SEO vs GEO vs AEO: what each one means, and why SEO is not dead.

SEO is the work of earning a place in search results. GEO, generative engine optimisation, aims to get your content used and cited inside AI-written answers. AEO, answer engine optimisation, shapes each page so a system can lift a direct answer from it. The three overlap heavily, and SEO is still the base the other two stand on.

What is SEO?

SEO, search engine optimisation, is the practice of helping search engines find and rank your pages so the right people click through to you. It covers the technical side (can the page be crawled and indexed), the content (does it answer what people search for) and reputation (do other sites trust it).

The basics have not changed much. Google's SEO Starter Guide still asks for descriptive titles, clear text written for people, sensible links between pages and URLs made of words. Success shows up as rankings and clicks.

What is GEO, and where did the term come from?

GEO is the work of shaping content so that AI systems which write answers, such as Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT search or Perplexity, draw on it and cite it. The term comes from a research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, first posted in November 2023 and presented at the KDD conference in 2024.

The researchers built a benchmark of queries, which they called GEO-bench, and tested different ways of rewriting web pages to see which made a source more visible in generated answers. Adding citations to sources, quotations and statistics helped. In the best cases visibility rose by up to 40 percent. Keyword stuffing, an old SEO habit, did worse than leaving the page alone.

Two cautions. The tests ran on the authors' own setup and on Perplexity as it worked at the time, and AI systems change often. The paper also found that what worked varied by subject. Treat it as direction, not a formula.

What is AEO?

AEO is the habit of writing so that a system can take a short, direct answer straight from your page. It grew out of featured snippets and voice assistants, and now applies to AI answers too. In practice it means headings phrased as real questions, the answer in the first sentence or two, and plain definitions.

Unlike GEO, AEO has no founding paper and no official definition. Agencies use it loosely, sometimes as another name for GEO. We use it for the page-level craft: how each section is written and laid out.

What do SEO, GEO and AEO have in common?

All three rest on the same base: a page that search systems can crawl and index, written clearly for people, and trustworthy enough to quote. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimisation beyond its normal guidance for Search.

To show as a supporting link in those features, a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet. That is ordinary SEO. Google lists the same best practices it always has: allow crawling, make content findable through internal links, give visitors a good page experience and keep important content in text. Clicks from AI features are counted in Search Console as part of Web search, not in a separate report.

What is genuinely different between them?

The difference is what counts as winning. SEO counts rankings and clicks to a page. GEO counts whether your brand or page is named or cited inside a generated answer, which may never produce a click. AEO works at the level of a single passage: is there a clean, quotable answer for a system to lift?

• Measurement: SEO has Search Console. GEO means checking what assistants actually say for a set of buyer prompts, and noting whether you are named.
• The result: a search result points to your page. A generated answer blends several sources and may name you without linking to you.
• What helps most: for SEO, relevance, links and technical health. For GEO, being a specific source with facts others can check. For AEO, the structure of each section.
• Stability: rankings move slowly. The same prompt in an assistant can return a different answer on another day, so check a few times before drawing conclusions.

So the craft overlaps. The scoreboard does not.

Is SEO dead?

No. The claim confuses the front page of search with the work underneath it. AI answers change how results look and how often people click, but the systems behind them still need pages they can crawl and trust. Google's guidance for AI features is its normal SEO guidance. A site that is weak at SEO usually gives an AI answer very little to draw on.

What has changed is the value of a ranking on its own. When a summary answers the question, fewer people may click, so it matters more that your page is the source the summary leans on and that your name sticks. Our guide to AI search visibility covers the evidence on clicks and the practical steps.

Do you need a separate GEO or AEO strategy?

For most businesses, no. You need one search strategy, written with AI answers in mind. Separate GEO and AEO packages often resell SEO basics under a new name. Ask anyone selling one what they would change on your site that good SEO would not, and how they will measure it.

When we review a site, we work through the same short list whatever the acronym on the brief:

• Fix the technical base first: crawling, indexing, internal links and speed. A well-built website makes most of this the default.
• Build each important page around a real buyer question, with the answer near the top.
• Add what only you can say: prices or price ranges, your process, your own examples.
• Cite your sources where you rely on outside facts, and keep business details identical everywhere they appear.
• Track clicks in Search Console and mentions in the assistants your customers use, side by side.

We treat SEO, GEO and AEO as one piece of work under SEO and AI search visibility: a sound site, clear answers and proof that is yours. If you would like a second opinion on your site, tell us about it.