Is GEO replacing SEO?

RushilFounder, Ru Visibility2 October 2026

Short answer

No. Google says “the best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search”, and GEO builds on the same foundation. What has changed is that being found now also means being mentioned in AI answers, and most websites are much further behind on that part.

The foundation is shared

Both depend on pages that can be crawled, indexed and understood. Google adds that there is nothing special to bolt on for its AI features: “You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features” ( Google Search Central). A site that is hard for Google to read is usually hard for AI tools too.

What GEO adds on top

Letting the crawlers that ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity use reach your site. They don't affect Google rankings, so SEO work rarely checks them.
Writing in short, quotable answers rather than only in pages built to rank for a phrase.
Making your business recognizable as one entity across your site, listings and profiles.
Earning mentions that an AI tool can use as evidence.

So where should a small business start?

With whatever stops both. A page told to stay out of Google can't appear in Google's AI Overviews either, so indexing problems come first. Then the AI-specific gaps, which for most sites are the bigger ones.

In our audits, 9.2% of sites had at least one page told to hide from search engines — sometimes on purpose, often not. It is usually a quick fix, and it matters for both.

For the full comparison, see SEO vs GEO: How Search Is Changing for Businesses.

Sources

Google Search Central: AI features and your website

Find out what AI says about you.

Send us your web address. We run our own tool on it, free, and send you what it says. The whole thing — not a taster with the useful bits taken out.

Whether AI can even read your site

ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google and Bing all send a small program to read your pages. We knock on your door as each one and see who gets let in. If they are being turned away, nothing else matters until that is fixed.

Two scores out of 100 — one for Google, one for AI

Plus what is behind each number. Where we could only make a fair guess, we say so instead of dressing it up as a measurement.

A list of fixes, best one first

Ordered by what gives you the most for the least work, so the top of the list is the quickest win. It is yours either way — use it with us or without us.

We ran it on our own site too. It told us what we were getting wrong, and we published that. A tool you will not point at yourself is not worth much.

One thing the free check does not do: actually ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini for businesses like yours, dozens of times, and count how often your name comes up. That costs us real money each time we run it, so it comes with paid work.