GEO vs SEO: what changes when your customers ask instead of search
SEO aims for a place in a list of links. GEO (generative engine optimization), or AI SEO, aims for a place in an answer an assistant writes. The two overlap more than is often said, and differ on one point: who reads your page.
What still holds
An assistant answering a current or local question first runs a web search. A page that search engines cannot find, it will not read. The basics of SEO therefore hold: indexable pages, titles that say what they hold, a fast site, links that lead to you.
What changes: your reader is a machine in a hurry
In a list of links, the customer clicks and reads. In an answer, the assistant reads in their place, in a few seconds, and keeps what it understands. What counts then:
- text readable without running JavaScript, with no menus or banners to sort through;
- plain facts: prices, availability, opening hours, address, written as they are;
- a table of contents that says where to read what (llms.txt), and a clean version of each page;
- answers that are up to date when the question is asked, which a tool queried live gives better than a page read last week;
- an open door for the robots that read to answer.
What is not measured the way it was
SEO has positions, clicks and impressions. An assistant’s answer has no rank and no page two: it changes from one time to the next, from one assistant to another, from one wording to another. A “GEO score” measures a few questions on a given day, and does not say what to fix.
Our stance: fix rather than grade
We do not give you a mark. We read your public pages and fix what a machine can fix safely: the llms.txt table of contents, a markdown version of each page, search and availability tools an assistant calls live. What a machine cannot fix on its own, a robots.txt that shuts assistants out for example, we point out to you, with how to put it right. And we show you what assistants come to read and search for on your site.
What stays off your site
Your reviews, your Google Business Profile and the directories of your trade count as much for an assistant as for a search engine, often more: they are the sources it cites when it finds nothing on your site.