What is GEO, and how does it differ from SEO?

Generative engine optimization: the definition, the practical differences from SEO, and what can be measured at all.

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization, also called AEO, Answer Engine Optimization. It means working so that an AI assistant names your business inside its answer, rather than listing your site among a page of links.

What actually changed

In traditional search someone types keywords, a results page comes back with ten links, and they choose. With an assistant they type a whole question and one answer comes back with a few names in it. No results page, no top ten, no click for anyone to measure.

This is why GEO cannot be measured with rank trackers: there is no "position three" in a paragraph of prose. The only measurable thing is whether your name was said, and in how many of the answers recorded.

How it differs from SEO

Much of what you learned in SEO still applies — a readable site, content that answers a question, credible presence elsewhere. But three practical differences:

Different crawlers. Alongside Google's crawler there are GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and others, and your site may well allow one and block another without anyone noticing.

The answer is not stable. A Google ranking is essentially the same if you check it twice in a row. An assistant gives a different answer on every ask, which is why a single check proves nothing.

Sources are sometimes declared. Some engines cite the links they built the answer from. There is no equivalent in traditional SEO, and it tells you exactly where the engine reads about your category.

What a GEO audit checks here

The Tabyian report measures your name across 72 buying questions, three engines and three rounds; extracts the competitors that were named; collects the cited sources; crawls your site as the AI crawlers see it; and produces a score out of 10 on a published formula with a plan in priority order. The full method is on this page.

Who this is for

Businesses selling to buyers across Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt and the wider Gulf, whose customers write their questions in Arabic or in a mix of Arabic and English. The questions are written in that market's own dialect, not translated from English.

Where to start

Start with the free check to see whether your name comes up at all, then read why ChatGPT names one company over another.