SEO and GEO, and why one of them still comes first

✦Are we really supposed to do this

A few days before recording this episode, a client I used to work with called. An expert had told them that in order to be seen better across several countries, their site needed a particular kind of data added.

I get this question constantly now. GEO, AEO, AI search, LLMO. New things keep arriving, and it becomes hard to know what to believe and what to act on.

My answer was this. Adding that data is not going to bring in traffic that was not there before.

It can be a plus for SEO. It should not be treated as though it constitutes SEO.

Adding one technical element does not dynamically change the whole result. Building good content steadily across multiple channels matters more than filling in a few data fields.

✦SEO, GEO, and AEO, what differs

SEO is the work of getting your website and your other channels seen inside search engines such as Google.

GEO is the work of getting generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity to cite your service and your company.

AEO is the work of being selected as the answer to a question.

The approaches differ somewhat. The root is the same, which is accumulating good content.

✦The consultant's first job is explaining

I think the first role of an SEO consultant is to make people understand.

Client, developer, designer, or your own manager. Making the other person understand what you are improving and why comes before everything else.

Adding one specific piece of data can affect the development structure, and it can disturb an SEO structure that was already set up correctly.

So if you were given an explanation and did not follow it, do not let it pass. What data, why, what it improves, whether there are side effects. Ask, confirm, then proceed.

A good consultant can also tell you clearly how unexpected issues get resolved and who to talk to when they arise. SEO is not work you can do alone, so persuasion and communication end up taking the most time and effort.

✦Why I still concentrate on SEO

First, I genuinely respect the people doing GEO well. On a project I ran to attract international customers, a specialist GEO team came in and produced good results, and I watched it from right beside them.

People testing and verifying directly in an area where nobody knows the answers yet are the ones setting the standards for this market.

I opened GEO as a service myself at one point. I did not take on projects with GEO as the main scope.

I had not verified it well enough on my own, and I was not confident I could stand behind the results.

Google SEO is a field with more than twenty years of accumulation, so what to measure against and how to improve are clear. GEO does not have that clarity yet. In time it will.

✦The numbers on where search is now

The figures below come from a YouGov study of search behavior across nineteen markets, reported by Greg Jarboe in Search Engine Journal on 13 July 2026. These are United States responses.

AI search usage in the United States was forty eight percent, the lowest of the nineteen markets surveyed. India, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates were at eighty nine percent, and the United Kingdom at fifty four.

The conclusion the article draws is this. Do not budget as though AI search is replacing conventional search. Stack it as a layer on top of an SEO strategy.

People receive an AI answer and still go to the official site to check the receipt. It is too early to skip SEO at this stage.

Search is not disappearing, it is accumulating in layers. Web search, social media, and AI above them. The person who can ride all three fastest is the one with solid fundamentals. Concentrating on SEO now is a sequence, not a surrender.

✦Three things to do now

• Check how the budget is split

  Look at whether the rest of your plan has tipped entirely toward AI visibility. Budget and time are finite, and how you divide them is the strategy.

• A citation is not the finish line

  Being cited by an AI is not the end. The person who clicks through has to find something more detailed, more helpful, more current, and better sourced than the chatbot summary, or the citation never turns into a visit and a next step.

• Make the primary source obvious

  Show who wrote it, when it was updated, and what it is based on. The top two things AI search users say they trust are clear source links and answers from official sources.

✦Layers, together

Not making GEO my main line does not mean keeping a distance from it. The opposite, if anything.

I would like to see more collaboration where each side takes what it does well and the layers get built together.

Naver's AI briefing pulls its citations from somewhere different again, and that is written up separately in the note on Naver and Google.

Something I ask myself often these days. Am I actually trying to solve this client's problem, or trying to sell my SEO service. SEO or GEO, what matters in the end is solving the problem.

How I work is on the services page, and the other episodes are in the episode list.

✦Common questions