The debate around SEO and Generative Engine Optimization is starting to move beyond specialist search publications.
A recent article from Midwest Medical Edition picked up the discussion around Google's position on GEO, another small signal that questions about visibility in AI-generated answers are no longer confined to the SEO community.
The underlying discussion comes from a question asked to Google's John Mueller about whether some industries may still be able to focus primarily on traditional SEO rather than GEO.
Mueller's answer was straightforward: from Google's perspective, there is nothing particularly special websites need to do for generative AI responses in Search. Google's AI search experiences still depend on its search index and existing ranking and quality systems.
That distinction matters.
For Google Search, the line between SEO and GEO may indeed be much thinner than the industry sometimes suggests. Google itself has described optimization for its generative search experiences as essentially still SEO.
But Google Search is only one part of the emerging AI discovery ecosystem.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and other AI systems can use different retrieval mechanisms, sources and citation patterns. Understanding visibility across those environments remains a separate research problem — regardless of what we eventually decide to call it.
What's interesting now isn't just the terminology. It's that the conversation itself is escaping the SEO bubble.
Source: Midwest Medical Edition — Google Weighs In on GEO
Background: Search Engine Journal — Google Answers If Some Sites Can Ignore GEO And Just Focus On SEO
Internal link: Some Websites May Not Need a Separate GEO Strategy