Search is changing. Google is increasingly using AI-generated answers, while platforms such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are becoming another way people discover businesses, products and expertise. This has led to growing interest in Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), the practice of making your brand and website easier for AI-powered search engines to understand, reference and recommend. But is GEO genuinely different from SEO, and does your business actually need to worry about it?
People are increasingly asking questions directly in AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot and other generative search platforms. Instead of receiving ten blue links and deciding which websites to visit, users can now receive a detailed answer assembled from multiple sources in seconds.
That shift has led to a new acronym entering the marketing vocabulary: GEO — Generative Engine Optimisation.
But is GEO really a new discipline, or is it simply SEO with a new name?
What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimisation is the practice of improving the likelihood that your organisation, brand and website will be discovered, understood, referenced or cited by AI-powered search and answer engines.
The term gained wider attention following academic research into what its authors described as “Generative Engine Optimization”, examining ways website content could become more visible within responses generated by AI systems.
Traditional SEO generally focuses on improving where a webpage appears in search results.
GEO broadens that objective.
The question is no longer simply:
“Does our website rank on Google?”
It is increasingly also:
“When someone asks an AI platform about our industry, services or expertise, does our brand appear in the answer?”
That is an important distinction.
Search is becoming an answer engine
Traditional search requires users to do much of the research themselves.
They search, open several websites, compare information and reach their own conclusion.
Generative search changes that process. AI systems can retrieve information from multiple sources, interpret it and construct an answer around the user’s particular question.
Google now uses generative AI through products including AI Overviews and AI Mode. ChatGPT can search the web and cite external sources, while Microsoft’s Copilot and Bing also generate answers grounded in online content.
That means visibility is increasingly about more than simply ranking first for a particular keyword.
Your content also needs to be understandable and useful enough to become part of the answer.
So, is GEO replacing SEO?
No.
In fact, much of what is being described as GEO rests on exactly the same foundations as good SEO.
Google explicitly states that its existing SEO best practices remain relevant to generative AI features and that there are no special technical requirements for appearing within AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being eligible within Google Search itself. Google goes even further in its current GEO guidance, saying that from its perspective, optimising for generative AI search is still fundamentally SEO.
So businesses should be cautious of anyone suggesting that SEO has suddenly become obsolete.
It hasn’t.
Technical accessibility, indexing, site structure, authority, useful content, relevance and a strong overall web presence remain important.
What has changed is the environment in which that information may be discovered.
What does GEO change?
The biggest difference is that search visibility is no longer limited to getting somebody to click a link.
An AI system might mention your brand, summarise information you have published, use your website as supporting evidence or cite one of your pages as a source.
Microsoft now provides website owners with AI visibility information in Bing Webmaster Tools, including data showing where their pages have been cited in AI-generated answers. Its newer reporting includes citation share, topics and user intent, which demonstrates that AI visibility is becoming measurable rather than merely theoretical.
Google has moved in the same direction. Search Console now provides reporting specifically around visibility within generative AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode.
This matters because a business could potentially gain substantial visibility inside an AI-generated answer without receiving the same quantity of traditional search-result clicks.
The definition of online visibility is beginning to expand.
What kind of content works for GEO?
There is no magic GEO formula.
Generative systems need information they can identify, understand and have sufficient reason to trust.
In practical terms, this means many of the qualities businesses should already be building into their websites become even more important:
- clear explanations of what the organisation does
- original expertise rather than generic content
- strong subject-matter authority
- accurate and up-to-date information
- clearly structured pages and headings
- evidence, examples and supporting facts
- consistent information about the brand across the web
- content that answers genuine customer questions
- technically accessible pages that search and AI crawlers can discover.
Google specifically recommends unique, valuable, people-first content for its generative search experiences rather than content created simply to manipulate visibility.
OpenAI likewise advises website owners who want content to be surfaced and cited within ChatGPT search to ensure its search crawler can access the relevant pages.
The fundamentals remain surprisingly familiar.
Create something worth finding.
Then make it easy for search engines, and increasingly AI systems, to understand what it means.
GEO isn’t just about your website
This is where GEO becomes particularly interesting from a brand perspective.
An AI platform may not rely solely on what your business says about itself.
It can encounter your organisation across news coverage, industry publications, directories, reviews, social platforms, third-party websites and other authoritative sources.
That means your digital reputation becomes part of the picture.
A brand that is clearly positioned and consistently described across multiple credible sources is easier for both people and machines to understand.
If one website describes your company as a strategic brand consultancy, another describes it as a graphic design studio and another describes it as a digital marketing company, the identity of the business becomes less clear.
Strong positioning has therefore become a search issue as much as a branding issue.
GEO also changes keyword thinking
SEO has historically revolved heavily around keywords.
Those still matter, but AI search is far more conversational.
Someone might once have searched:
“branding agency Auckland”
Now they might ask:
“Which New Zealand branding agencies specialise in renaming established companies?”
Or:
“What should I look for when choosing a branding consultancy for a company merger?”
These are longer, more contextual questions.
Google describes one of the techniques behind its generative search as query fan-out, where an AI system can perform multiple related searches around a user’s original question before constructing its response.
This makes comprehensive subject knowledge increasingly valuable.
Instead of building a page around a single phrase, businesses need to demonstrate that they genuinely understand the wider topic.
Does GEO really matter?
Yes, but perhaps not in the way some of the hype suggests.
GEO matters because the way people discover information is changing.
Search engines aren’t disappearing, and SEO isn’t being replaced overnight. Instead, traditional search and generative AI are converging.
Google is building AI directly into Search. Microsoft is measuring AI citations. ChatGPT can search the web and direct users to external sources. The distinction between a search engine and an AI assistant is becoming less clear.
Businesses therefore shouldn’t abandon their SEO strategy and rush towards the latest acronym.
A better approach is to recognise that good SEO, strong branding, genuine expertise and high-quality content are increasingly working together.
The organisations most likely to perform well in generative search will not necessarily be those that learn the latest GEO trick.
They will be the organisations that are easy to find, easy to understand, credible enough to reference and distinctive enough to remember.
GEO is another reason to build a stronger brand
Ultimately, GEO highlights something that has always mattered.
Visibility without clarity has limited value.
Being mentioned by an AI platform is useful, but being correctly understood and positioned is far more important.
If AI increasingly becomes the intermediary between customers and businesses, organisations need a clear answer to a fundamental question:
When machines explain your business to people, what do you want them to say?
That isn’t simply a GEO question.
It’s a brand question.
About the Author: David Johnson.
David is our lead digital developer, bringing more than 30 years of web development experience, over 20 years of SEO expertise, and hands-on experience in the emerging field of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).
