GEO vs SEO: what changes when the buyer asks an AIGEO 和 SEO 有什么区别：当客户开始问 AI

The short version一句话版

SEO is about being found on a results page: ten blue links, your position among them, the click. GEO (generative engine optimization) is about what happens when there is no list. The buyer asks ChatGPT, Doubao or Perplexity “which company should I hire for X”, and the AI writes an answer with two or three names in it. Either yours is there, described correctly, or the shortlist is written without you.SEO 解决的是「在结果页上被找到」：十条蓝色链接、你排第几、有没有人点。GEO（生成式引擎优化）解决的是没有列表的情况：客户直接问 ChatGPT、豆包或 Perplexity「做 X 该找哪家」，AI 写出一段话，里面点两三个名字。要么你在里面、而且被说对了，要么这轮短名单里根本没有你。

What stays the same不变的部分

• Facts still have to live somewhere crawlable. An AI cannot cite what it cannot read.事实仍然得放在爬虫读得到的地方。AI 引用不了它读不到的东西。
• Authority still comes from other people saying it. Directories, press, partner pages, an active LinkedIn page: AI engines lean on the same third-party sources search engines do, and weigh them harder, because they need something to cite.权威仍然来自别人替你说。行业目录、媒体、合作方页面、活跃的 LinkedIn 公司页：AI 引擎依赖的第三方来源和搜索引擎是同一批，而且更看重，因为它需要东西可引用。
• Technical hygiene still matters. Crawlable HTML, structured data, a sitemap, and a robots file that does not block the AI crawlers you want.技术基础还是那些。可抓取的 HTML、结构化数据、sitemap，以及不要把你想要的 AI 爬虫挡在 robots 外面。

What changes变了的部分

• The unit of success. SEO counts positions and clicks. GEO counts three things: whether you are mentioned, whether you are recommended, and whether the description is accurate. A mention with the wrong price or the wrong city can be worse than no mention.成功的单位变了。SEO 数排名和点击；GEO 数三件事：有没有被提到、有没有被推荐、描述对不对。被提到但价格错了、城市错了，可能比没被提到更糟。
• The question replaces the keyword. Buyers ask AI in full sentences with context: “an energy testing lab in Liaoning that can do X”. Content has to answer questions the way a person asks them, not pack keywords into a title.问题取代了关键词。客户问 AI 用的是带上下文的整句：「辽宁能做 X 的能源检测机构」。内容要按人真正提问的方式回答，而不是往标题里塞关键词。
• Consistency across sources. An AI that sees your company described three different ways on three sites will hedge, or pick one at random. Official name, what you do, where you are, and your price have to say the same thing everywhere.各处说法要一致。AI 在三个网站看到你公司的三种说法，要么含糊其辞，要么随机挑一个。公司名、做什么、在哪、价格，各处必须一字不差。
• Each engine has its own sources. Yuanbao tends to lean on WeChat official accounts; Doubao on the ByteDance ecosystem and the open web; Perplexity and ChatGPT on the web behind a search index. One strategy per engine group, not one for all.各家引擎取材不同。元宝偏重微信公众号，豆包偏重字节系内容和公开网页，Perplexity 和 ChatGPT 靠网页加自己的搜索索引。要按引擎分组定策略，不能一套打全部。

How you measure it怎么量

The honest way is boring: write down the questions your real buyers ask, ask each platform the same questions in a clean session, save every answer, count mentions and recommendations, and repeat on a fixed cadence with the same questions. Anything else is anecdote. The full method is in How to check whether AI recommends your company.老实的办法很枯燥：把真实客户会问的问题写下来，在干净的会话里把同一批问题问每个平台，每条答案存档，数提及和推荐，然后按固定节奏用同一批问题复测。除此之外的都是「我试了一下」。完整方法见怎么查 AI 有没有推荐你的公司。

Do you still need SEO?还要做 SEO 吗

Yes. Most AI answer engines with search grounding read from a web index, so a page that cannot rank usually cannot be cited either. Think of GEO as the layer on top: same foundations, different scoreboard. What a full engagement looks like is in What a GEO engagement looks like.要。大部分带联网检索的 AI 引擎读的是网页索引，一个排不上的页面通常也引用不到。把 GEO 看成叠在上面的一层：地基相同，记分牌不同。完整的项目怎么做，见GEO 项目怎么做。