A client asked me this on a call last month, a little embarrassed, like he’d missed a memo. He runs a real business with real revenue, and he’d started seeing GEO in newsletters and LinkedIn posts and figured everyone else already knew. Nobody does. The term is maybe two years old and half the people using it are selling something.
So here’s the plain version, the one I’d give you across a table.
When someone asks an AI assistant a buying question, “who’s the best CPA for a construction company,” “what’s a good lodge for a corporate retreat,” the AI doesn’t show ten blue links. It gives an answer, usually with two or three businesses named. GEO is everything you do to be one of those names, described accurately, recommended confidently.
The stakes have gotten real fast. Around 94% of B2B buyers now use AI tools somewhere in their buying process. When Google shows an AI Overview at the top of results, roughly 80% of those searches end without a click to any website. The buyer gets an answer, forms a shortlist, and moves on. If you’re in the answer, you’re in the deal. If you’re not, there’s no page two to save you.
That’s the cleanest way I know to hold the difference. SEO is a contest for position on a list the buyer still has to sort through. GEO is a contest to be the conclusion the machine hands them.
The two share most of their machinery. Clear content, fast site, good structure, consistent business information, credible outside mentions, all of it feeds both. Where they split is emphasis. SEO cares a lot about keywords and links. GEO cares more about whether the machine can understand who you are, verify it from multiple sources, and quote you cleanly.
Here’s the number that changed how I plan this work: somewhere around 85% of the citations in AI answers come from third-party sources, not the company’s own site. Reviews, directories, press mentions, industry lists, other people vouching for you. You can polish your website all year, and the machines will still weigh what the rest of the internet says about you more heavily. That was the part I underestimated when I started doing this work for clients. I spent early effort on-site when the bigger lever was off-site.
After running this for my own studio and for clients, the work sorts into four buckets, in order of leverage.
One story, everywhere. Your website, Google profile, LinkedIn, directories, and social bios all saying the same thing about who you serve and what you do. Machines cross-check. Contradictions read as risk, and risky businesses don’t get recommended. This costs nothing but a decision and an afternoon.
Third-party proof. Reviews from real customers, listings where your industry gets listed, any press or podcast or guest content you can earn. Every outside mention is a vote the machines count. This is slow, steady work, which is exactly why most competitors won’t do it.
Answer-shaped content. Pages that ask the question your buyer asks and answer it directly in the first breath, the way this article opens. AI systems lift concise, factual passages. Give them something liftable with your name on it.
The technical layer. Schema markup that labels your business for machines, clean site structure, fast pages, crawlers not blocked. Necessary, unglamorous, and third in line behind story and proof, not first. I’ve seen businesses buy the plumbing while the story stayed muddy, and nothing moved.
No, and be wary of anyone selling them as separate line items. The overlap is most of the work. What I’d actually do is run one program with both scoreboards: your Google rankings on one side, and a monthly check of what AI assistants say when asked your buyer’s questions on the other. The second scoreboard takes ten minutes and most businesses have never looked at it once.
If you only have bandwidth for one move this quarter, make it the consistency pass. It’s the cheapest work on this list and it feeds every scoreboard you have, search, AI, referrals, even sales calls, because it all rests on the same foundation. Most businesses are better than they look. The gap between the two is a decision problem, not a budget problem.
Want to know where you stand on both scoreboards? The 2-minute brand audit rates your business across the six things buyers and AI actually check, and hands you the playbook for whatever it finds.
I run GiddyBrands out of Charlotte, North Carolina, working with founder-led businesses across the US, from local service companies to nationwide brands. GEO work is built into every brand we launch, and the first Field Note, on checking whether you show up in ChatGPT, is the practical companion to this one.
GEO stands for generative engine optimization, the practice of making your business visible and accurately described inside AI-generated answers from tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google’s AI results. It focuses on consistent business information, third-party credibility, and content written to be quoted directly.
No. Search still drives most discovery, and the work overlaps heavily. GEO extends SEO to a new surface where answers replace links. Businesses that treat them as one program with two scoreboards, rankings and AI mentions, get the best of both without doubling the budget.
Ask AI assistants the questions your buyers ask, monthly, and track whether you’re named and described accurately. Pair that with referral sources in your inquiries. When new leads start saying an AI tool suggested you, the work is compounding.
