO vs SEO: what changes and what doesn't

Generative engine optimisation — GEO — is the discipline of earning mentions and citations inside AI-generated answers, the way SEO is the discipline of earning positions on a results page. The name invites the comparison, and plenty carries over. But the differences are where the opportunity is, because most brands haven't adjusted yet.

What doesn't change: quality compounds. Content that genuinely answers a buyer's question, credibility built on third-party sites, a brand that's talked about in the right places — these win in both worlds. GEO is not a trick, and nobody has a reliable way to game their way into AI answers. If someone sells you guaranteed placement in ChatGPT, keep your money.

What changes is the unit of competition. SEO competes for positions — ten of them, plus everything below the fold. AI answers usually commit to three or four names, so visibility is much closer to all-or-nothing. Second change: the deciding signals move off your site. Engines answering buying questions lean on reviews, communities and editorial comparisons more than on vendor pages, so citation-worthiness — being the brand those sources mention — matters more than keyword targeting. Third: the question shapes everything. Real buyers ask conversational, constraint-loaded questions ('under £200', 'for a small team', 'that won't stain'), and the brands mentioned can change completely when the constraint changes.

There's also a measurement gap. SEO matured around rank trackers and search-console data; GEO has no equivalent built in, because the conversations happen out of sight. You can't improve what you haven't measured, and you can't measure AI answers by intuition — they vary by engine, by question, and by week.

So start the way SEO started: get a baseline. Run the questions your buyers actually ask through the engines, score who's getting named, and find the sources doing the deciding. That baseline — score, competitor share of voice, source list — is what a free Skavora check gives you in a couple of minutes. Then GEO stops being a buzzword and becomes a to-do list.