SEO vs. GEO: why showing up on Google isn't enough anymore

For twenty years, "showing up on Google" was synonymous with existing digitally. That phrase isn't enough anymore. More and more people don't type a search and click a result — they ask an AI directly: ChatGPT, Google's AI-generated summary (AI Overviews), Perplexity. The answer arrives already assembled, without the person ever visiting a site.

This has started being called GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): the equivalent of SEO, but built so AI engines understand your business and mention you when someone asks something related. It doesn't replace traditional SEO — it builds on it, and in many cases shares the same foundation.

Why does this matter for a small or mid-sized business? Because if someone asks ChatGPT "what spa would you recommend in Playa del Carmen" or "a trustworthy architecture studio in Salta", that AI builds its answer from information scattered across the internet — reviews, your own site, directories, social media. If your digital presence is weak or inconsistent, it's much harder to end up in that answer.

The good news is that much of what already makes a site good for technical SEO also helps with GEO: clear, well-structured content, consistent contact info and location everywhere, structured data (schema.org) that explicitly tells any system what your business is, and real —not fabricated— presence in reviews and directories.

What changes is the approach: writing so both a person and a summarizing system can read it well. Clear, direct sentences, concrete facts (where you are, what you offer, who it's for), without relying on tricks that used to work for ranking in traditional search engines but mean nothing to an AI.

You don't need to be a giant brand to show up in these answers — you need the foundation done right. That's exactly the kind of work we do in Che Webs' Web development + SEO stage: getting your digital presence ready both for the search engine you already know and the conversation that's already happening with AI.