GEO vs SEO

What is the difference
between GEO and SEO?

SEO gets you ranked on a results page a person still has to read. GEO gets you cited inside the answer they read instead. The work overlaps, the metrics do not, and GEO does not replace SEO.

Both are about being found, and much of the underlying craft is shared: a page nobody can crawl helps neither, and a clear, well-sourced page helps both. The split is what happens after retrieval. A search engine returns ten links and lets the reader choose. An answer engine reads the sources and writes one answer, naming a few of them. Ranking first is worth a great deal in the first case and nothing in particular in the second, because there is no list to be first in.

That changes what you optimise. Keyword position gives way to whether you are named at all. Click-through gives way to citation. And the sources an answer engine trusts are frequently not the pages that rank: comparison articles, forum threads and review sites get quoted far more often than their search position would suggest.

Side by side
SEOGEO
What it optimises for
Position on a results page
Being named and cited inside an answer
What the user sees
A list of links to choose from
One answer, with a few sources named
Main metric
Ranking, impressions, click-through
Mention rate, citation share, position within the answer
What gets rewarded
Authority, links, keyword coverage
Clear claims, checkable sources, comparisons an engine can quote
Which pages win
Pages that rank
Pages engines trust: comparisons, guides, forum and review sources
How fast it moves
Weeks to months
Answers shift week to week as engines refresh
Where it is measured
Search Console, rank trackers
Sampling the engines directly, because no console reports it
Does GEO replace SEO?

No, and anyone selling it that way is overreaching. Search traffic has not gone anywhere, and the technical foundations are shared: crawlable pages, clean structure, real substance. What has changed is that a growing share of buyers now get an answer instead of a list, and nothing in an SEO report tells you whether you are in it. GEO is the measurement and the work for that second surface.

How Sourso handles it

Sourso samples both: the AI answer engines and Google search, recorded the same way so one analysis reads across them. Where you are missing from an answer, it drafts what would get you into it, and every draft waits for your approval. If your buyers are in China it samples Doubao, including its app, and DeepSeek, which most tools skip entirely.

Common questions
No, though the marketing around it sometimes is. The technical groundwork is genuinely shared, but the target differs: SEO competes for a position in a list, GEO competes to be named in a written answer. The metrics that tell you whether it worked are not the same ones.
Measurement, usually. Search Console does not report whether ChatGPT mentioned you, so most teams have no idea. The second gap is content shape: answer engines quote comparisons and plainly stated claims far more than the keyword-led pages that rank.
Keep the SEO you have, and start measuring AI answers, because you cannot act on what you cannot see. Whether GEO deserves more of your time after that depends on what the sampling shows about your category.
Answer engine optimisation, and in practice people use it interchangeably with GEO. If a distinction is drawn, AEO tends to mean featured snippets and AI Overviews on a search page, GEO the assistants themselves. Not a distinction worth arguing about.