GEO vs SEO strategy

Is ranking in large language models like ChatGPT the same as ranking in traditional search engines? In other words, is GEO just SEO in a fancy costume?

I have multiple videos talking about why I think GEO is in fact different than SEO. However, I've now upset a lot of SEOs who say it's the same thing, but I wanna Steelman their argument and then I wanna provide a helpful metaphor that might clear up the misunderstanding.

As many SEOs will point out, when you do a search in a large language model like ChatGPT, it will then perform its own search in a traditional search engine. So the results it returns are the same results you would get if you went to that traditional search engine.

Therefore, it seems entirely reasonable to say there's no difference. Just do SEO, you'll rank in the traditional search engines, the AI will return those exact same results, and therefore you will rank in the AI search results.

However, the difference in GEO or AI SEO is not a difference in how the search engine works, it's a difference in search behaviour...

ve a section for gluten free cereals, but probably not enough room for your gluten free, high fibre cereal. Now, I don't know enough about cereal to know if this analogy actually tracks, but let's just say your product is too specific to make it onto grocery store shelves, and therefore this is a bad strategy.

Now, let's say something changes overnight, and all of a sudden all the grocery stores have not one, but 10 cereal aisles. 10 aisles devoted specifically to cereal and one entire aisle just to gluten free cereal.

This changes the strategy. It doesn't change how you make cereal or how you sell your product, but it does change which products make sense to develop in the first place.

That's the shift we're seeing in large language models. When a human does a search in Google, they search for one broad competitive term and they look through one, maybe three websites.

In other words, the available shelf space that you're competing over is very small...

ddenly, it's worth making hyper specific content. Even if you can't rank on page one of Google, it makes sense to get your company mentioned on third party websites that might not rank on page one of Google and might not link back to you.

AI is exploring dark corners of the internet that no one cared about with traditional search engines before. So I still think there's more that we don't know than we do know, but things are definitely changing.

Yes, SEO still works. SEO is still important.

You do have to show up in the search engines, but things are changing quickly, and your strategy should change along with it.

So this is mostly true, but there are a couple ways where ranking in large language models is very different from ranking in traditional search results. So I want to talk about those distinctions.

First of all, web linker here. I have a lot of respect for him.

He runs the SEO subreddit, really knows what he's talking about, and I think on like 90% of issues we agree. On this one it seems like there's some disagreement, or maybe there's just miscommunication.

So let me kind of lay out what I see as the differences between ranking in traditional search versus these large language models, and then you can tell me if we're on the same page. So, as I've said many times on this channel, yes.

Anything you can do to show up higher in traditional search results will also help you show up in large language models. There is some parity there, but it's not perfect parity.

So if you rank on page one of Google, you will usually be on perplexity search results? Not always, but usually.

It's actually less true on like, Google's AI mode...

ls will look up to 300 pages. And they're gonna synthesize the information across all of those pages.

So, yes, you do need to be found on those 100 pages. But one, it doesn't need to be your website.

They're just looking for information about your brand. So as long as you're mentioned on those pages, that's enough.

That's a big shift from traditional search engines, where we really cared about your website ranking and getting links. Now we just care about all the websites that are showing up mentioning your brand.

But two, it's not as important that you're in the top three results. It definitely helps, but it's more important that you're showing up frequently, that you're in as many results as possible.

So there's a lot of pages that could never rank on page one of Google. So I'm gonna go this way, cause these cicadas are very loud.

A lot of websites that you didn't care about because they never show up on page one of Google. And the running joke, if you want to hide a dead body, hide it on page one of page I.

Sorry, page 2 of Google. Cause no one ever goes there, it's true...

ng on the broad, short competitive terms, but think about all the long tail terms that are very specific to a given searcher or that might show up in a query fan act. And now a lot more traffic is going to be going to pages like that.

Right? So that changes your content strategy a little bit.

But also it should change your outreach strategy. You should be monitoring all the websites that these large LinkedIn models crawl, cause you want to be mentioned as much as possible.

If you're mentioned more than your competitor, you will be in the results most of the time, even if you're not in the top three. And that's a complete shift from how traditional search rankings work.

One of the biggest shifts is that social media now matters more than it ever did before in traditional Google search. It's very rare that you get traffic from social media.

In large language models, they will crawl social media sites all the time and so being present there makes a big difference. So web linker, let me know.

Do we really disagree on this? Are we talking past each other?...