§01the discourse
Every few months, someone posts a chart showing Google search volume declining and declares SEO dead. The chart is usually real. The conclusion is usually wrong.
Search isn’t dying. It’s fragmenting. Some queries that used to go to Google are now going to Claude, ChatGPT, or Perplexity. But “some queries” is not “all queries,” and “shifting channel mix” is not “channel death.”
The brands treating GEO as a replacement for SEO are making the same mistake as the brands that abandoned email for social in 2012. Channel diversification is not channel replacement.
§02how queries actually split
Based on our citation data and public usage research, here’s roughly how query intent routes in 2026:
The categories routing most heavily to AI are exactly the categories that matter most for B2B SaaS: “best CRM for startups,” “how to choose a data warehouse,” “alternatives to Salesforce.” This is your buyer, in their research phase, talking to an AI instead of running a Google search.
§03different channels, different signals
Google ranks pages. LLMs cite brands. The unit of measurement is different, which means the optimization path is different — but the upstream inputs overlap more than people realize.
What Google rewards: inbound links, structured data, page speed, E-E-A-T, freshness.
What LLMs reward: specificity, comparison structure, third-party validation, entity clarity.
The overlap: high-quality, specific content. The difference: LLMs don’t care about your backlink profile. They care about whether your page contains something worth quoting.
“A page that ranks #1 on Google for a commercial keyword is not automatically well-cited by LLMs. But a well-cited page almost always ranks well on Google too. The causality goes one direction.”
§04where they converge
The strategies that help GEO and SEO simultaneously, ranked by leverage:
- Comparison pages. LLMs cite them constantly. They also rank well for “X vs Y” keywords. One asset, two channels.
- Community presence. Reddit threads and G2 reviews drive Perplexity citations and provide the third-party signals Google’s E-E-A-T rewards.
- Specific, number-backed claims. “4.8/5 on G2” gets pulled into LLM responses and improves CTR on Google SERPs.
- Clear entity description. Schema markup helps Google. The same clarity helps LLMs extract what you do.
§05the actual answer
Stop asking “should I focus on SEO or GEO?” It’s the wrong question. The right question is: “is the content on my site worth citing — by a search algorithm or an LLM?”
The brands winning in 2026 aren’t doing “GEO instead of SEO.” They’re creating content that’s genuinely useful, specific, and structured — and it happens to work everywhere. Stripe doesn’t have a “GEO team.” They have a documentation team that writes things worth reading, and the citations follow.
The question to ask every quarter is simple: are you getting cited? If not, fix the content before worrying about which channel you’re optimizing for.