SEO and GEO: the difference between being found and being recommended

For years, being visible online meant one thing: showing up on the first page of Google. Today, your customers also ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity. And AI doesn’t show them ten links: it gives them one answer, with two or three names. SEO makes you findable. GEO makes you recommended. You need both.

Search has changed

Yesterday, on Google, customers saw ten links. They compared, clicked, hesitated, went back. Today, they ask an AI and get a ready-made answer that names a few businesses. The rest don’t show up.

SEO: being found

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the work that gets your website to appear on Google when a customer searches for what you do: clear pages, the right words, a fast site, an up-to-date Google Business Profile, links from other websites to yours. Customers see your name, click, compare and choose.

GEO: being recommended

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) goes further: it makes your business clear and credible to AI, so that it cites you in its answers. The term comes from a research paper published in November 2023, “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”.

In practice, an AI cites a business when it finds the same information about it everywhere: its website, its Google listing, the directories of its industry, its reviews, and content that answers customers’ questions.

You need both

AI relies on websites that are already well ranked and well documented. SEO is the foundation. GEO makes you the answer.

Our test on October 21, 2026 shows it: when we asked ChatGPT for the best real estate agencies in Geneva, it named six, drawing on an industry directory, Google reviews and the agencies’ official websites. The full results are in our article Geneva, Monaco, Luxembourg, Brussels: ChatGPT names only five or six real estate agencies per city.

What we do

Pandorra Studio works on your SEO and your GEO together, with one team and a single point of contact. We always start with a free 15-minute AI visibility test: we ask AI the questions your customers ask and show you who it recommends instead of you.

Book my free AI visibility test →

Pandorra Studio is an AI marketing agency.