New abbreviations keep appearing in the field: GEO, AEO, LLMO. They largely describe the same work. This piece uses GEO, generative engine optimization, and sets it against the familiar SEO, so you know what actually changes and what is marketing language.

01 / definitionWhat GEO is

GEO is about setting up your content and online presence so that AI systems can find, read and cite you in their answers. The goal isn't a position in a list but a mention in the answer itself, as a source or as a recommendation.

That goal requires partly different work than classic optimisation. A search engine assesses pages; an AI system cuts pages into passages and assesses those. GEO therefore aims for passages that are readable on their own, for demonstrable credibility, and for presence in the places where AI systems draw their sources from. What that produces is called AI visibility.

The difference in one overview:

The table looks like a contrast, but the columns share their foundation. The next two sections therefore go through the similarity first, and only then the differences.

02 / what staysThe shared foundation

Most of the foundation is the same for both disciplines. A site that is technically readable, loads quickly and can be visited by crawlers. Content that genuinely answers a genuine question. A recognisable sender with demonstrable expertise.

Anyone doing good work for SEO already has the foundation for GEO in place. That's also why the two disciplines aren't opposed: AI systems draw their sources from the same web that search engines index, and Google's AI Overviews even lean directly on the ordinary rankings.

The reverse is also true. A site that's unfindable for search engines, due to technical errors, blocked crawlers or pages that only become readable after heavy scripting, is just as unfindable for AI systems. Anyone who wants to start with GEO while the foundation isn't in place is starting at the wrong end of the work.

The order follows from that: first the foundation the two disciplines share, then the emphases GEO adds to it. Anyone who has been working on their visibility for years therefore isn't starting over, but building on what's already there.

03 / what shiftsPassages, evidence and third parties

The difference lies in three emphases, and these have been measured. Princeton's GEO research (KDD 2024) compared nine optimisation methods and found clear differences in effect:

The first three are classic, solid writing: show where your knowledge comes from. The last line is the quietest shift: repeating keywords had already been pointless at best in classic SEO for years and long since penalised there, but here it demonstrably lowers visibility. Anyone who once wrote their old texts around a keyword density therefore gets no benefit from that in this discipline, rather the opposite.

For a search engine you wrote about a topic. For an AI system you answer a question, with evidence attached.

The third emphasis is presence beyond your own site. AI systems cite reviews, trade media and forums alongside company sites, and regularly instead of them. GEO therefore looks beyond your own domain, whereas classic SEO mainly puts your own house in order.

Measurement changes along with it. SEO measures positions, clicks and impressions, and mature reporting exists for that. For GEO, such a standard report doesn't yet exist: you measure presence in answers, across a fixed set of questions, over multiple platforms, and you compare each measurement with the previous one. How to set up such a yardstick is covered in how to measure AI visibility.

04 / conclusionA layer on top, not a replacement

For completeness: all of this is only relevant for businesses whose customers search and compare online. Anyone who gets their intake from a fixed circle or personal referral needs neither abbreviation.

GEO doesn't replace SEO, and anyone who sells it as a replacement is overselling. The visibility SEO builds is the gateway; GEO determines whether you also make it through that gateway into the answer. Why SEO still holds up in an AI era is set out in does AI make SEO redundant.

In practice this means you don't need a second team or a second budget, but an adjusted way of working: the same content effort, set up for citability and measured against a second metric. How we set up that metric is on datadriftdigital.nl.

Finally, be wary of anyone offering GEO as a standalone miracle cure. The discipline is young, and so are the measurement methods, and no one can guarantee a spot in an AI answer. What can be done: do the work whose effect has been measured, and measure that effect for yourself in a traceable way. Everything beyond that is, for now, a promise without evidence.

This text was produced with AI assistance and checked and approved by a human before publication.