For two decades, SEO ruled digital discovery. Rankings were king, links were currency, and every marketer knew the game: optimise for Google, win visibility, get traffic.

But that world is changing fast.

As generative engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok become the starting point for real buying decisions, a new discipline has emerged, GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). And the uncomfortable truth is this:

If SEO is about ranking, GEO is about relevance.
Not where you appear in search, but whether AI even considers you worthy of a recommendation.

Here are the 10 core differences shaping that shift, and why brands who cling to old playbooks will be invisible in an AI-first world.

1. SEO and GEO Require Opposite Optimization Strategies

You can change one paragraph on your website and improve SEO… while hurting your GEO.

SEO favors structure, keywords, and technical clarity.
GEO favors specificity, narrative, and performance attributes.

Optimizing for one does not guarantee improvement in the other. In fact, they often pull in opposite directions.

2. The Mad Men Would Crush GEO, And Struggle With SEO

Drop a team of 1960s ad copywriters into today’s AI world?

They’d thrive in GEO.

Why?
Because GEO rewards persuasive storytelling, clarity, differentiation, and product performance language, not keyword density or schema markup.

It’s a world built for communicators, not technicians.

3. Links Don’t Matter… Except When They Do

LLMs don’t use PageRank. They don’t crawl the web like Google. They don’t care if the link is dofollow or not.

But they do care how often your brand appears, where it appears, and the context around those mentions.

You shouldn’t build links for GEO.
You should earn mentions, because visibility in the network is a proxy for trust.

4. GEO Tactics Are Evolving Fast

Founder blogs, original POVs, product deep-dives, these now shape LLM understanding far more than “Top 10 Tools for X” listicles.

AI models crave authentic, attributed human insight.

Listicles are cheap.
Experience is not.

5. GEO Is About Network Science, Not Search Engines

SEO = optimizing for Google’s systems.
GEO = understanding how massive, interconnected networks distribute information and how LLMs interpret it.

Network effects.
NLP.
Brand signals.
Digital reputation.

This is not “just SEO.”
This is a multidisciplinary field, and reducing it to one-liners is lazy thinking.

6. The SEO Slice of GEO Is Shrinking

Because GEO is governed by how networks distribute attention, the technical SEO portion becomes smaller over time.

You can’t keyword-target your way into AI recommendations.
You can only influence your informational reputation across the network.

7. When AI Can’t Measure Performance, It Judges Fit

Humans used search rankings as authority.
AI uses fitness signals, the attributes that imply performance, quality, or superiority.

This is Barabási’s Law of Success in action.

If your product or service doesn’t express its performance attributes clearly, AI won’t choose you, even if Google ranks you.

8. Low-Level GEO Tactics Will Die Quickly

Right now, listicles and roundup posts can move the needle. But as LLMs evolve, they rely increasingly on rich, multi-source signals, not repetitive formats.

The more a tactic is gamed, the faster its impact decays.

9. GEO Is About Informational Fitness, Not Topic Coverage

SEO says:
“Write more content around the keyword.”

GEO says:
“Improve the clarity, detail, credibility, and distribution of information about your product’s real performance.”

It’s not about topics.
It’s about truth, clarity, and proof.

10. GEO Is Ultimately About Digital Fame

As models train on larger datasets, they learn what the internet pays attention to.

To be recommended, you need fame, not celebrity fame, but digital informational fame:

People talk about you.
You appear in credible places.
Your brand has context, not just content.

Brands that are invisible in the ecosystem will be invisible to AI.

The Real Problem: We’re Fighting the Wrong Battle

The SEO vs. GEO argument is a pointless civil war.

GEO is not SEO with a new haircut.
SEO is not suddenly irrelevant.
Both matter, but they matter for different reasons.

SEO helps you get found where people type.
GEO helps you get recommended where people ask.

And if you want to influence AI recommendations, you need a different kind of team:

A copywriter.
A PR/comms strategist.
A content marketer.
An SEO who brings audience intelligence and intent data.

Not a department rearranging title tags and calling it innovation.

The Only Question That Matters

Forget labels. Forget the arguments. Forget the LinkedIn threads.

Ask this instead:

Can you show a direct line between your work and an increase in how often generative engines recommend your brand when someone is ready to buy?

If yes, you’re doing GEO.

If not, you’re still playing yesterday’s game.