SEO (Search Engine Optimization) gets your pages to rank in traditional search results; GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) gets your brand cited inside AI-generated answers. SEO optimizes for rankings and clicks on Google and Bing, while GEO optimizes for inclusion and citation in answers produced by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google’s AI Overviews.

The term Generative Engine Optimization was introduced by Aggarwal and colleagues in a 2024 study published at the ACM SIGKDD conference. The two disciplines share one foundation (clear, trustworthy and well-structured content) but target different surfaces and are measured differently, which is why a modern strategy runs both together. GEO is also called AEO (answer engine optimization); the tactics overlap heavily.