AIBy Net Age teamCreated · 10 min read

SEO vs GEO: What’s the Difference Between Google Search Optimisation and AI Search Optimisation?

If your business has invested in good SEO, you may be closer to being discoverable through AI than you think. How SEO, GEO and AEO overlap, differ and should be measured.

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If your business has invested in good SEO, you may be closer to being discoverable through AI than you think. That is the most useful thing to understand before you spend money on a new "AI optimisation" package.

New terms appear every few months. GEO, AEO, LLMO and AI SEO are all being sold as if they replace search engine optimisation. In practice, most of what helps a business show up in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot or Google's AI Overviews is the same work that has always helped people find it on Google: a website that can be reached, read and trusted, with useful answers to real customer questions. This article explains the terms, where they overlap, where they genuinely differ, and how to measure each honestly.

Your Quick Checklist

1. SEO, GEO and AEO in Plain Language

SEO (search engine optimisation) is the work of helping search engines find, understand and show your pages to people searching for what you offer. It covers technical health, content, internal links, local listings and your reputation across the web.

GEO (generative engine optimisation) is a newer label for helping AI systems that write answers, rather than lists of links, understand your business and refer to it. Think of ChatGPT search, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Claude or Copilot summarising options and citing sources.

AEO (answer engine optimisation) is an older, overlapping term. It started with featured snippets and voice assistants: structuring content so a system can pull out a direct answer to a question.

These labels are useful shorthand, but they are not separate disciplines with separate rulebooks. Google's own guide to optimising for generative AI search notes that terms such as AEO and GEO are common online, but that many suggested "hacks" are not effective or supported by how Google Search actually works. Its advice is to keep applying foundational SEO best practices.

2. the Foundations They Share

Whether a person searches Google or asks an assistant, the system needs to do the same basic things with your website. That is why good SEO work carries over so well.

  • Accessibility: your pages load reliably, on any device, without errors, and are not blocked by a firewall or login.
  • Crawlability: automated crawlers are allowed in, can follow your links and can read your content without having to click buttons.
  • Indexing: the right pages are stored by the search system, with one clear main address for each, and nothing important is accidentally marked "noindex".
  • Usefulness: the page actually answers the question someone has, with specifics such as services, areas, prices or how pricing works, and next steps.
  • Credibility: it is clear who you are, what you have done, and why your information can be trusted.
  • Independent mentions: reviews, directory listings, press coverage, associations and other websites that talk about you. Search engines have long used these signals, and AI answers frequently draw on third-party sources when comparing businesses.

If your SEO provider has been doing this properly, you already have most of what AI systems need. If your SEO has mostly been keyword stuffing or buying low-quality links, the gap will be larger, for both.

Google is unusually clear here. Its guide explains that the way Google Search finds and processes pages remains the core of how its AI features access content. To be eligible to appear in generative AI features on Google Search, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. It also lists things you do not need to do for Google, including creating llms.txt files or other special AI files, breaking content into tiny "chunks", or rewriting content in a special style for AI.

So for Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, SEO is not a competitor to GEO. It is the entry ticket.

That said, being eligible is not the same as being chosen. Ranking well for a search does not guarantee your page will be cited in an AI answer about the same topic. The AI may combine several sources, choose a different page that answers a narrower part of the question, or not show an AI answer at all.

4. Where SEO and AI Search Really Differ

The foundations are shared, but there are real differences worth understanding.

  • Different systems, different rules. Google's AI features use Google's index. ChatGPT search relies on OpenAI's own crawler and its search systems. Claude, Copilot and Perplexity each have their own. A page can be prominent in one and absent from another.
  • Answers, not lists. A search results page shows ten options. An AI answer may name two or three businesses, or none, and summarise the rest. Being "position four" has no direct equivalent.
  • Questions are longer and more specific. People ask an assistant things like "Which web developer in Pretoria can build an online shop that integrates with my stock system and offers monthly support?" That favours pages that genuinely explain who you serve and how.
  • Answers vary. The same question asked twice, or from a different location or account, can produce a different answer. That changes how you should measure results.
  • Clicks behave differently. Some people get what they need from the AI answer and never visit a site. Those who do click often arrive better informed and closer to a decision.

5. Why More Content Is Not the Answer

A common reaction to AI search is to publish dozens of pages targeting every possible question. Google warns against this directly: creating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings or AI responses can fall under its scaled content abuse policy, and a high quantity of pages does not make a site higher quality.

What works better is context. A smaller number of strong pages that explain your services, who they are for, where you operate, how the process works, what it costs or what affects the price, and what makes you different will serve customers, search engines and AI systems at the same time. Start with the questions your sales team actually hears, and answer those properly. Add first-hand experience that a generic AI summary could not produce: real processes, real constraints, real examples you have permission to share.

6. Examples for South African Businesses

A Cape Town accounting practice ranks well for "accountant Cape Town" but has one services page listing everything in a single paragraph. A prospective client asks an assistant which firms help small businesses with SARS provisional tax and payroll. The practice is far more likely to be understood and mentioned if it has a clear page explaining exactly those services, who they suit and how onboarding works, plus consistent details on its Google Business Profile and professional body listings.

A Durban manufacturer has a beautiful site built so that product specifications only load after a visitor clicks a tab. Google may cope with that, but other crawlers may not see the specifications at all. Putting the key details in the page's initial HTML helps every system.

A Johannesburg online store blocks all AI bots because a security plugin switched it on by default. Its SEO is fine, but it has quietly opted out of ChatGPT search. A deliberate robots.txt decision fixes that in minutes.

A Pretoria service company has strong reviews but different phone numbers and addresses across directories. Both search engines and AI systems struggle to confirm which details are correct. Cleaning up its listings helps both.

7. Technical Controls Your Developer Should Check

Most of the technical work is standard SEO, but a few AI-specific controls matter.

Search crawlers versus training crawlers. OpenAI documents its crawlers separately on its crawler overview page. OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features. GPTBot crawls content that may be used to train OpenAI's foundation models. ChatGPT-User fetches pages when a person asks ChatGPT to. OpenAI states these settings are independent: you can allow OAI-SearchBot so you can appear in search results while disallowing GPTBot. It also states that sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links.

Other providers make a similar distinction. Anthropic separates Claude-SearchBot from ClaudeBot, and Google provides a Google-Extended token for Gemini training uses that is separate from Googlebot. Decide on purpose which you allow, and check that your firewall or CDN is not overriding that decision.

Rendering. If your website builds its content with JavaScript in the browser, check what a crawler receives before any scripts run. Google can process JavaScript that is not blocked, but not every crawler renders as thoroughly. Important text, prices, contact details and links should be present in the initial HTML, not only after a click.

Structured data. Schema markup such as Organization, LocalBusiness, Product or Article helps describe your pages in a machine-readable way. Google says it is not required for its generative AI features and there is no special AI schema. Where you use it, it must match what is visible on the page. Inaccurate markup helps nobody.

For the full developer checklist, including status codes, canonical URLs, sitemaps and firewall checks, see our technical guide on how to make your website easier for AI to find and understand.

8. Measuring SEO Versus AI Visibility

SEO measurement is relatively mature. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools report impressions, clicks, average positions and indexing problems. Your analytics shows organic visits, enquiries and sales. These numbers are not perfect, but they are consistent enough to track over time.

AI visibility is harder to measure, and anyone claiming precise "AI rankings" should explain how they got them. A sensible approach looks like this:

  • Sampled questions: agree a fixed set of realistic customer questions and ask them regularly across several assistants. Record whether your business is mentioned, how it is described, and whether it is accurate.
  • Citations: note which pages are linked as sources, including your own pages and third-party pages that mention you.
  • Traffic: watch referral visits in your analytics from sources such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com and gemini.google.com. Google's AI features are reported within Search Console's normal Search data rather than as a separate channel.
  • Outcomes: ask new enquiries how they found you. "I asked ChatGPT" is becoming a common answer, and it is valuable evidence.

Because answers vary between runs, treat results as samples and look for trends, not single screenshots. And be clear-eyed: no one can guarantee that a particular assistant will recommend your business. Each provider decides what to show, and those systems change frequently.

9. A Practical Checklist

  1. Confirm your important pages load without errors, have one clear main address and are indexed in Google and Bing.
  2. Check your robots.txt and firewall settings, and make a deliberate decision about search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot and training crawlers such as GPTBot.
  3. View the initial HTML of each page type and make sure key content is there without clicking.
  4. Rewrite your main service pages to answer the questions customers actually ask, with specifics about who, where, how and what it costs.
  5. Show credibility: real examples, clear business details and the people behind the work, where appropriate.
  6. Make your name, address, phone number and hours consistent across your website, Google Business Profile and directories.
  7. Encourage genuine reviews and earn independent mentions from relevant South African publications, associations and partners.
  8. Keep structured data accurate and consistent with the visible page.
  9. Track SEO in Search Console and analytics, and run a regular sampled check of how AI assistants describe you.
  10. Ignore anyone promising guaranteed AI citations or a secret file that fixes everything.

Where to Go From Here

SEO and GEO are best treated as one programme with two ways of measuring success. If your foundations are solid, the AI-specific work is often a short list of technical checks and some sharper, more useful content. If they are not, fixing them improves both at once.

Want a business-level view first? Read our guide on how to get your business found on ChatGPT. If you would like Net Age to review how your website performs in Google and how AI assistants currently describe your business, our SEO team can help, or you can get in touch to talk it through.