We think AI search work and SEO work are mostly the same list of tasks. The documented facts are marked and sourced. The conclusion is our opinion.
GEO means generative engine optimization: work aimed at being used or cited by AI answer products. Our opinion is that it is largely the same backlog as SEO, not a second program with its own team and its own tools.
The rest of this note separates what the vendors document from what we conclude.
Google's page on AI features says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no other special optimizations are necessary. It says all existing SEO fundamentals continue to be worthwhile. Its examples include allowing crawling in robots.txt and keeping structured data consistent with visible page text.
To appear in these features, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. Google says there are no additional technical requirements, and that meeting requirements does not guarantee a page will be crawled, indexed or served. The page was last updated 2025-12-10 per its own footer.
OpenAI says OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features. It recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt to help ensure visibility. It treats GPTBot, which relates to training, as a separate setting, and says it can take about 24 hours after a robots.txt update for its systems to adjust.
Perplexity says PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in search results, and is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models. It recommends allowing it in robots.txt, with changes taking up to 24 hours to reflect. Its help center says each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources.
In all three cases, the documented path runs through crawl access and an indexable, readable page. That is the SEO fundamentals list.
From those documents we conclude, as opinion, that most items on a GEO checklist are items already on a good SEO backlog: crawlable pages, clear titles and headings, accurate structured data, internal links, fresh and correct content. We do not claim this has been tested by us. We say that no vendor above documents a separate set of required tasks.
The one clear addition is a robots.txt decision per crawler. Allowing search crawlers and disallowing training crawlers are separate choices at OpenAI, and Perplexity separates its search crawler from its user-triggered fetcher.
Google says sites appearing in AI features are included in overall search traffic and reported in the Performance report under the Web search type. So in Google's own reporting, AI feature appearances sit inside the same Web search data as everything else.
OpenAI and Perplexity do not provide a Search Console equivalent in the documents we read. Checking whether you are cited in those products is a separate, manual or third-party activity, and we would treat any such figure as an estimate. This is the real difference: the work is shared, but the reporting is not.
Keep one backlog. Tag items that help citations as well as rankings. Review robots.txt for OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and GPTBot as a deliberate decision. Keep reporting for AI products clearly labeled as separate and less certain.
Sources were last checked on October 13, 2026. Documentation changes, so confirm any detail that matters to a decision against the source itself.
Indexive Research. (2026, October 1). GEO and SEO are one backlog, not two separate programs. Indexive AI. https://indexive.ai/research/geo-and-seo-are-one-backlog
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No. Google says there are no additional requirements or special optimizations necessary, and that SEO fundamentals remain worthwhile.
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