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GEO vs. SEO
The technical basis is almost identical. The difference is the goal: a position in the click list versus a mention in a formulated answer.
What they share
Retrievability, fast delivery, server-rendered content, a clean heading hierarchy and meaningful titles all benefit both. A page that is invisible to Google is almost always invisible to AI systems too. If you ignore SEO basics, you can skip GEO.
Where they diverge
SEO optimises for a results list where a person clicks and visits the page itself. GEO optimises for a language model building the content into an answer — often with a source link, often without a visit. That shifts the focus from click-through rate and time on page to citability and unambiguous statements.
A different way to measure success
SEO measures impressions, position and organic traffic. For GEO there is no established console yet: you watch whether and how often your own domain shows up in AI answers to relevant questions, partly manually, partly with specialised tools. citeglass measures the technical precondition for this, not the mention itself.
AI-specific building blocks
Beyond the shared basis, GEO adds bot-specific robots.txt rules for named AI crawlers, an optional llms.txt, a deliberate approach to the training-versus-search distinction, and stricter demands on trust signals — named authors, an Organization schema, a visible date.
What does not change
Content quality, topical depth and authority in the subject area remain decisive. No markup and no robots.txt rule replaces text that genuinely answers the question better than the alternatives. GEO makes sure a good text is even considered.
The order in practice
First secure the SEO basis: rendering, load time, structure, indexability. Then the AI-specific additions. Planning the two separately leads to duplicated work — most measures act on both channels at once.
Check your own site
citeglass shows in about 30 seconds where your website is unreadable for AI systems — free and without login.
Read on
General information, not legal advice. GEO is a young field — recommendations may change.