SEO vs AEO vs GEO: What Is the Difference, and What Should You Do About It?
SEO, AEO and GEO explained in plain English: how AI answers are built, what changes for your business, and a practical checklist for showing up in AI search.
Three acronyms now describe roughly the same goal: being the business people find when they look for help. Here is what each one means, where they differ, and what is actually worth doing.
The three definitions
SEO (search engine optimization) is the practice of earning visibility in search results: the blue links, the map pack, image and video results. It covers technical health, page content, and authority signals like links and reviews.
AEO (answer engine optimization) focuses on being selected as the answer. When Google shows a featured snippet, a People Also Ask box or an AI Overview, it picks a source to quote. AEO structures your content so that source is you.
GEO (generative engine optimization) focuses on AI assistants that write an answer from scratch, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Microsoft Copilot. GEO works on how often those tools mention your business, cite your pages, and how accurately they describe you.
How AI answers are actually built
Most AI search features follow the same basic pattern. The system takes a question, searches an index of web pages, picks a handful of sources it trusts, and writes an answer that summarises them. Google’s AI Overviews draw from Google’s own index. ChatGPT search and Perplexity run live web searches. Assistants answering without a live search lean on what they learned during training.
That pattern explains almost everything about AI visibility:
- If your page isn’t indexed or can’t be crawled, it can’t be a source.
- If your page buries the answer, it’s less likely to be quoted.
- If the wider web doesn’t mention you, the assistant has little reason to recommend you.
What stays the same
The fundamentals of good SEO carry straight over: crawlable pages, clear site structure, fast load times, helpful content written from real experience, and a trustworthy reputation. A site that ranks well is already most of the way to being cited.
What is different
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank and earn the click | Be the quoted answer | Be mentioned and recommended |
| Where | Search results, Maps | Snippets, PAA, AI Overviews, voice | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot |
| Main levers | Technical, content, links | Answer-first structure, schema | Entity consistency, third-party mentions, citable content |
| How it’s measured | Rankings, clicks, leads | Snippet and AI Overview citations | Share of tracked prompts that mention you |
The biggest practical difference is GEO’s dependence on off-site signals. An AI assistant asked for “a good family dentist in Airdrie” summarises consensus. If your website, Google profile, reviews and a couple of local directories all describe you the same way, you’re far more likely to be named.
What to do this quarter
- Check access. Make sure your robots.txt doesn’t block search crawlers such as Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot.
- Rewrite your key pages answer-first. Put a clear, two-sentence answer near the top of every service page and guide, then support it.
- Add the right structured data. Organization or LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage and BreadcrumbList are a good baseline.
- Make your details consistent. Name, services, service area, hours and phone should match across your site, Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places and key directories.
- Earn mentions. Reviews, local media, industry associations and “best of” lists are the raw material AI tools draw on.
- Start tracking. Write down 15 to 25 prompts your customers would realistically use and check them monthly across the main platforms.
How to measure it honestly
AI answers change between users and sessions, so there’s no single “rank” to report. The useful measure is share: of the prompts you track, how many mention you, how many cite your site, and is that number trending up? Combine it with Search Console data on AI Overview impressions where available, and with leads that mention finding you through an AI tool.
Common misconceptions
“SEO is dead.” It isn’t. AI search depends on it.
“You need a special AI file to rank.” Files like llms.txt are optional and still emerging. They can help, but they don’t replace crawlable pages and a good reputation.
“Someone can guarantee a ChatGPT placement.” They can’t. Treat anyone who promises one with the same suspicion you’d give a guaranteed number-one Google ranking.
If you want to see where you stand today, I run an AI visibility audit as part of every SEO engagement, and the GEO service page explains how ongoing tracking works.