On r/b2bmarketing this week, a CMO asked: "has anyone actually hired a GEO agency that wasn't just a rebadged SEO agency with new decks?" The 24-comment thread landed at: mostly no. Most of what's sold as GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is 2022-era SEO with "AI" appended to every deliverable.
GEO is real — optimizing for citations inside LLM outputs is genuinely different from optimizing for Google rank — but the delta between real GEO work and rebadged SEO is worth naming.
What SEO Actually Does
- On-page: title/meta/headings/internal linking
- Technical: crawlability, page speed, schema markup
- Content: keyword-mapped briefs, topical authority
- Off-page: backlinks, brand mentions, PR
- Measurement: Google rank, organic traffic, conversions
What Real GEO Adds
- Structured content that LLMs can extract cleanly (FAQ schema, HowTo, explicit definitions)
- Citation-worthy assets: original research, first-party data, unique framings
- Presence in LLM training cutoffs: Reddit, Wikipedia, HackerNews
- Monitoring which LLMs cite you for which queries
- Influence via answer-engine SERPs (Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google AI Overview)
The Rebadge Test
If the agency deck says "AI-optimized content" but the work plan is still keyword research → brief → writer → publish, it's SEO. If the deck includes specific LLM citation tracking, Reddit / Wikipedia seeding plans, and structured-data audits, it's real GEO.
What to Ask the Agency
- How do you measure ChatGPT / Perplexity / Gemini citation rate?
- What's the reporting cadence on LLM visibility vs organic rank?
- How do you seed content into training-data-adjacent sources (Reddit, Wikipedia)?
- What percentage of deliverables are aimed at LLM extraction specifically?
- Show me a client report where GEO moved before SEO did.
If the answers are hand-wavy, the agency is rebadging. If they have concrete numbers and methodology, keep talking.
Why the Confusion Persists
A lot of GEO gains really are just good SEO. Google rank still correlates strongly with ChatGPT citation rate (because ChatGPT's web_search tool pulls from Google-indexed pages). Rebadging SEO as GEO isn't entirely dishonest — it's just undershooting what GEO could be.
The agencies that will actually win the next three years are the ones doing measurable LLM-citation work on top of solid SEO fundamentals, not instead of them.
How to DIY It
Weekly: prompt ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini with 20 priority queries. Record which domains get cited. Track your own share-of-voice. When your citation rate drops or a competitor shows up, investigate.
Full GEO audit setup is in the GEO audit weekly report workflow . Runs in ~15 minutes per week; generates the data your agency probably isn't.