AI search
AEO vs GEO vs SEO: what each term means and what’s new
Published by Zubair Afzal, responsible editor
First published Updated 7 min readWe check this page every three months. Next check: .
AEO and GEO mostly change what gets measured. You’re judged on one passage of a page. And there’s no fixed position, only how often you appear.
Most of the practical differences follow from that. A list of links and an AI-written answer pick different things, and you see the results in different ways.
Definitions
What do SEO, AEO and GEO mean?
Loose definitions are how the same service gets sold three times.
- SEO (search engine optimisation) improves how a website does in a ranked list of search results. You work on the page, you measure position, and the payoff is a click.
- AEO (answer engine optimisation) makes a passage of your content the source for a direct answer, such as featured snippets, People Also Ask, voice responses and AI Overviews. You work on the passage, and there’s usually still a link.
- GEO (generative engine optimisation) improves how you are described in text an AI model writes, including when no page is quoted. You work on the claims made about you, and measure them by repeated sampling.
- The three sit inside each other. AEO needs SEO first, because nothing can be quoted from a page that can’t be found. GEO benefits from both, and also depends on sources you don’t own and can’t edit.
- The umbrella term for all three is AI search optimisation. That label is fine, as long as the invoice under it lists separate tasks.
How they fit together
How SEO, AEO and GEO build on each other
Each stage needs the one before it. That’s why the same foundations serve all three.
- 1SEO: the page can be found — Crawlable, indexable, fast HTML. You work on the page, measure position, and the payoff is a click.Blocked, unrenderable, or too slow to fetch
- 2AEO: the passage can be quoted — A paragraph that still makes sense on its own. You work on the passage, and there’s usually still a link.The answer is scattered, never in one place
- 3GEO: the claim about you is right — What the web says overall, including sources you don’t own and can’t edit. You work on the claims about you.If a model is unsure, it leaves you out
Which AI search tasks are new?
Only a few. Most rows below say "same work".
| Dimension | Where it sits | Our assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Crawlable, indexable, fast HTML | SEO, unchanged | Same work. If a system can’t fetch and read the page, nothing after that matters. |
| Depth and coverage on a topic | SEO, unchanged | Same work. Thorough coverage helped before and helps now, for the same reasons. |
| Structured data | SEO, unchanged | Same work. It helps machines understand the page, and it always had to match what the page shows. |
| Author and organisation credibility | SEO, unchanged | Same work. Named authors and expertise you can check mattered long before the acronyms. |
| Answer passages that stand alone | AEO, adapted | Clearly different. Most website copy isn’t written so that one paragraph makes sense when lifted out on its own. |
| Definitions and answer-first openings | AEO, adapted | Different in emphasis. Leading with the answer was always good writing. Now it also decides whether the passage gets picked. |
| Consistent business description across the web | GEO, mostly new | Different. A model has to match you to one organisation. Conflicting descriptions on directories, profiles and old pages make that harder. |
| Third-party mentions and independent coverage | GEO, mostly new in purpose | Different in aim. Links used to be the goal. Now an accurate description in the text counts, even with no link. |
| Whether to allow AI crawlers | GEO, new | New. Search crawling and AI model crawling are separate permissions with separate effects. This choice didn’t exist before. |
| Measurement | AEO and GEO, new | New. There is no position to track, only repeated prompts and a record of how often you appear and how you’re described. That is a much weaker signal than rank data, and reports should say so. |
What’s worth paying for
Four things that change with AI answers
First, what gets picked. A search engine ranks pages; an answer engine picks a passage. A page can be excellent overall and still useless for quoting if its answer never sits in one place.
Second, sources you don’t own carry more weight. An AI answer draws on what the web says as a whole. If a comparison article, forum thread or directory describes you wrongly, another page on your own site won’t fix it.
Third, the model has to know who you are. A common name, a recent rebrand, a mismatched legal name or three different descriptions on your profiles all make that harder. When a model is unsure, it tends to leave you out.
Fourth, measurement is fuzzier. Run the same prompt ten times and you may see several different sets of sources, so a precise score is dressing up noise. Ask how many samples the number is based on.
Everything else is SEO. That’s no reason to skip it, but it is a reason to question any proposal that charges separately for AEO, GEO and SEO without saying which of these four things it covers.
What to expect
What can anyone promise about AI search?
Fair claims
- Pages that are easier to find, read and quote from are more likely to be used in an answer.
- Consistent, accurate descriptions of your business across the web help a model describe you correctly.
- Running the same prompts over time can show whether you are appearing more or less often.
- Much of this is good SEO, and doing it well helps you in search results and AI answers at once.
Claims nobody can back up
- Any guarantee that you’ll be included or cited in an AI-generated answer.
- Exact knowledge of how a commercial AI model ranks or picks its sources.
- An exact "AI visibility score" with no sampling method shown behind it.
- That AEO or GEO replaces SEO. Both depend on pages being findable, and SEO is what makes them findable.
Questions
AEO, GEO and SEO: common questions
Is AEO just SEO with a new name?
Mostly, yes. The page still has to be crawlable, indexable, relevant and credible. What changes is the size of the piece being picked: an answer engine lifts out one passage, so you need a complete answer that makes sense on its own.
If someone sells you AEO and can’t name one thing it does that their SEO service doesn’t, you’re paying twice for the same thing.
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
AEO is about being the source of a direct answer: featured snippets, People Also Ask, voice results and AI Overviews. The answer usually comes from one page, and there’s normally a link.
GEO is about how an AI model describes you, even when it quotes no single page. It cares more about the wider web: what independent sources say about you, whether your description matches everywhere, and whether a model can tell which organisation you are.
How much of this work is new?
Less than the sales pitches suggest. The foundations are unchanged, the writing changes a bit, the off-site work changes more, and measurement changes completely.
Four things didn’t exist five years ago: writing self-contained answers, keeping your business description consistent everywhere, deciding which AI crawlers to allow, and measuring with repeated prompt tests in place of rank tracking.
Why do I rank first and still not get cited?
Ranking picks a page; citation picks a passage. If your best answer is spread over four paragraphs after a long warm-up, there’s nothing clean to quote, and a lower-ranked page that states the answer clearly gets used.
It can also happen because the AI answer blends many sources. Then what matters is whether independent pages describe you the way you describe yourself.
How do you measure visibility when there is no ranking position?
By sampling. Write the prompts a buyer would use, run them repeatedly in the assistants that matter to you, and record how often you appear, how you’re described and which sources are cited next to you.
That gives you a frequency, not a position, and it’s less precise than rank tracking. Anyone who shows an AI visibility score as exact is claiming more than the data supports.
Should I block AI crawlers?
Probably not, unless your content is the product. Publishers who earn money from people reading their pages have a fair case for blocking them; most service businesses don’t, and an accurate description from an assistant works like free advertising.
Whatever you choose, choose it on purpose: check what your robots.txt file and CDN rules allow. Many sites block crawlers nobody meant to block.
References
Sources for AEO vs GEO
The official documents and research this page is based on. Platform rules change, so check the source before you act on a detail.
Related
Keep reading on AEO vs GEO
- AI search services
- answer engine optimisation as a service
- generative engine optimisation as a service
- a fuller definition of AEO
- the GEO explainer
- entity optimisationDecides whether an AI model can work out who you are.
- technical foundationsEverything here depends on the page being reachable in the first place.
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