GEO vs SEO: do Google and ChatGPT trust the same pages?

Two jobs, one buyer

SEO (search engine optimization) is the work of getting a page to rank in a search engine’s list of results. Success is a position: third for “best CRM for agencies”.

GEO (generative engine optimization) is the work of getting a brand named, and its pages cited, in the answers that ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews write. Success is a share: named in three of every ten answers to your buyers’ questions. The term comes from a 2023 paper by researchers at Princeton and IIT Delhi, who rewrote pages and raised their visibility in a generative engine’s answers by up to 40% ^[1]. Their engine was a test build on GPT-3.5 that read Google’s top five results, not ChatGPT itself.

Both chase the same person: a buyer comparing options. The open question for anyone who already does SEO is how much of that work carries over.

Where each answer gets its pages

Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on Google Search. Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in them: a page has to be indexed and able to show a snippet ^[2]. Both may run several related searches for one question, which Google calls query fan-out, so they can cite pages that don’t rank for the exact words you typed.

ChatGPT runs its own searches when it decides a question needs them, and a site that blocks OpenAI’s search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, is left out of its search answers ^[3]. Ahrefs describes Bing as its built-in search provider ^[4]. Different index, different ranking, and a model choosing what to cite: there is no reason to expect Google’s top 10.

The same search on Google and ChatGPT

So we checked. On November 6, 2026, we typed 49 buying searches (“best payroll software for a US small business”, “Shopify vs WooCommerce for a new store”) into Google and into ChatGPT, from the United States, and compared Google’s organic results with the pages ChatGPT cited. The method and every page are in the full study.

That search is typical. Across all 49, 3% of the 320 pages ChatGPT cited ranked in Google’s top 10 for the same search; counting whole sites instead of pages, 14%. Google’s own AI Overviews stayed closer to their results: 38% of the pages they cited were in the top 10.

Larger studies agree on ChatGPT: Ahrefs found about 8% across 15,000 longer prompts ^[4]. On AI Overviews they found more overlap than we did, 76%, counting the first three citations of a million overviews in 2025 ^[5]; counted that way, ours was 47%.

What your SEO already does for GEO

• A good share of Google’s AI answers. About two in five pages cited by AI Overviews ranked in the top 10 for the search. Ranking is the most direct way into them that an SEO team already controls.
• Being reachable. Pages Googlebot can’t index don’t appear in AI Overviews, and sites that block OAI-SearchBot don’t appear in ChatGPT’s search answers ^[3]. Check robots.txt for both: our AI crawler checker reads it for you.
• Product and pricing pages. When ChatGPT names a product, it links to the maker’s site: 51% of its citations were brands’ product, pricing or home pages. That is where a buyer lands from the answer, so say plainly what the product does, who it’s for and what it costs.

What GEO adds

Almost none of ChatGPT’s sources sit in Google’s top 10, so ranking won’t get you into its answers. What it cites instead is concrete enough to plan around:

• Get onto the lists it reads. Review sites, blogs and “best X” lists made up about a third of ChatGPT’s citations, and few of them rank on Google’s first page. Ask ChatGPT your buyers’ questions, read its sources, and work on being in the ones that name your competitors.
• Be named, not just linked. The buyer reads the brands in the answer, not the footnotes. Being cited and being named are two separate numbers.
• Don’t count on forums and video for ChatGPT. Forum threads and videos were about a fifth of Google’s top 10 and about a third of the AI Overviews’ citations, but none of ChatGPT’s in our study. They help on Google’s AI more than on ChatGPT.
• Expect the answer to move. Ask ChatGPT the same question twice and the brands lower down the list often change (our study on that). One screenshot proves little.

GEO and SEO side by side

How to measure both

SEO has its rank tracker. For GEO, ask the questions your buyers ask, on each engine, more than once, and record two things for every answer: which brands it names and which pages it cites. Report the share of answers that name the brand with its range, and keep the cited pages: they are the list of sites to work on. The AI visibility audit guide walks through it step by step.

Menzio does this on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews: it asks your buyer questions on a schedule, counts how often each brand is named, with its range, and lists every page the answers cite, grouped by kind of site.