AI Choosing You Free scan

GEO vs SEO

GEO vs SEO: an SEO position holds still. The set of companies an AI assistant names does not.

We asked one assistant the same question twice, 10 minutes apart, on the same model tier. It named 5 companies, then 4 entirely different ones. That is the difference that changes what anyone can honestly promise you - and it is a measurement, not a position.

0%

overlap between two readings of the same question, 10 minutes apart, on the same model tier

What we measured

  • Asked the same question 10 minutes apart on the same model tier, an AI assistant named 5 companies, then 4 entirely different ones - an overlap of 0%.
  • Across 10 same-tier repeats of 5 questions, the mean overlap between two readings of the same question was 15%.
  • All 5 page-side and off-page explanations we tested for who gets named - structure, sentence matching, a page per trade, site shape and authority - failed to predict it.
  • Every one of the 75 answers we examined on the questions in this category was produced by a web search, so a page can reach all of them.

The difference that actually matters

Almost every GEO-versus-SEO article compares the two on mechanics: keywords against entities, links against citations, ten blue links against one synthesised answer. Those are true and they are not the difference that changes your plan.

The difference that changes your plan is that a search ranking is a position and an assistant's shortlist is a sample. Rank 3 on Monday is rank 3 on Tuesday. We repeated one identical question on one model tier and the two answers had nothing in common.

So the two disciplines produce different kinds of promise. SEO can promise a position and show it to you. GEO can honestly promise a rate - how often you appear across repeated readings - and it can only show you that by reading repeatedly.

What carried over from SEO, and what did not

We tested 5 page-side and domain-side explanations for who gets named. All 5 came back negative.

Page structure did not separate cited pages from uncited ones: across 112 cited and 128 uncited pages answering the same queries, the cited pages were shorter, carried fewer numbers and had less structured data - 70% against 80%, with FAQ markup at 20% against 23%. Writing sentences that mirror the answer did not help either: a cited page's best-matching sentence beat an uncited one in 10 of 26 comparisons, worse than a coin flip.

Off-page authority is not the gate. Among 9 companies an assistant actually named, off-page strength ran from 1 referring domain to 2,095, and the weakest - 1 referring domain, 1 backlink, 20 organic keywords - was named anyway.

What did survive is subject matter. The pages assistants cite are the pages that own the specific fact the answer needs. That is a different job from the one an SEO team is set up to do, and it is the honest reason this is a separate discipline rather than a rebrand.

Where the question is being asked

Comparison questions like this one are the part of the category ChatGPT answers most. Across the 75 answers we examined, 16 of the 18 that came from ChatGPT sit on comparison questions; every answer about tools, services or reports came from Google's AI answers.

The wider pattern is the same. Measured on both surfaces with the same filter, everyday business phrases are about 2.7 times more common on Google's AI answers than in ChatGPT. This category's own vocabulary is 19.4 times more common.

Practically: if you are choosing where to be present first, the buying questions in this category live on Google's answer surface today.

The questions this page answers

  • geo vs seo2,900/mo
  • geo seo2,400/mo
  • seo geo2,400/mo
  • seo vs geo1,900/mo
  • seo/geo1,900/mo
  • is geo replacing seo?57/mo
  • what is geo vs seo?29/mo
  • which is better, seo or geo?15/mo
  • what is geo in seo example?14/mo
  • what does geo mean in seo?4/mo

10 questions, 11,619 searches a month between them. All 12 answers we examined on them were produced by a web search, which means a page can reach every one.

Who an assistant cites on these questions today

  • informatechtarget.com 5
  • reddit.com 5
  • semrush.com 5
  • arxiv.org 5
  • neilpatel.com 3
  • a16z.com 3
  • contentful.com 3
  • developers.google.com 3
  • pimberly.com 2
  • evertune.ai 2

28 distinct domains are cited across these questions; the 10 above are the most frequent, with the number of answers each appears in. Counted from the answers captured in our corpus, not from a market census.

What to ask before you buy

  • Judge any GEO offer by whether it reports a rate over repeated readings or a single check. A single check cannot distinguish being in the set from being lucky that minute.
  • Ask what the pool size is for your question. We measure between 8 and 53 companies depending on which question a customer types, and that number sets the odds of any one appearance.
  • Treat structured data, FAQ blocks and answer-shaped paragraphs as good practice for other reasons. On our evidence they do not predict being named, and should not be priced as if they did.

Honest limits of what we measured

  • The stability figure comes from 19 readings of 5 questions in one trade, on one assistant. It is an early reading with wide uncertainty, not a constant.
  • The corpus behind the surface comparison is a sample of captured questions, not every question ever asked, and the balance between surfaces can change quickly.
  • The 5 negative results are negative results at modest sample sizes. Absence of an effect at this scale is not proof that no effect exists.

Questions we get asked

Is GEO just SEO with a new name?

No, on one specific and measurable ground: SEO sells a position that holds still between checks, and in our repeats the AI-named set did not. Most of the tactical advice does carry over; what does not carry over is the shape of the promise.

Should we stop doing SEO?

Nothing in our data says that, and we do not measure classic Google rankings, so we would not advise on it either way. What we can say is that the questions in this category are answered from a web search, so pages remain the raw material on both surfaces.

If the set turns over, is there any point?

Yes, but the goal changes shape. You are not buying a slot you then hold. You are raising how often you appear across many readings, which is a rate - and a rate can only be seen by reading repeatedly.

How do you measure this for a specific business?

We run the questions that business's customers would actually ask, capture the raw answers, and repeat the readings over time. You get the answers themselves, not a score we invented.

Start with one free reading

One business, real questions, the raw answers back - before you decide on anything paid. If you are running this for a book of clients, say so and we will talk terms rather than quote a page price.

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Related

Pricing is per category, because the work differs by how competitive the answers are. See every category we measure and what a reading costs →

Published 31 August 2026. Every figure on this page is recomputed from raw observation files by a single script, so any of them can be traced back to the readings behind it. We make your site citable. We do not promise placement in any assistant’s answer - we measure whether you are in it, and show you the raw answers either way.