GEO Is Not Just SEO In Disguise

There is ongoing debate whether GEO simply depends on SEO. The argument is that since AI search systems rely on external search providers for source retrieval, SEO is the primary driver of AI citation. On the other hand, prior work has found that strong GEO results require optimizing for a distinct set of model-specific preference rules (Wu, 2026).

We argue it is important to measure your brand's visibility in AI search in addition to your SEO performance. With access to over 65 million AI citations, we assessed the extent to which domain authority is correlated with AI citation rates.

We defined SEO and GEO scores to represent how visible a brand is in traditional search and in AI-generated results, respectively.

Both scores were then min-max normalized to a range of [0, 100].

Modeling the linear relationship between GEO scores and SEO scores, a very slight positive trend emerges. However, the relationship is extremely weak, as evidenced by an R² value of 0.008. Practically, the SEO score of a domain is a very poor predictor of its AI citation performance.

The lack of relationship between the SEO and GEO scores is also evident in the residuals. Throughout the plot, residuals are randomly scattered, suggesting that a variety of GEO rankings are present across both high and low SEO scores. The slight widening around SEO scores of 20 points to a certain level of SEO score being needed before high citation scores become possible, but even at very high SEO scores, GEO performance varies widely.

Some well-known brands performed poorly in GEO metrics relative to their SEO scores and others in the same category. These are illustrative examples of relative underperformers, not a ranked list of the worst overall performers.

Two domain categories that stood out were Ecommerce (red) and Business (green) as they had a pronounced negative relationship between GEO and SEO scores, although the strength of this relationship was poor (R² = 0.038). So, for business and ecommerce websites, strong SEO is not a reliable predictor of GEO performance.

Prior analyses have shown that AI models prioritize a distinct set of content signals when assessing credibility (Pfrommer, 2024). This work corroborates those findings by highlighting a weak relationship between SEO and AI citation rates.

One limitation is that we consider only the effect of domain authority on citation frequency, which excludes domains that are never cited. It is plausible that some minimal SEO threshold is necessary to appear in AI results, but beyond that, other factors dominate. Understanding these signals is key for improving brand visibility as AI emerges as a more personalized substitute for traditional search engines (Aggarwal, 2024).

The practical implication is direct: brands that rely solely on their SEO ranking as a proxy for AI visibility are flying blind. Ecommerce and business brands in particular face a real risk of strong SERP performance masking poor AI citation rates.