GEO vs SEO: what changes when ChatGPT and Google AI Mode answer the question.

What stays the same

Google gives the same advice for its AI answers as for search. Its guide to AI features says: There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary. In May 2025, John Mueller of Google wrote that meeting Google's technical requirements covers you for search generally, including AI formats.

Microsoft says much the same for Copilot and Bing. In October 2025, its Bing team named the usual SEO work as the base for AI answers too. That means pages a search engine can reach, clear titles and descriptions, and links from your own pages and from other sites (Microsoft).

So SEO keeps paying. An assistant can only cite a page it can find and read. In Google AI Mode and in Copilot, finding it starts with Google's or Bing's search.

What changes

Seven things work differently once an assistant writes the answer.

One answer instead of a list

A results page shows about 10 links, and the person picks one. An AI answer names a few brands, says why, and the person may never click. If your brand is not in the answer, there is no second page to fall back on.

The assistant runs its own searches

Google says AI Mode and AI Overviews may use query fan-out: issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources. So a page can be used for a question it was never written for, and passed over for the one it was.

Other assistants search in their own way, and their sources often differ from Google's. In an Ahrefs study of 15,000 questions in August 2025, about 8% of the pages that ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot cited were in Google's top 10 for the same question. More than 80% were not in Google's results for it at all. Perplexity came closest to Google, at 28.6% (Ahrefs).

Each AI company also sends its own programs to fetch pages. OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot, for example, finds pages for ChatGPT search, and blocking it keeps a site out of those answers (OpenAI).

Evidence and other sites count for more

The term GEO comes from a 2024 study by researchers at Princeton University and IIT Delhi. Pages that added statistics, quotes and named sources were about 30 to 40% more visible in the answers of a test AI search engine. Stuffing in keywords did not help (the 2024 GEO study).

What other sites say about you matters too. In a 2025 Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, the number of sites that mention a brand was the factor most closely tied to how often Google's AI Overviews named it (Ahrefs). An assistant asked to compare brands leans on pages that compare them.

The GEO study tested 2023 models, mostly GPT-3.5, and its results varied by topic. Read the numbers as a direction, not a promise.

The answer moves, so measure it differently

A search result stays put from one day to the next. An AI answer may not. In a SparkToro study published in January 2026, ChatGPT and Google's AI gave the same list of brands less than once in 100 tries (SparkToro). A single position in one answer tells you little.

Count instead how often the answers name you across many tries, what they say about you, and which sources they cite. Google's Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools now also report how often your pages appear in their AI answers. What Google's report counts, and what it leaves out.

What to do

1. Keep the SEO basics: pages that load, that search engines can reach, and that say clearly what they are about.
2. Let the AI companies' search programs in. Which ones to allow, and which you can block.
3. Answer the question near the top of each section, with numbers, quotes and named sources. How pages get cited.
4. Earn mentions on other sites: reviews, the trade press and comparison lists. Why AI names your competitors.
5. Measure the answers as well as your search results. How to measure AI visibility.