GEO vs AEO vs SEO: what each term actually means
SEO is getting found in a list. AEO is being the source of an extracted answer. GEO is the discipline of being cited and correctly described by AI assistants, which contains AEO and assumes competent SEO underneath.
The three terms, side by side
The nesting in the last row is the most useful thing on this page. GEO contains AEO, and both assume competent SEO underneath. They are layers rather than alternatives, which is why the vs framing in the title is slightly dishonest and why everyone uses it anyway.
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in a list | Be the extracted answer | Be cited and correctly described |
| Surface | Search results | Snippets, overviews, assistants | AI assistants and AI search surfaces |
| Main lever | Authority and relevance | Content structure | Off-site citation sources |
| Where the work sits | Your domain | Your domain | Mostly other people's domains |
| Measured by | Position, clicks | Snippet and overview capture | Citation rate, mention rate, accuracy |
| Includes the others? | No | Assumes SEO foundations | Includes AEO, assumes SEO |
Why the vocabulary is such a mess
Three reasons, all of them ordinary. The category is about three years old, so nobody had time to agree terms before the money arrived. Several vendors coined labels to own a phrase, which is a reasonable commercial move and a bad outcome for buyers. And the underlying technology changed twice while people were naming it.
You will also encounter LLM SEO, AI SEO, AI search optimisation, generative search optimisation and search everywhere optimisation. None of these describes work the three terms above do not already cover.
Our position
We use AI search when talking to people and generative engine optimisation when precision matters, and we do not think the distinction between GEO and AEO is worth an argument in a sales conversation. What is worth checking is whether a supplier using the words can tell you which specific work they mean.
Which one you should be buying
Buy SEO if you do not rank
Google's AI surfaces are grounded in Google Search, AI Overviews are generated from pages already ranking, and Copilot runs on the Bing index. Without this foundation, nothing above it works.
Buy AEO if you rank but are not extracted
The symptom is stable rankings with falling clicks, and competitors appearing in overviews for queries you rank for. This is a content-structure problem and it is comparatively cheap to fix.
Buy GEO if you are absent from assistant answers entirely
Especially where the assistant is naming competitors without citing anyone. That is usually an entity and off-site citation problem, and no amount of on-site work will resolve it.
Buy measurement regardless
You cannot tell which of the three you have without a baseline, and the baseline is cheap relative to guessing wrong for a quarter.
How to test a supplier on this
- 1Ask which crawler controls whether you appear in ChatGPT citations. The answer is OAI-SearchBot, and blocking GPTBot instead is the common error.
- 2Ask whether their citation rate includes unlinked brand mentions. If it does, the number is roughly double what you think it is.
- 3Ask which domains currently carry citations in your category. If they have not measured it, they are guessing at where the work belongs.
- 4Ask what they would do if the answer is that you do not need them yet. A supplier with no version of that answer has one product.
- 5Ask whether they sell llms.txt. The evidence says it does nothing, and selling it is a useful signal.
Related questions
The four layers we work across
Related answers
What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of getting a brand cited and accurately described in AI-generated answers.
Read the answerDefinitionWhat is answer engine optimisation (AEO)?
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is structuring content so it becomes the source an answer engine uses.
Read the answerDecisionLooking for a GEO agency or an AI SEO agency?
An agency does the work and is paid for output.
Read the answer