SEO, GEO and AEO, in plain English
Every agency now sells all three, and most explain them badly. The short version: SEO gets you ranked, AEO gets you shown as the direct answer, and GEO gets you named when an AI model writes one. Most of the work is shared. The differences that matter are in emphasis and in how you measure.
SEO: ranking in search results
Search engine optimisation is the work of getting your pages to rank on Google and Bing. It has three parts:
- Technical health. Can the crawler find, fetch and render your pages? Are they fast, indexable and not duplicated across five URLs?
- Relevance. Does the page answer the query someone typed, better than the pages around it?
- Authority. Do other sites link to you and talk about you? Does the content show real experience?
It's still where most buying journeys start, and it's the base the other two stand on. Google's AI Overviews draw on Google's own index. Several assistants run a web search before they answer. If you're invisible in search, you're mostly invisible to them too.
AEO: being the direct answer
Answer engine optimisation is about the places that answer a question without a click: featured snippets, "People also ask" boxes, voice assistants and Google's AI Overviews.
The skill is mostly structure and precision:
- Put the question in a heading, in the words people actually use.
- Answer it directly in the next sentence or two.
- Follow with detail, steps or a short table.
- Add structured data so engines know what each part of the page is.
AEO comes with an awkward trade-off. When you win the answer box, some people get what they need and never click. That's fine for questions where being the visible answer builds trust. It's worse for questions where the click was the business.
GEO: being cited by generative models
Generative engine optimisation is the newest of the three. It's about getting named and linked when ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Claude write an answer.
Models favour sources that are clear, specific, quotable and trusted by other sources. So a lot of GEO is good SEO, plus better writing, plus showing up in the places models read: review sites, comparison articles, forums and industry publications. It also has one technical piece of its own. AI companies run their own crawlers, such as OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot, and plenty of sites block them without knowing.
The other difference is that GEO counts mentions, not only links. If an assistant recommends you by name without a link, that still matters. A buyer who hears your name will often search for you next.
One question, three jobs
Say you sell expense management software, and a finance lead asks: "How do I stop employees submitting duplicate receipts?"
| What winning looks like | What the work is | |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Your guide ranks near the top on Google and Bing | A focused page on the topic, internal links from related pages, a few good external links |
| AEO | Your answer shows in the featured snippet or "People also ask" | A heading that matches the question, a two-sentence answer, then numbered steps |
| GEO | ChatGPT or Perplexity cites your guide, or names your product as a fix | The same clear answer, plus being named on the review and comparison pages assistants pull from |
One page can do all three jobs, and the page itself barely changes between them. What changes is where else you need to show up, and how you check whether it worked.
Where they overlap, and where they don't
The shared work is most of the work:
- A fast, crawlable site with content in the HTML, not only in JavaScript.
- Pages that answer real questions directly.
- Clean, accurate structured data.
- A reputation that exists outside your own site.
The emphasis and the scorecard differ:
| Unit | Measured by | Where you see it | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | The ranking | Positions, impressions, clicks | Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, rank trackers |
| AEO | The answer box | Snippets and AI Overview appearances won | Manual checks, some rank trackers |
| GEO | The mention or citation | Share of answers that name or link you | Your own prompt tracking, specialist tools |
Measurement is the real gap. At the time of writing, Search Console folds AI Overview appearances into its regular web search numbers without a separate filter. Visits from assistants show up in analytics as referrals from domains like chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai, but that only captures clicks. It misses every answer where you were named and nobody clicked. To see GEO properly, you have to ask the assistants yourself, on a schedule, and log what they say.
Which one should you start with?
Usually SEO, because the others borrow its authority. A site with weak technical health and no links won't be cited much by anyone.
But don't wait to measure. If your buyers are technical, young or already using assistants daily, start tracking GEO now, even if you don't act on it for a quarter. You'll want the baseline. And the first round of tracking often turns up something cheap to fix: a blocked crawler, a wrong price being repeated, a competitor's comparison page doing all the talking.
A sensible order for most B2B teams:
- Fix technical SEO and make sure AI crawlers can reach you.
- Rewrite the pages that answer your buyers' main questions so they lead with the answer.
- Add and validate structured data on those pages.
- Start tracking mentions and citations across the main assistants.
- Work on third-party presence where the tracking shows the answers come from.
A note on the names
The acronyms aren't settled. Some people call GEO "AI SEO" or "LLM optimisation". Some use AEO to mean everything AI-related. Don't get stuck on the labels.
When someone pitches you any of these, ask three things: what they'll change on your site, what they'll do off it, and how they'll show you it worked. If the third answer is vague, the first two probably are too.
What to do this week
- In Search Console, find the ten queries closest to a purchase decision and note where you rank.
- Search each one on Google and note whether there's an AI Overview or featured snippet, and who's in it.
- Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity the same ten questions and write down who they name and who they link.
- Open your robots.txt and confirm you aren't blocking the AI search crawlers.
- Pick the one question where you're missing everywhere, and rewrite its page to answer in the first two sentences.
