SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The work of getting your pages to rank well in traditional search results. GEO and SEO share many fundamentals but aim at different finish lines.
Updated August 21, 2026
SEO optimizes for a ranked list of links, where clicks and backlinks carry a lot of weight. GEO reuses the same technical groundwork — reachable pages, clean structure, clear entities — but adds a heavier emphasis on extractable, well-sourced statements. A site can rank well and still be a weak source for an answer engine, and closing that gap is the point of GEO.
Related terms
- GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). The work of making your website easy for AI answer engines to find, trust and quote. The goal is not to rank a link, but to have your facts used inside an AI-generated answer.
- Retrieval. The step where a system finds and fetches your page. If a page is blocked, unreachable, or clearly not about the topic asked, it is never retrieved, and nothing else matters.
- Structured data (schema). Hidden labels in your page's code that state facts in a machine-readable format, for example that a block of text is your business's name, address and phone number. It removes guesswork for machines.