In recent months, a new acronym has entered the digital marketing conversation: GEO, for Generative Engine Optimization.
It quickly sparked a question that divides the industry, is GEO just SEO with a new name, or are we witnessing a real shift in how visibility works online?

This isn’t a superficial debate. It’s about who shapes the future narrative of search in an era where AI-powered engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity are changing how information is found and consumed.

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Continuity or rupture?

Two camps are forming.

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On one side, the defenders of continuity, many of whom align with Google, argue that GEO is simply the natural evolution of SEO. In their view, it’s the same discipline applied to a new kind of search engine.

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On the other side, the advocates of change, mostly American players and new AI-native companies, see GEO as a true break from traditional SEO. For them, it’s a new territory that deserves its own rules, frameworks, and services.

Both perspectives have a point. But the reality sits somewhere in between.
There’s no clean break between SEO and GEO, yet assuming they’re identical would be a mistake.

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Why GEO deserves its own name

In business, what isn’t clearly defined often gets ignored. That’s why naming GEO matters: it forces organizations to analyze, measure, and adapt to a new kind of search experience.

Just as we once learned to treat Google Discover or local SEO as distinct areas, we now need to study how AI engines rank and display content differently.

Although these engines often rely on Google’s and Bing’s indexes, the ranking logic diverges significantly. Less than 10% of top Google results appear in ChatGPT or Gemini responses.
Perplexity is currently the closest experience to a SERP, but even that reshapes visibility patterns and opens space for new players.

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1. Competition intensity is being redefined

Traditional SEO focuses on a limited set of high-intent keywords, the famous 20% of queries that generate 80% of traffic. GEO, on the other hand, operates in an infinite landscape of prompts, where user intent is fragmented and ultra-specific.

Instead of optimizing for a handful of major queries, brands will need to find their niche within millions of micro-prompts, each carrying smaller volume but unique context.

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2. The website is no longer the center of gravity

For two decades, SEO revolved around the website: optimizing structure, performance, and authority. In the GEO era, visibility comes from distributed mentions across social platforms, review sites, forums, and media publications.

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AI engines increasingly surface content from earned media sources, giving an advantage to brands that have strong reputation signals rather than just technical optimization.
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That means marketing teams will need to bridge the gap between SEO, PR, and community management : disciplines that often operate in silos.

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3. Standardized content is losing value

In classic SEO, evergreen articles and generic guides have always been the backbone of visibility. In GEO, such content loses impact.
Searches become contextual and hyper-personalized, “best auto insurance for a young driver in Paris” replaces “auto insurance.”

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To stay visible, brands must move from producing generic pages to highly contextual content chunks, user stories, comparisons, and specific answers that can feed AI-generated responses.

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At the same time, the volatility of GEO rankings appears much higher than that of traditional SEO results, adding a new layer of unpredictability.

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4. The era of “clicks” is fading

For decades, on-site visits have been the main metric of marketing success. That era is ending. Nearly 70% of Google searches now end without a click, and click-through rates from AI engines like ChatGPT remain under 1%.
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As AI overviews and direct answers multiply, the very idea of driving traffic to your website becomes less relevant.

Marketers will need to measure visibility and influence through new KPIs : mentions, context, and brand presence, rather than traffic or conversions alone.
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If in-chat purchases expand through integrations with platforms like Stripe or Shopify, visibility itself may become the new performance indicator.

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5. Branding is the ultimate differentiator

In this new ecosystem, brand authority replaces backlinks as the main driver of visibility.
Having a recognizable, trusted brand determines whether an AI engine cites you and how often.

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This marks a return to fundamentals: public relations, trust, and credibility.
For publishers, this shift could even restore value as brands will increasingly seek partnerships and mentions from authoritative media sources whose content AI systems rely on.

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GEO is not SEO. It’s marketing reborn.

In the end, GEO isn’t a technical revolution... it’s a strategic one.
Where SEO was about optimizing your website for algorithms, GEO is about optimizing your entire brand ecosystem for visibility in generative experiences.

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The brands that will lead tomorrow aren’t just those ranking first on Google, they’re the ones recognized, cited, and trusted across all platforms where AI looks for answers.