Is GEO different from SEO?

They overlap more than they differ. Both reward clear, consistent, well-structured information about your business. GEO puts the emphasis on being named inside a written answer rather than ranked in a list of links, which raises the value of answering questions directly and keeping your details identical everywhere.

Which AI assistants does Bump track?

ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, and Google AI. That live check runs on the paid tiers. A free scan never queries an assistant, so it reports AI visibility as not yet measured rather than guessing at it.

Why would a score say not assessed instead of zero?

Because they mean different things. Not assessed means we did not have the data to judge it. Zero would mean we looked and you scored nothing. Reporting the first as the second would make the number look precise while making it wrong, so we abstain instead.

AI Search Glossary

These are the terms that come up when people talk about being found by AI assistants, defined in plain English. Most of them describe something ordinary wearing an unfamiliar name. Where a term involves something you can do, there is a line telling you what.

GEO(Generative Engine Optimisation): GEO is the practice of making your business easy for AI assistants to find, understand, and name in an answer. It overlaps heavily with good SEO, because both reward clear, consistent, well-structured information. The difference is the outcome you are optimising for: a mention inside a written answer rather than a ranked link.Start by saying what you do, where, and for whom, in the first lines of your homepage.
AEO(Answer Engine Optimisation): AEO is another name for much the same idea as GEO, with the emphasis on answering questions directly. In practice the two terms are used interchangeably and nobody has settled which will win. They overlap more than the industry's naming suggests, so a different label does not mean a different discipline.
AI Overviews: AI Overviews are the AI-written summaries Google places above the traditional results for some searches. They cite a handful of sources, so being one of those sources matters more than ranking sixth in the links below.Answer common customer questions directly on your site, with the answer first.
Citation: A citation, in the AI-answer sense, is an assistant naming your business or linking your site inside its answer. It is not a footnote in an academic sense and not a backlink: it is the assistant deciding you are worth mentioning to the person who asked.
AI crawler: An AI crawler is a bot that reads public web pages so an AI system can use them, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended. They are separate from the traditional search crawlers, so a site can be visible to Google and invisible to an assistant.Check that your robots.txt does not block them. A blanket block is a common own goal.
robots.txt: robots.txt is a small text file at the root of your site that tells bots which parts they may read. It is a set of instructions rather than a lock, and well-behaved crawlers follow it. Its most common failure is being stricter than anyone intended, often left over from a site rebuild.Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and read it. If it disallows everything, that is your first fix.
Schema(structured data): Schema is machine-readable markup you add to a page so a bot can tell what the page is about rather than guessing from the words. It states plainly that this is a business, this is its address, this is a frequently asked question and its answer.Add organisation and FAQ markup to your homepage and key service pages.
Local SEO: Local SEO is the older discipline of being found for searches tied to a place, largely through your website, your Google Business Profile, and directory listings. It still matters for AI search, because the consistency it demands is exactly what an assistant needs in order to trust who you are.
Bump Score: The Bump Score is our single number for how ready your public presence is to be found and cited, built from seven categories: technical, content, performance, GEO readiness, AI visibility, earned media, and social trust. It is a readiness measure rather than a promise about traffic.Run a free scan to see the categories and the specific gaps behind the number.
Abstain: A category abstains when we do not have the data to score it honestly, and it reports as not yet measured rather than as zero. A free scan abstains on AI visibility, because it never queries the assistants, and on earned media, because no off-site provider is wired into it. A zero would claim we looked and found nothing, which would be a different and untrue statement.

Frequently asked questions

Is GEO different from SEO?: They overlap more than they differ. Both reward clear, consistent, well-structured information about your business. GEO puts the emphasis on being named inside a written answer rather than ranked in a list of links, which raises the value of answering questions directly and keeping your details identical everywhere.
Which AI assistants does Bump track?: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, and Google AI. That live check runs on the paid tiers. A free scan never queries an assistant, so it reports AI visibility as not yet measured rather than guessing at it.
Why would a score say not assessed instead of zero?: Because they mean different things. Not assessed means we did not have the data to judge it. Zero would mean we looked and you scored nothing. Reporting the first as the second would make the number look precise while making it wrong, so we abstain instead.

See where your business stands

A free Bump scan checks the signals that make your business easy for search engines and AI assistants to find and cite, scores them, and shows the gaps to fix. No account needed.

Run a free scan