"Generative Engine Optimisation consultant" is a job title that did not exist in most Indian marketing teams' vocabulary two years ago. It exists now because the underlying problem is real: a growing share of B2B research happens inside ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity conversations that never touch a search results page, and a brand that isn't built into how these models describe a category is quietly absent from deals it never knew it was competing for.
GEO grew out of SEO the same way performance marketing grew out of print advertising: the underlying skill (understanding intent, structuring information for a system to retrieve and reuse) carried over, but the surface changed enough that a new specialisation formed around it. A GEO consultant in India today is usually someone with a strong SEO and content background who has additionally built a practice around how large language models select, summarise, and cite sources.
Strip away the buzzwords and a competent GEO engagement produces a specific set of outputs:
The research and content fundamentals overlap almost completely with good SEO. What differs is the measurement loop and the content format. A traditional SEO retainer optimises toward a rank-tracking dashboard with a monthly cadence. A GEO engagement optimises toward a citation-tracking exercise that currently has to be run manually, because no mainstream analytics tool yet reports "cited in ChatGPT" the way Google Search Console reports rankings. This is the main reason GEO consultants in India still charge as an addition to, not a replacement for, an SEO retainer.
A useful filter: if a consultant's GEO pitch sounds identical to their SEO pitch with the word "AI" added, they likely haven't built the citation-tracking discipline that makes GEO a distinct, measurable practice rather than a rebrand.