Search didn’t die โ it split in two. There’s the old game of ranking in a list of links (SEO), and the new game of being the answer an AI gives (GEO). Here’s the difference, and why most Australian businesses now need both.
What is SEO?
SEO โ Search Engine Optimisation โ is the practice of getting your pages to rank in the list of results on Google and Bing. It rewards relevant keywords, fast and well-structured pages, and backlinks from other sites. The goal is a high position in the “ten blue links” so a human clicks through to you.
What is GEO?
GEO โ Generative Engine Optimisation โ is the practice of getting your business cited, linked and recommended inside AI answers. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Google’s AI Overview a question, the engine reads the web, picks a few sources, and writes a single answer. GEO is the work that makes you one of those sources. It’s sometimes also called AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) or LLMO (Large Language Model Optimisation).
GEO vs SEO: the key differences
- The target. SEO optimises for a ranked page a human scrolls. GEO optimises for a single synthesised answer a machine writes โ where there’s no page two and often only three or four sources cited.
- What gets rewarded. SEO rewards keywords and backlinks. GEO rewards clear entities, structured data, quotable answers, and being referenced across sources the model already trusts.
- The click. SEO wins a click. GEO can win the recommendation even when there’s no click โ the buyer remembers the brand the AI named.
- How you measure it. SEO tracks rankings and organic traffic. GEO tracks your “share of answer” โ how often you’re mentioned or cited across a set of buyer questions on each engine.
Do you need both?
Yes โ and they reinforce each other. Google’s AI Overviews and most answer engines still lean heavily on the same content and authority signals classic search rewards, and a large share of buyers still use traditional search. Run GEO and SEO together and one foundation โ clean content, schema, fast pages, citations โ feeds both surfaces, rather than paying twice for overlapping work.
How GEO actually works
Getting cited by AI comes down to a handful of moves: a clean entity and schema foundation (Organization, Service, FAQ), an llms.txt file that tells models who you are, answer-targeted content in the quotable format engines lift, citations on third-party sources the models trust, and the technical groundwork that lets crawlers like GPTBot and PerplexityBot read you. Done well, the foundation lands in two to four weeks and the authority compounds from there.
The bottom line
SEO gets you found on Google. GEO gets you recommended by AI. In 2026, your buyers use both โ so you should win on both. If you’ve got a great brand that isn’t showing up when people ask AI “who’s the best?”, that’s a GEO problem, and it’s fixable.
Want to see where you stand? Amora Digital runs a free AI-visibility audit across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews โ and our dedicated GEO service gets you cited, fast. Book a free audit →
