Is GEO replacing SEO? What the search results actually show

“Is GEO replacing SEO?” is not a question we made up. It is one of the questions Google itself suggests, in its People Also Ask box, when you search for “generative engine optimization”. So instead of adding another opinion, we looked at what the search results actually show. Everything below was checked on Australian and UK results in September 2026.

What GEO means

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of getting a business cited in AI-generated answers: Google’s AI Overviews, and assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. SEO is the older work of getting pages found and ranked in ordinary search results. The worry behind the question is simple: if people read an AI answer and never click, does ranking still matter?

Finding one: Google treats “AI SEO” as SEO

We compared the page-one results for “ai seo agency” and “seo consultant” in Australia. The same kind of business ranked for both: SEO agencies and independent consultants, with at least one agency on page one for both searches. Google does not treat AI search as a separate market with separate specialists. It treats it as part of SEO.

The search volumes point the same way. According to Google’s own Keyword Planner, “seo consultant” is searched around 1,600 times a month in Australia and 2,900 in the UK. “ai seo agency” is searched around 390 and 590 times. There is real demand for help with AI search, but it is a fraction of the demand for SEO itself.

Finding two: most people are still asking what GEO is

“Generative engine optimization” gets around 260 searches a month in Australia and 880 in the UK. Its results are almost all explanations: Wikipedia, Google’s own developer documentation, an academic paper, online courses and software blogs. That is what informational intent looks like. People are trying to understand the term, not yet hire someone for it.

Finding three: AI answers cite pages that already rank

For “how to create a marketing strategy”, Google’s AI Overview cited eleven sources: government business-advice sites, a university, an online course provider, a professional association, a software company, YouTube and a Reddit thread. We pulled the same query through two separate data providers and got substantially the same list of cited sources both times.

None of those sources were obscure. They are the kind of pages that already rank and already carry trust. An AI Overview is assembled from the open web, and the open web it draws on is, largely, the one search engines already rank.

Finding four: the question box has changed

Almost every People Also Ask entry we checked now opens into an AI-generated answer rather than a snippet quoted from one page. That is the real change for businesses. The questions your buyers ask are still visible, but the answer they read first is written by Google, drawing on several pages at once.

What changes, and what does not

What changes:

• There is a new place to check. For the searches that matter to you, look at which sources the AI answer cites, not only which pages rank.
• Clear answers matter more. Pages that answer a specific question plainly, with the answer near the top, are easier for an AI system to quote.
• Being cited is not the same as being clicked. Visibility inside an AI answer builds recognition, but it will not always send a visitor.

What does not change:

• Pages still need to be crawlable, fast and indexed.
• They still need to match what the search is actually asking.
• They still need the signals that earn trust: real expertise, real examples, and other sites referring to them.

So, is GEO replacing SEO?

No. In the results we checked, GEO sits on top of SEO rather than beside it: the sources the AI answers cited were the kind of pages that already rank, and the work that earns one tends to earn the other. The sensible response is not a separate GEO budget. It is SEO done properly, with one more results page added to the list of things you watch.

If you want to know where your own business stands, in the results and in the AI answers above them, that is part of every SEO engagement we run.