Hala Creative.

Being found on Google is now only half the job.

Search visibility today means two things at once. SEO competes for a position among ten links on a results page. GEO — generative engine optimisation — competes to be the source an AI assistant cites when it writes a single answer and shows no links at all. The work overlaps, but the second is won differently, and most agencies in this market are still only doing the first.

What actually changed

For twenty years the goal was a position on a page of results. The buyer typed a query, saw ten options, and chose one. Ranking third still meant being seen.

When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini which supplier to use, there is no page of ten. There is one answer naming two or three businesses. Ranking fourth in that world is not a lower position — it is absence. The list is shorter and the cut is harder.

Both channels still matter, and they are not opposites. A site that is technically sound, clearly structured and genuinely useful does well in both. But the tie-breakers differ, and the GEO ones are unfamiliar to most people selling SEO.

Where the two diverge

Same foundation, different tie-breakers.

Traditional searchWhat wins on Google

  • Keyword-aligned pages matching how people phrase a search
  • Links from other sites, weighted by their own authority
  • Page speed, mobile behaviour, crawlability, clean indexing
  • Freshness and depth relative to whoever currently ranks
  • Local signals — Google Business Profile, reviews, consistent listings

AI assistantsWhat gets you cited

  • A clear entity definition, so a model knows exactly what your business is
  • Answers stated in the first sentence, before any explanation
  • Structured data connecting your site, profiles and listings as one identity
  • HTML that renders without JavaScript, since most AI crawlers do not run it
  • Consistent mentions on third-party sites the models already draw from
  • Concrete specifics — numbers, ranges, named constraints — rather than claims

How the work runs

An audit first. Committing to a monthly programme before knowing what is broken is how budgets get spent on the wrong problem.

  1. Audit

    Technical health, indexing, structure, speed, and a check of what AI assistants currently say about your business — which is frequently nothing, or something wrong.

  2. Fix the foundation

    Crawlability, speed, structured data, entity definition, internal linking. Nothing else works while these are broken.

  3. Answer the real questions

    Content built around what your buyers actually ask, answered directly in the opening line rather than after four paragraphs of preamble.

  4. Consistency off-site

    Business profile, directories, listings and mentions carrying the same name, address and description everywhere. Contradictions across sources make models hedge or omit you.

  5. Measure both channels

    Rankings and traffic on one side; on the other, whether assistants name you when asked for a recommendation in your category. The second is checked manually, because no reliable tool reports it yet.

What nobody selling this will tell you

GEO is not fully controllable, and anyone promising otherwise is guessing at best.

Whether a model cites you depends heavily on what exists about you elsewhere — directories, listicles, forums, professional profiles, coverage. Your own site is the anchor that makes those mentions resolve to one coherent business, and without it nothing else lands. But on-site work alone will not get you quoted, and any agency selling GEO as a purely on-page service is selling you a third of the job.

There is also no dependable rank tracker for AI answers. Results vary between models, between phrasings, and between one week and the next. Progress is measured by asking real questions and recording the answers, which is slower and less tidy than a dashboard, and considerably more honest.

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Questions about SEO and GEO

What is generative engine optimisation?

GEO is the practice of making a business visible inside AI assistant answers — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity. Instead of competing for a position in a list of links, it competes to be one of the few sources a model names when it writes a single answer.

In practice it means defining your business clearly as an entity, structuring pages so the answer comes first, using structured data, serving HTML that crawlers can read without JavaScript, and being mentioned consistently across sites the models already trust.

Is GEO replacing SEO?

No, it is being added to it. Google still sends a large share of commercial traffic and will for the foreseeable future. What has changed is that a growing share of buyers now ask an assistant first and never see a results page. Optimising for only one of the two channels leaves the other unattended.

How long before results appear?

Technical fixes can show in weeks. Ranking and citation improvements take months, and longer on a new domain with no history. Anyone quoting a fixed timeline for a specific position is guessing — search results depend on competitors who are also working, and AI answers depend on sources outside anyone's control.

Can you guarantee first position on Google?

No, and any agency that does is either misleading you or targeting terms nobody searches for. What can be committed to is the work: a technically sound site, content answering real questions, consistent listings, and honest reporting of what moved.

How do you measure whether AI assistants mention my business?

By asking them, repeatedly, in the phrasings your buyers would use, and recording what comes back over time. There is no reliable rank tracker for AI answers yet. This is manual, and it is currently the only honest method available.

Does this work in Arabic?

Yes, and it is often less contested. Arabic queries and Arabic content are handled directly rather than through translation, which matters because a translated page tends to miss the phrasing people actually use when they search or ask.

Find out what assistants say about you

Most businesses have never checked what ChatGPT says when someone asks for a recommendation in their category. It is a short conversation and often a revealing one.

Email me

Email
hisham@halacreative.com
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+966 54 690 2154
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hishamhikami
Based in
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia