SEO vs GEO: what is generative engine optimization and why you need both

More and more often, a customer no longer finds you through ten blue links but through a single AI answer. GEO (generative engine optimization) is the discipline that responds to this: making sure ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews cite your brand when they answer that question. Does that mean the end of SEO? No, and whoever claims so is selling panic. In this article I bring you up to speed on what GEO exactly is, where it differs from SEO, what is concretely shifting in Belgium and how an SME should divide its time between the two. With figures that hold up in 2026, not the myths doing the rounds.

Want GEO handled rather than figured out on your own? ClickForest sets up GEO marketing for Belgian SMEs that want to be cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.

What is GEO (generative engine optimization)?

GEO or generative engine optimization is the practice of optimising content so that AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews cite or mention your brand in their answers. Where SEO aims for a high position in the classic search results, GEO aims for a place inside the answer itself. In short: SEO wants you to be found, GEO wants you to be named. In practice you will also hear the synonyms GEO marketing and AI search optimisation; it is the same discipline every time.

The term is not a marketing invention. GEO comes from the academic paper “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization” by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues (November 2023, later presented at the KDD 2024 research conference). The researchers tested nine optimisation techniques on a benchmark of 10,000 search queries and demonstrated that targeted adjustments can boost visibility in generative engine responses by up to 40%. Mind the unit: that is visibility in AI answers on their test benchmark, not 40% more visitors.

You will also find a concise definition of GEO and related terms in the ClickForest glossary. ClickForest delivers GEO as a core service for Belgian SMEs and scale-ups in Mechelen, Antwerp and across Flanders, always in combination with SEO.

What is the difference between SEO and GEO?

SEO (search engine optimization) optimises for a position in Google’s classic search results. GEO optimises to be cited in AI-generated answers. SEO measures success in positions and clicks, GEO in citations and mentions. The foundations overlap: a technically sound, authoritative site feeds both. GEO adds citable facts, sources and structure on top.

So it is not an either-or choice. The SEO approach remains the foundation on which a site ranks; the GEO layer determines whether AI systems also understand, trust and cite that site. Also, do not confuse GEO with AEO (answer engine optimization): that concept emphasises question-and-answer structure and largely overlaps with GEO.

Why is the search landscape tipping in 2026?

Three shifts are converging. Google answers ever more questions directly on the results page with AI Overviews and AI Mode. ChatGPT counts 900 million weekly users according to OpenAI (February 2026). And 68% of US Google searches ended without a click to the open web in early 2026. Whoever measures visibility in clicks alone sees only part of the playing field. Incidentally, how often such an AI Overview appears fluctuates strongly: Semrush measured a share over 2025 that climbed from 6.49% in January to a peak of 24.61% in July and slid back to 15.69% of the studied searches by the end of that year (US data), while the queries that trigger one became ever more commercial.

The figures behind that shift are well documented by now. Pew Research measured in March 2025 among 900 US users that a classic result was clicked in 8% of visits with an AI summary, versus 15% without one. Ahrefs saw the click-through rate of position 1 drop by roughly 58% when an AI Overview is present (December 2025 data, published February 2026); in April 2025 that was still 34.5%. Both studies measure a correlation, not proven causation, but the direction is the same every time.

Zero-click search is not an AI invention either. Already in 2024, largely before the broad rollout of AI Overviews, 58.5% of US and 59.7% of European Google searches ended without a click (SparkToro/Datos). The measurement from early 2026 (SparkToro/Similarweb, US) comes out at 68%. AI accelerates a trend that has been running for a decade, as we described earlier in our article on the importance of zero-click searches.

“Thanks to AI features, instant answers, UI elements that keep searchers in the results, and shifting user preferences, Google is becoming a walled garden.”

— Rand Fishkin, cofounder and CEO of SparkToro

For completeness: Google itself, through Liz Reid, VP and Head of Google Search, states that total organic click volume has remained “relatively stable year-over-year” and that the clicks that do come through are of higher quality (Google, August 2025). Independent data from Pew, Ahrefs and SparkToro contradict that volume picture. And one nuance deserves its place: Google still processed roughly 373 times more searches than ChatGPT in 2024 (SparkToro/Datos). Classic search remains by far the biggest channel. That is exactly why the conclusion is not “stop doing SEO” but “add GEO to it”.

How does GEO work in practice?

AI search engines build their answers on sources they can retrieve, understand and trust. Google describes a “query fan-out” technique in its official documentation: the system fires off multiple related searches and composes one answer from those results. GEO responds by making content citable: clear definitions, figures with source citations, expert quotes and a consistent brand entity.

The GEO paper tested what demonstrably works here. The three strongest techniques were adding source citations, quotations and statistics, together good for a relative improvement of 30 to 40% on the study’s visibility metric. Classic keyword stuffing did next to nothing. Striking for smaller players: for sources ranked only fifth, the citation technique delivered a 115.1% increase in visibility, while the top source actually lost ground. AI answers thus reshuffle the deck in favour of whoever writes citably, not whoever happens to rank first already.

Equally important is what you do not need. Google states in the same documentation that no special files, markup or schema are required to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. The much-discussed llms.txt file is a proposal from September 2024, not a standard: SE Ranking found it on barely 10.13% of nearly 300,000 studied domains and saw no correlation whatsoever with AI citations, and no major AI company confirms using it. Google Search Advocate John Mueller was dry about it on Reddit:

“AFAIK none of the AI services have said they’re using LLMs.TXT (and you can tell when you look at your server logs that they don’t even check for it). To me, it’s comparable to the keywords meta tag – this is what a site-owner claims their site is about … (Is the site really like that? well, you can check it. At that point, why not just check the site directly?)”

— John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google

Correct structured data does remain useful as hygiene: it helps search engines and AI systems recognise your entities and authors correctly, even though no proven citation percentage hangs on it. How to roll all of this out step by step, from entities to FAQ structure, is covered in our separate guide on GEO strategy.

What is changing concretely in Belgium and Flanders?

The shift is no longer an American story. AI Overviews have been active in Belgium since 25 March 2025, initially in English only, and AI Mode followed in October 2025. According to imec.digimeter 2025, 43% of Flemish people use generative AI at least monthly, up from 28% in 2024 and 18% in 2023.

Dutch was added as a language through the worldwide expansion of May 2025; whether and when Dutch-language AI Overviews specifically appeared at scale in Belgium has never been separately confirmed by Google. The Belgian rollout of AI Mode started on 8 October 2025 according to trade medium ITdaily. And daily AI use in Flanders more than doubled meanwhile, from 4% in 2024 to 11% in 2025.

In all honesty: a public study on the click impact of AI Overviews on Belgian or Dutch-language search results does not exist today. The US figures above are directional, not a Flemish measurement. What is measurable: in the GA4 reports of clickforest.com, “AI Assistant” has been a traffic channel of its own since mid-2026, still small next to organic search.

Curious where your site stands today? The GEO audit by ClickForest maps how you score on classic findability and on AI citability, and doubles as your baseline measurement.

Is SEO dead now that AI is taking over?

No. AI search engines find their sources largely through the same route as classic search engines: crawlability, structure, speed and authority. Google explicitly states that no separate optimisation is needed to appear in AI features. So SEO remains the foundation. Only, that foundation no longer suffices on its own: whoever is not citable disappears from the answers with which ever more searches end. If that foundation is not in place yet, you do not start with GEO but with the diagnosis in why your website is not ranking high in Google.

Danny Sullivan, then Google Search Liaison, summed it up deliberately soberly at WordCamp US (August 2025):

“Good SEO is good GEO, or AEO, AIO, LLM SEO, or LMNOPO. So, they’re all fine.”

— Danny Sullivan, Google Search Liaison

At the same time Rand Fishkin warns that simply getting better at classic SEO is no answer to a search engine that hands out fewer and fewer clicks: “there’s not much point (nor any hope) of fighting back by simply getting better at SEO”, he wrote in June 2026. The synthesis of both positions is exactly where GEO sits: the same foundations, a new citability layer on top. International SEO consultant Aleyda Solis calls it the evolution of the profession itself:

“We are evolving into findability specialists, ready to navigate the increasingly diverse search landscape.”

— Aleyda Solis, international SEO consultant and founder of Orainti

How SEO and AI reinforce each other in daily practice, from keyword research to content production, is covered in our article on combining SEO and AI.

How should an SME divide its time between SEO and GEO?

Do not treat GEO as a separate project, but as an extra layer on your existing SEO work. The largest part of the work feeds both channels at once: technology, structure, authority and good content. On top of that comes a limited, targeted GEO layer that makes your content citable for AI systems.

What stays the same in both worlds:

• Technical basis: crawlability, speed, a logical site structure and internal links.
• Authority: mentions and links from reliable external sources weigh at least as heavily for AI systems as for Google.
• Local findability: for whoever works regionally, local SEO remains the basis, as AI answers to “best X in region Y” questions also rest on those signals.

What GEO adds on top:

• Citable core blocks: every important page opens with a direct, factual answer an AI can adopt.
• Statistics and sources: figures with source citations, the demonstrably strongest technique from the GEO research.
• Entity consistency: the same company name, service description and region across your site, socials and external mentions.
• Tracking chatbot visibility: regularly test how ChatGPT talks about your brand; our guide on getting recommended by ChatGPT contains the full step-by-step plan.
• Looking ahead to AI agents: the next step is AI that not only answers but also buys; what that demands of your webshop is covered in our article on agentic commerce.

ClickForest builds that combination of SEO and GEO for Belgian SMEs and scale-ups in Mechelen, Antwerp and beyond, with the existing site as the starting point instead of an expensive rebuild.

How do you measure whether GEO works?

Measure three things: citations (are you mentioned in AI answers to your core questions), AI referral traffic (visible in GA4 as a separate channel) and the quality of those visitors. AI traffic is still small today, but it grows fast and converts remarkably well. Whoever measures now will have a head start on whoever waits until the channel is big.

The available data consistently points in the same direction. Similarweb measured a tripling of AI referral traffic across the web between September 2024 and September 2025, and notes that ChatGPT traffic converts at 7.1%, just below paid search (7.8%). Semrush calculated in its own study that the average AI search visitor is 4.4 times more valuable on conversion rate than a classic organic visitor; that is a study by an SEO tool vendor, so take it as an indication rather than law.

Practically, you measure GEO like this: ask the same set of core questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini every month and note whether your brand is mentioned, follow the AI channel in GA4, and monitor your AI visibility continuously with a GEO monitoring tool like Veesie. If you would rather have a specialist run that baseline and follow-up, the GEO audit by ClickForest is the starting point for that.

What should you remember about SEO vs GEO?

The relationship between SEO and GEO is not a changing of the guard, but an expansion of the playing field. Google remains by far the biggest search channel, and at the same time ever more searches end in an AI answer you can only enter with citable content. The businesses that have their foundations in order today and write citably will be found in both worlds tomorrow.

My advice is therefore simple: stop the “SEO or GEO” debate and start the “SEO and GEO” division of labour. ClickForest helps Belgian SMEs and scale-ups in Mechelen and Antwerp with one integrated approach: SEO as the foundation, GEO as the citability layer, and the GEO audit as the baseline. That way your brand stays visible, even now that the answer comes before the click. Looking for a partner to do that with? The overview of GEO agencies in Belgium puts fourteen players side by side, ClickForest included.