Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is Just SEO, Let’s Stop Pretending It’s New
ChatGPT may be all the talk lately, but here’s a reality check: ChatGPT's search interactions are a drop in the ocean compared to Google, which serves around 400x more searches.
Not only is ChatGPT's search market share tiny in comparison to Google, but searches on Google are actually increasing, not declining. This tells us two things;
- AI is not taking market share from Google
- AI should be seen as a new channel that sits within SEO
Recent data from Search Engine Land indicates that Google handles over 5 trillion searches annually (~14 billion per day), while ChatGPT receives roughly 37.5 million search-like prompts daily, representing just about 0.25% of Google’s volume.
Put another way, for every search-type query ChatGPT gets, Google gets about 400. Even Microsoft’s Bing clocks in at nearly 16x more usage than ChatGPT.
Even if every single ChatGPT prompt were a search query (which they’re not), it’d still be well under 1% of Google’s size.
These numbers should put things in perspective. Yet, on social media, in blogs, and boardrooms, a buzzword has emerged from the AI frenzy: “GEO” (Generative Engine Optimisation).
It sounds like the next big thing: a new SEO for the AI era - but is it really a paradigm shift, or just an unnecessary rebranding of what good SEO's have been doing all along?
Let’s explore why the hype around “GEO” is overblown. Not only is SEO not going anywhere, but GEO IS SEO.
Why generative AI isn’t replacing search engines
First, the cold, hard stats: ChatGPT’s share of search-like activity is minuscule next to Google’s.
Google commands about 90% of the market, while ChatGPT accounts for around a quarter to a half of a per cent. Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo collectively account for a small percentage.
In other words, AI usage is still far behind traditional search in terms of usage. People haven’t collectively changed a habit of a lifetime. As marketers know, user behaviour is a stubborn thing!
They serve different purposes
Then there’s the question of intent and experience. ChatGPT (and the Claude, Gemini, etc.) serve a different kind of need compared to a search engine. That's not to say there isn't some overlap.
ChatGPT excels in areas such as providing long-form answers, offering brainstorming assistance, providing coding help, and offering conversational guidance. It’s more of a personal assistant or tutor than a quick lookup tool.
Only about 30% of ChatGPT prompts resemble traditional search queries. Primarily, it's used for content creation or providing advice, rather than browsing websites.
If you want to book a flight or do some shopping, you'll likely turn to search engines. Search engines excel at navigation and transactional queries, but ChatGPT can't compete yet.
Google isn't taking it lying down
Even for informational queries, Google hasn’t been standing still. Features like Google’s own AI-powered AI-Overviews aim to give direct answers, keeping users on Google. Paradoxically, Google’s addition of AI summaries might make Google even stickier.
Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, suggested that they’re seeing increased search usage, and not a decline. Rather than losing users to ChatGPT, Google is integrating similar tech and retaining its audience.
This all shows that ChatGPT isn’t replacing Google. Instead, it has created a new way of finding information. We’re likely heading toward coexistence, not outright competition, where AI tools supplement traditional search rather than replacing it.
The idea that “GEO” will replace SEO is based on the false premise that ChatGPT-style search will replace traditional search. However, the current reality today is apparent: SEO dominates, and GEO (to the extent it exists as a practice) is a tiny add-on, not a sea change.
Now onto the fun part...
GEO is just SEO rebranded
If you strip away the buzzwords, optimising for generative AI is a lot like what good SEO has always done.
How does a tool like ChatGPT decide what information to present? It’s trained on content from the web. The same content that traditional SEO aims to optimise. Currently, it even pulls data from Bing’s search index when it needs more up-to-date information than it was trained on.
In short, if you want to be visible in AI-generated answers, you need a strong presence in search results.
Even proponents of GEO admit it builds on classic SEO: “Generative engine optimisation strategies build on the foundation of traditional SEO, refining familiar techniques…” (as one agency put it).
However, I have yet to see anyone successfully prove any differences between 'GEO' and SEO. The overlap between what they claim is GEO and what SEO actually is, is huge. For instance, I've seen the following claims recently:
- GEO leans on Schema and structured markup
- GEO requires concise and to-the-point content
- GEO needs you to tackle the query quickly with no content bloat
- GEO demands semantic relevance and similarity
- LLM's need to be able to render content in HTML
Every single one of these is a responsibility of SEO. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either uninformed about what SEO is or is intentionally trying to deceive you.
Semantic relevance is my favourite. Not only does Google understand semantic relationships, but it also developed the very architecture that today’s LLMs are built on, approximately 12 years ago.
In other words, GEO is just SEO. Charlatans/grifters/opportunists have just given it a new name, and suddenly everyone thinks it’s a different game, but it's not.
SEO fundamentals already align with the AI era
Here’s the good news: if you’ve been undertaking good SEO, you’re already doing most of what GEO advocates.
Traditional SEO’s core pillars - understanding user intent, creating valuable content, and building authority - naturally translate into visibility in AI-driven conversations. After all, AI still needs source material.
It’s worth remembering that SEO has never been a static field. It has continually evolved since 2000, when I started working with websites. We’ve adapted to the Penguin algorithm, voice search, mobile-first indexing, featured snippets, RankBrain, BERT... the list goes on.
Every time the rules changed, the SEO community adjusted accordingly. Generative AI is just another evolution. Yes, we might tweak how we structure content or seek brand mentions, but none of that throws out the core principles of SEO.
TL;DR: Don’t let the GEO hype trick you. ChatGPT’s influence is tiny compared to Google’s, and the same tried-and-true SEO practices are your best bet to win, whether the answer is coming from a search engine or an AI.