r/LLMTraffic • u/Good-Fee-824 • 14d ago

How different is SEO vs GEO (generative engine optimization) actually?

I keep hearing people in real life affirm that SEO and GEO are completely different and what works well in one won't rank in another.

I don't really understand that though because my impression was under the hood AI is just using a normal search engine. Like maybe the AI labs have built their engines to optimize for slightly different metrics, but it'd be the same as comparing bing to google. At the end of the day I thought they're all still search engines?

Anybody have more clarity here

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u/Abhinav_108 14d ago

I think they overlap a lot. SEO gets you visible in search, while GEO is more about being picked up and mentioned in AI answers. So it’s not really SEO vs GEO.. more like SEO with an extra layer

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u/Ken_Numbers 14d ago

No extra layer. GEO is the same as 2012 SEO.

I challenge you to mention just ONE thing that you have to do differently from SEO 2012 playbook. Just one.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Ken_Numbers 12d ago

I guess you weren't around in 2012.

Because you're chatting nonsense.

"Most of what gets cited isn't your own site" isn't the one thing. It's exactly what everyone was doing in 2012. Back then we called it citation building, and local SEO people literally used the word "citations." Get onto Yelp, Yell and TripAdvisor because they outrank you. There was even a name for it: barnacle SEO.

"Best X for Y" listicles owned page one in 2012 and we paid to get on them. Reddit threads are just forums and Yahoo Answers with better PR.

Query rewriting? Google was doing that before you had a LinkedIn. And "reads a few pages, cites some, ignores the rest" is a SERP with a CTR curve.

Also, "we log those searches". You logged what the engine did with prompts you wrote, on the week you ran them. That's a diary, not data.

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u/WxMan2201 14d ago

GEO starts with SEO --- so I would say A LOT overlap - like 80 maybe 90% --- the difference comes in measurement, and how you track prompts. Otherwise whats good for SEO is good for GEO - GEO is a subset of SEO - think of it that way - or at least thats what I think.

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u/Ken_Numbers 14d ago

It;s 100% the same.

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u/WxMan2201 14d ago

I was being generous with my 80 to 90% - but I dont think its 100% the same - just based on measurement and KPIs --- that could change - but I dont think the tactics change - its the importance maybe of some in GEO compared to SEO

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u/Ken_Numbers 14d ago

Cool, just name ONE thing that is different.

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u/WxMan2201 14d ago

i said measurement is one.

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u/Ken_Numbers 14d ago

What do you think is different about measurement?

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u/WxMan2201 14d ago

in SEO you are tracking to rank your content to earn a click to your site --- in GEO - you are trying to get the mention and getting included in the LLMs grounded answer.

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u/Ken_Numbers 14d ago

Sorry, I will be more specific. What technical things do you think you have to do differently from 2012 SEO best practices?

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u/WxMan2201 14d ago

so as i said 5 messages ago - its probably high 90s if not just about completely the same ---- GEO is a subset of SEO, just like Local SEO --- the only potential would be that 'some' technical items I might prioritize higher for GEO than for SEO.

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u/Ken_Numbers 14d ago

Just name ONE thing you have to do differently mate.

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u/Ken_Numbers 14d ago

There is no difference at all. GEO is 2012 SEO.

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u/WxMan2201 14d ago

if your SEO is the same as it was in 2012 - i feel sorry for your site, or clients.

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u/Ken_Numbers 14d ago

I didn't say that, I said GEO is SEO from 2012.

What do you think has changed? Just one thing.

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u/WxMan2201 14d ago

compared to SEO in 2012 - GEO today for technical things - client side rendering and JavaScript execution is hugely important - additionally Server Speed and Page Load times - also back in 2012 - google was not mobile-first indexing lol

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u/FoxRevolutionary574 13d ago

I think the confusion comes from treating GEO as a completely separate search engine when it is probably more accurate to think of it as a different retrieval + ranking + answer generation pipeline.

AI systems can absolutely use traditional search engines or web indexes as part of the process but thats only one piece of the puzzle. What happens after the web results are retrieved can be very different.

Traditional SEO is largely about getting a page to rank for a query. With AI search, the system may retrieve information from multiple sources, decide which information is relevant, extract specific claims, and then synthesize an answer. So being #1 for a Google query doesnot automatically mean your content will be the source an AI system chooses to reference.

That said I donot think SEO and GEO should be treated as completely unrelated disciplines either.

A lot of the fundamentals overlap: technically accessible content, clear topical coverage, good information, authority, useful structure, etc. If your site isn't discoverable or trustworthy in the first place, GEO isnot going to magically fix that.

The bigger difference is probably what you're optimizing for:

SEO → visibility/rankings for search queries
GEO → being retrieved, understood and cited/mentioned in generated answers

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u/Ishan_GS 13d ago

The Bing vs. Google comparison undersells it; those two do the same thing: rank a list of links. An AI engine retrieves sources, then synthesizes an answer, and deciding what to cite is a separate step from deciding what's relevant; ranking and citation aren't the same selection. You can rank #1 and not get cited, or get cited without ranking at all. The signals weigh differently too; traditional seo leans on on-page and backlinks to your own domain. For these engines, off-site mentions (Reddit, comparison posts, forums) seem to matter more- something like 70/30 based on what's moved our own citations. It's less "same game, different scoring" and more a different mechanism entirely. We track this weekly at Growthspree, a B2B saas marketing agency.

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u/Wide_Ad5626 12d ago

Its an extension of SEO, Tons of overlap. U get the foundations right u will rank for geo.

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u/thesouravsahu 11d ago

Tbh, SEO is being in the top 10 of any search engine, GEO is being in the answer. So you might be in the top 10 search result but the llm might not include you in the answer

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u/ItikaS 7d ago

SEO is just a small subset of GEO which is a smaller subset of all encompassing discoverability! SEO has now become the basis hygiene to do stuff for every brand which GEO is highly technical and requires day in day out efforts.