Three acronyms now compete for the same budget line. The short version: SEO gets pages ranked, AEO gets a specific answer lifted out, and GEO gets your brand named inside AI-generated responses. They are not rivals. They are layers.
The Definitions
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Search engine optimization | Answer engine optimization | Generative engine optimization |
| What you optimize | A page, to rank | A passage, to be extracted | A brand, to be mentioned and cited |
| Where the win appears | Blue-link results | Snippets, PAA, voice, AI Overviews | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Mode answers |
| Typical metric | Rankings, clicks | Snippet and answer placements | Mentions and citations across a prompt set |
| Core levers | Crawlability, relevance, links | Answer-first writing, schema | Entity consistency, independent mentions, citable pages |
See our service pages for GEO and AEO.
Where They Overlap
Most of the work is shared:
- A page that cannot be crawled or indexed cannot win at any of the three. That is technical SEO.
- Clear, helpful, specific content satisfies searchers, gets extracted as an answer, and gets cited by AI products.
- Structured data that matches the page helps Google understand it and helps machines attribute it.
- Trust signals such as named authors, accurate dates, and real contact details help in all three.
Google's own guidance says that the practices that make a site good for Search also apply to its AI features, and lists llms.txt among things site owners can ignore. That is a useful corrective to anyone selling AI search as a separate discipline with its own secret handshake.
Where They Genuinely Differ
Measurement. A ranking is stable enough to track daily. A generated answer varies between runs, users, and locations. GEO therefore has to be measured as a rate across many prompts, not as a position.
Who you are competing with. In SEO you compete page against page. In AI answers the system often names a handful of businesses, so being left off the list is a binary loss.
Off-site influence. Independent sources carry more weight in AI answers. A study from Wix Studio's AI Search Lab, as reported in industry coverage, found that in professional services third-party listicles accounted for about 80.9% of AI citations, versus 19.1% for self-promotional ones. Treat the exact figure as indicative, but the direction is consistent with what we see: publishing your own "best agencies" list is a weak play.
What to Do First
- Fix access and indexation. Check robots.txt for AI crawlers, noindex tags, canonicals, and your sitemap. Our free SEO checker covers the basics.
- Make priority pages answer-first. Lead with a 40-60 word answer, then the depth.
- Clean up your entity. One name, one address, one description, consistent profiles.
- Earn independent mentions. Reviews, directories, and genuine coverage.
- Measure with a fixed prompt set, monthly.
Our AI search optimization program runs all five. If you want to see where you stand first, request a free audit. Unfamiliar terms are defined in the glossary.