The marketing head of a Mumbai life insurer opens two proposals on the same morning. One is from her SEO agency and lists technical fixes, content and links. The other is titled generative engine optimisation and lists technical fixes, content, links and something called AI visibility tracking. The prices are different. Most of the line items are not. She forwards both to her team with one question: is GEO a real discipline, or rebranded SEO that asks us to pay twice for the same work?
- Where did the term generative engine optimisation come from?
- Which parts of GEO are simply SEO?
- What does GEO measure that SEO never did?
- Why does GEO for a bank, insurer or fund sit under SEBI, IRDAI and RBI rules?
- Should a BFSI marketing head buy GEO, SEO or both?
- Five tests to tell GEO from rebranded SEO
- A worked example: reading the two proposals
- Common mistakes when buying GEO
- How to brief an agency on GEO without paying twice
- People also ask
Where did the term generative engine optimisation come from?
The term was set out in a research paper, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, first posted in November 2023 and accepted at the KDD 2024 conference. The authors tested ways of changing a web page so that it shows up more often inside answers written by AI engines, and they found the effect of each tactic varied by subject area.
So the name did not start as an agency slogan. It started as a research question: when an engine writes one answer from several sources, what decides which sources it uses and how visibly? That question is new. Many of the tactics used to answer it are not.
Which parts of GEO are simply SEO?
Google is direct about this. Its guidance on AI features says a page needs to be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet, that no special optimisation, schema or AI text file is required, and that SEO fundamentals still apply. Any GEO proposal that bills crawlability, internal linking, page speed or clean structured data as new work is billing SEO.
| Work item | Already SEO? | What changes under GEO |
|---|---|---|
| Indexing, crawlability, site speed | Yes | Nothing for Google; other engines use their own crawlers and robots.txt rules |
| Question-led content with direct answers | Largely | Each section is written to be quoted whole, not just to rank |
| Links and mentions from other sites | Yes | Which sources an engine trusts for your category matters more than link counts |
| Consistent brand facts across the web | Partly | Wrong or old facts get repeated inside answers, so they become a priority |
| Measurement | No | Rankings and clicks miss it; you re-ask the engines and record who they name |
GEO is not a new way to rank. It is a new place where the brand either gets named correctly or does not.
What does GEO measure that SEO never did?
SEO asks where a page ranks and how many people click. GEO asks a different set of questions, and the tools most teams already use cannot answer them.
- Whether the brand is named. An AI answer may cite your page without naming you, or name a competitor while paraphrasing your content.
- Whether the description is correct. An engine can state an old interest rate, a discontinued plan or a wrong claim settlement process as fact.
- Which engine is looking. OpenAI, for example, documents that its search crawler controls whether a site appears in ChatGPT search, separately from the crawler used for model training. A robots.txt written years ago may block one and not the other.
- Where the traffic went. Google reports AI feature traffic inside the ordinary web search numbers in Search Console, not as a category of its own. The more direct check is to put the buyer’s questions to each engine and log the answers.
Why does GEO for a bank, insurer or fund sit under SEBI, IRDAI and RBI rules?
An engine does not quote a page. It quotes a passage, and it drops whatever sat around that passage. For a regulated brand, the surrounding context is often the disclaimer. That turns GEO into a design problem with a regulator behind each decision.
- Mutual funds. SEBI’s advertisement rules require the standard market-risk warning on mutual fund ads, and a 2008 SEBI circular requires it to be shown and voiced for at least five seconds in audio-visual ads. The decision we make on answer pages: no past-return figure goes into a passage an engine might lift alone. Where a number is needed, the warning sits in the same paragraph, so an engine that takes the paragraph takes both.
- Loans. RBI requires lenders to give a Key Facts Statement, including the annual percentage rate, before the loan contract is signed, for retail and MSME term loans sanctioned from 1 October 2024. The decision: the first sentence of a loan answer page explains what sets the rate and says the full cost appears in the Key Facts Statement, instead of opening with a teaser rate an engine will repeat without the charges.
- Insurance. IRDAI’s 2024 policyholder protection regulations require an insurer’s advertisements to show its registered name with its trade name or logo, and ads issued through distribution channels need the insurer’s written approval first. The decision: the first mention of the insurer in every liftable passage uses the registered name, and any answer page a partner publishes goes through the same approval path as an ad.
None of this is SEO. It is also the part most agencies selling GEO to financial brands leave out.
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Should a BFSI marketing head buy GEO, SEO or both?
If the SEO base is weak, start there. A page Google cannot index will not appear in its AI answers, and no GEO retainer fixes that. If the base is sound, the GEO-specific work is narrower than most proposals suggest.
- A baseline query log. The questions your buyers ask, put to each major engine, with who gets named and what is said about you.
- A crawler policy per engine. A deliberate decision on which AI crawlers may read the site, signed off by legal.
- Answer pages built for lifting. One question per section, the answer first, the disclaimer inside the passage, reviewed by compliance before publishing.
- A fact clean-up. Rates, products, registrations and leadership correct on your own site and on the third-party pages engines rely on.
We set out what this looks like as a service on our AI visibility agency page for BFSI brands, and the shorter answers to related questions are in the 100 AI search optimisation questions and our GEO and AEO FAQ.
Five tests to tell GEO from rebranded SEO
A proposal can use every new term and still describe old work. These five tests sort one from the other. Each can be answered from the proposal itself or from one call with the agency.
- Does it name the engines? Real GEO work says which AI engines it will track, such as Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini. A proposal that only says “AI search” has not decided.
- Does it measure answers, not rankings? Look for a fixed set of buyer questions, put to each engine on a schedule, with a record of who is named and what is said. Rank reports and click charts are SEO measures.
- Does it separate the line items? Ask the agency to mark each item as SEO it would do anyway or work that exists only because of AI answers. If the second column is almost empty, you are looking at rebranded SEO.
- Does it cover crawler policy? Different engines use different crawlers. A GEO plan should include a decision on which ones may read the site, with legal sign-off.
- Does it handle compliance inside the passage? For a bank, insurer or fund, the disclaimer has to travel with any paragraph an engine might lift. A plan that treats disclaimers as a footer issue has not understood the channel.
A proposal that passes all five is selling GEO. One that passes none is SEO under a new name, which may still be worth buying, at an SEO price.
A worked example: reading the two proposals
Go back to the marketing head at the Mumbai life insurer with her two proposals. Her team puts the line items side by side.
Technical fixes, content and links appear in both. Google’s guidance says the same fundamentals decide whether a page can appear in its AI features, so these lines are SEO whichever proposal they sit in. They should be bought once.
That leaves AI visibility tracking, the only line unique to the GEO proposal. The team asks what it contains. If the answer is a list of buyer questions about term cover and claims, asked of each engine on a schedule, with a log of whether the insurer is named by its registered name and whether the facts are right, it is real GEO work. If the answer is a rank report with a new label, it is not.
The team adds one line neither proposal had: compliance review of every answer passage before it goes live. The final brief is one SEO base, a narrow GEO layer and a review step owned by compliance.
Common mistakes when buying GEO
Most wasted spend on GEO comes from buying the label rather than the work. These are the mistakes we see most often.
- Paying twice for the SEO base. Crawlability, speed, structured data and internal links belong to one budget, not two.
- Skipping the SEO base. A page that cannot be indexed will not appear in Google’s AI answers, whatever the GEO retainer says.
- Measuring with the old tools. Search Console counts AI feature traffic inside ordinary web search, so it cannot show whether the brand was named in an answer.
- Leaving robots.txt untouched. A file written years ago may block one AI crawler and allow another without anyone having decided that.
- Buying a promise of placement. Engines decide what they cite. No agency controls that, and a guarantee of being named is a warning sign.
- Treating compliance as a final check. For a regulated brand, the disclaimer placement is a design decision made while the page is written.
How to brief an agency on GEO without paying twice
A clear brief keeps the GEO layer narrow and priced on its own. Send these with the request:
- Your current SEO scope and who delivers it, so the agency does not quote it again.
- The buyer questions you most want to own, ranked by business value.
- The engines you want tracked and how often.
- The regulators whose advertising rules apply to you, SEBI, IRDAI or RBI, and who signs off in compliance.
- How you will judge progress: being named, being described correctly and being cited.
Ask for the proposal in two columns, SEO and GEO, with a price for each. Advertising rules change, so confirm the current text with your compliance team before answer pages go live.
People also ask
Is GEO replacing SEO?
No. Google’s own guidance says the same SEO fundamentals decide whether a page can appear in its AI features. GEO sits on top of SEO and adds a different goal: being named and described correctly inside the answer.
How do you know if GEO work is working?
Put a fixed set of buyer questions to each AI engine at a regular interval and record whether your brand is named, whether the facts are right and which sources are cited. Search Console alone is a blunt tool for this, because Google counts AI feature traffic inside ordinary web search.
Does a financial brand need compliance sign-off for GEO content?
Treat it as if it does. An engine can lift a single paragraph and show it without the page around it, so rates, returns and product claims need their disclaimer in the same passage. Compliance should review answer pages before they go live, not after an engine repeats them.
Is GEO just rebranded SEO?
Partly. Much of what is sold as GEO, such as crawlability, clear structure and links, is SEO done properly, and Google says no special optimisation is needed for its AI features beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. What is new is the goal and the measure: being named and described correctly inside AI answers, and checking that by asking the engines.
Where did the term generative engine optimisation come from?
From a research paper, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, first posted in November 2023 and accepted at the KDD 2024 conference. The authors tested how changes to a page affected how often it appeared inside AI-written answers, and found the effect of each tactic varied by subject area. The name began as a research question, not an agency slogan.
Can a financial brand block AI engines from reading its site?
It can decide which crawlers may read the site through robots.txt. OpenAI, for example, documents that its search crawler controls appearance in ChatGPT search, separately from the crawler used for training. Blocking a search crawler may keep the brand out of that engine’s answers, so the choice should be deliberate and signed off by legal.
Should GEO and SEO be bought from the same agency?
They can be, as long as the proposal separates the two and prices the GEO layer on its own. Buying them from different agencies works too, but then one agency must own the SEO base and the other must not quote it again. Either way, the compliance review of answer pages should stay with your own team.
What is the difference between GEO and AEO?
Answer engine optimisation aims to make a page the single answer an engine quotes, as in a featured snippet or a voice reply. Generative engine optimisation aims to make the brand one of the sources an AI engine reads, trusts and names when it writes its own answer. The page work overlaps heavily. The measure differs: a quoted snippet on one side, being named inside a written answer on the other.
Is rebranded SEO always a bad deal?
Not if it is priced as SEO. Plenty of sites need the fundamentals fixed before anything else, and a proposal that does that well is worth buying. The problem is only paying a GEO premium for work that would be in any sound SEO plan. Ask for the two columns and judge each on its own price.
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