AI search
ChatGPT SEO vs Google SEO: what overlaps and what doesn’t
Published by Zubair Afzal, responsible editor
First published Updated 9 min readWe check this page every three months. Next check: .
The main difference
The one difference between ChatGPT SEO and Google SEO
Google gives you a list and shows where you came. An assistant gives the reader one written answer, built from sources it may never name. There’s no position to report back.
Most of the confusion about ChatGPT SEO comes from that difference. A ranked list can be seen, logged and charted. A written answer isn’t a list, so talk of positions, movement and share of voice stops making sense.
The work stays mostly what it always was. The reporting changes: you have to be open about what you can and can’t know.
The shared ground
Most of the work is the same
Assistants answering questions about the world today fetch their sources, so a crawler has to reach your page, read it and understand it, just as Google always has. A page blocked in robots.txt, hidden behind a script that shows a fetcher nothing, or so slow it times out won’t be used by either.
Clear structure matters for the same reasons as before. Use headings that say what each section covers. Keep one idea per block. Put definitions near the top. Credit figures to a named source with a date. Systems that lift passages out of pages favour text that makes sense on its own. So do readers skimming on a phone.
Accuracy matters more, because errors travel further. A wrong figure on your page can now be repeated as a summary, with your name on it, in a conversation you’ll never see and can’t correct. Keeping dates and numbers current protects your reputation.
Trust still decides which source gets used. When a model chooses between two pages that say the same thing, the signals that made a source credible to a search engine still apply: coverage from sites with their own reputation, consistent naming across the web, and being the original source of a claim.
Google says this directly about its own AI features. There are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimisation beyond the fundamentals. Pages that appear there are counted in the normal Search Console performance report.
Being the primary source is the strongest position in both. Original research, first-hand data and a documented method get used, because nobody else can supply them.
Where Google search and AI assistants differ
These rows cover the practical differences. Everything else is shared with normal organic search.
| Dimension | Google organic search | An assistant answering a prompt |
|---|---|---|
| What the reader gets | A ranked list of links and features. The reader chooses. | A written answer. The reader may accept it without choosing anything. |
| What competes | The page. A whole address earns a position for a search. | The passage. A few sentences get pulled out and used. The rest of the page may play no part. |
| Position | A clear number you can see for a search at a given moment. | There isn’t one. You’re either in the answer or not, and that can change between two runs of the same question. |
| What you can measure | Impressions, clicks, searches and average position, reported by the search engine itself. | No official report of what an assistant said. You see referral visits when a link is shown and clicked, and nothing when it isn’t. (Google’s own AI features are the exception. They’re counted in Search Console, though not shown separately.) |
| Consistency | Fairly stable between refreshes for the same wording. | Changes from run to run. Wording, earlier messages and model version all affect the answer. |
| The click | The whole aim. A result exists to be clicked. | Optional and often missing. The answer may settle the question completely. |
| How an error spreads | It stays on your page until someone fixes it. | It can be repeated as a summary with your name on it, and no link where anyone could correct it. |
| What you control | Your pages, structure, speed, reputation and the links pointing to you. | The same things. How sources are chosen and how the answer is written belong to someone else. |
| A sensible goal | Compete for the searches that bring in customers. | Be the clearest, best-sourced, most up-to-date page on a specific claim, and make sure it can be fetched. |
How people ask
The same need, asked two different ways
This shows the change without any theory. The person wants the same thing in each group. How they ask changes what can be found for them.
Typed into a search box
Short and keyword-shaped. The searcher wants a list to work through and expects to compare options themselves.
- crm for small business
- best crm uk
- crm pricing comparison
- pipedrive vs hubspot
Asked of an assistant
Longer, with conditions, and expecting the comparing to be done for them. One prompt replaces what used to be four searches.
- which crm suits a twelve-person agency that already runs accounting software
- compare the two cheapest crms that handle email sequencing properly
- what usually goes wrong when a small team adopts a crm for the first time
Follow-ups that never reach a search box
These refine an answer already given. Nothing you publish competes for them directly. The sources fetched for the first question decide them.
- is that still accurate this year
- what would you use instead
- summarise the drawbacks briefly
These are example searches from keyword research and public search data. Before we suggest anything, we check how often people search for them in your area.
Where pages compete
In a conversation, only the first question is open to competition
One prompt replaces what used to be four searches, and the follow-ups never reach a search box. The rest of the conversation is built from whatever was fetched at the start.
The first turn
- Sources are fetched, so a page must be reachable
- A passage competes, not the whole page
- Clarity, freshness and credits decide what gets used
- The only turn your pages take part in
Every turn after it
- Follow-ups refine an answer already given
- Is that still accurate? What would you use instead?
- Nothing you publish competes for them directly
- Decided by what was fetched on the first turn
Measurement
What we will and won’t claim about AI assistant visibility
What we do
- Run a written, fixed set of prompts on a set schedule and show you the answers as they came back, with no score laid on top.
- Record the date, the assistant and the exact wording every time, because all three change the answer.
- Check the basics first: whether the page can be reached, and whether it’s current, correct and clearly credited to you.
- Tell you when an answer changed and we can’t link the change to anything we did.
What we won’t do
- Promise a citation, a mention or any share of an assistant’s answers. Nobody can promise that.
- Sell a rank tracker for assistant answers. There is no rank, and a panel of sampled prompts isn’t a position report.
- Present a sampled prompt panel as if it measured your share of a market.
- Write pages built to be quoted at the expense of being correct. That trick is obvious and doesn’t last.
AI search terms explained, and the services behind them
This page covers how things work. These pages cover the terms and the services.
Questions
Common questions about AI assistants and search
Is ChatGPT SEO a real discipline or a rebrand?
Mostly a rebrand, with a small new part. Making pages crawlable, well structured, accurate and trusted is the same work you’d do for Google. Anyone charging extra for it under a new name is charging for the name.
The new part: write so a single claim can be lifted cleanly out of a page. Keep facts current, because a stale figure gets repeated with your name on it. And accept that measurement means sampling. You can’t report a position.
Can I track my ranking inside ChatGPT?
No, because there is no ranking. An assistant doesn’t put sources in order and publish the list. It writes one answer, and the same question asked twice can use different sources.
What you can do is run a fixed set of prompts on a schedule and record what comes back, with the date and wording. That’s a sample, and should be shown as one. A product that turns it into a position number is selling you a chart, not a measurement.
Should I block AI crawlers?
It depends on what you publish and why. If your content is the product and a summary undercuts the sale, blocking is a sound business choice. Make it on purpose.
If your content exists to bring in customers, blocking takes you out of the pool of sources. You can’t appear in answers you’ve opted out of. The vendors publish their crawler names, so the choice is yours.
The controls are finer than all or nothing. OpenAI documents separate crawlers: OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search and GPTBot for model training. It says each setting is independent, so a site can stay in ChatGPT search answers while opting out of training. It also says sites that block OAI-SearchBot won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. For Google, AI Overviews and AI Mode follow the normal Googlebot rules and snippet controls such as nosnippet and max-snippet.
Do I need different content for AI search?
No, the same content with a little more discipline. Answer the question in the first paragraph. Keep one claim per section. Use headings that state the point clearly. Credit every figure to a named source with a date.
All of that also helps readers, which is a good test. If a change only makes sense as a way to influence a model, it’s a trick that won’t last.
If nobody clicks through, what is the point?
Some of the point is lost. Pages that only existed to answer a simple definition will get fewer visits over time, and no optimisation reverses that.
What’s left is worth having. People often use assistants while researching, and being the source of a correct, well-credited claim then can shape the shortlist they make later. Searches made when someone is ready to book or buy are still the ones most likely to end in a click.
How is this different from AEO and GEO?
AEO and GEO are names for the discipline. This comparison is about how things work underneath. AEO is about being the answer that gets pulled out. GEO is about being used by a system that writes its own text. Both describe the same shift.
If you need the terms sorted out, our definitions page explains all three and shows where they overlap.
References
Sources for ChatGPT SEO
The official documents and research this page is based on. Platform rules change, so check the source before you act on a detail.
Start here
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