In short
- The outcome
- A click versus a mention. In SEO you win a visitor, in GEO you win a sentence in the answer — and sometimes no visitor at all.
- The unit
- The page versus the passage. A page can rank well while containing not one paragraph that can be quoted on its own.
- The field
- Your own site versus everything that exists about you. That second one you cannot publish, only earn or request.
Where do the two crafts genuinely diverge?
Five points, and the last one is there because a comparison without its limits is a sales pitch. So the right-hand column also says what we do not measure.
| What it is about | SEO | GEO |
|---|---|---|
| What you win | a place in a list | a mention in the answer itself |
| How many places count | about ten, and page two exists | one to three, and there is no second screen |
| Where the evidence comes from | links to your website | what is written about you, with or without a link |
| How you measure it | one position per search term | mentioned, cited or chosen per question and per engine |
| What we do not measure of it | we do not track positions today — other tools exist for that | what happens in a private conversation with an assistant stays unmeasurable for everyone |
Which work is exactly the same for both?
More than most accounts suggest. A site that loads slowly, that only shows its content after scripts have run, or that has no decent heading structure, loses at both — and for the same reason: there is nothing to extract. Anyone who has done technical maintenance in recent years is not starting from zero here.
Also shared: the value of clear, factual text containing the things someone actually wants to know. The difference is not in the quality of the writing but in the shape — a page that tells a good story can have zero individual passages that hold up alone.
Do I have to finish SEO before starting this?
No, and waiting is expensive here. The technical part you do for SEO counts immediately for the other; there is no phase you must complete first. What does belong in that order: measure first, fix after. Otherwise in three months you will not know which of the two did anything.
How do I divide my time between the two?
Look at where your customers come from, not at what the trade press says. If traffic still arrives from classic results, that work keeps paying; if that traffic has been falling for years while your revenue holds, part of your demand is travelling elsewhere.
Frequently asked questions
Does GEO replace my SEO work?
No. Classic results still send traffic, and the indexes assistants lean on are partly the same indexes. A site that drops out of the classic index often drops out of the answers too — this is an extension rather than a replacement.
Do you measure my position in Google?
Not today, and it is better said plainly than half. We do read your search terms from Search Console when you connect it, and we use them to work out which questions are really asked. The position per term we do not track; when that arrives, it will say so here.
Read on
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