AEO vs SEO vs GEO: What's the Difference, and Which Comes First?

SEO vs AEO vs GEO at a glance

The easiest way to tell them apart is to ask where you want to appear. SEO aims for a place in the list of results, AEO for the answer box above that list, and GEO for a mention inside an answer that an AI tool writes.

What is SEO?

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the work of helping search engines find, understand and trust your website, so its pages rank for the searches your customers make. It covers the site's technical health, a useful page for each service, links and mentions from other sites, and, for local businesses, the Google Business Profile.

SEO is still where most website enquiries begin, and the other two depend on it. Google says the same SEO best practices apply to its AI features, and Microsoft Copilot's answers draw on Bing's search results. If search engines can't crawl a page or don't trust it, AI tools are unlikely to quote it either.

• Technical: fast pages, mobile-friendly design, no crawl blocks, a clean sitemap.
• Content: one clear page for each service and the questions buyers ask about it.
• Authority: links and mentions from relevant, trusted websites.
• Local: an accurate Google Business Profile with photos, posts and recent reviews.

What is AEO?

AEO, or answer engine optimisation, means writing and structuring content so a search engine or voice assistant can lift it as the direct answer to a question. Its targets are featured snippets, People also ask boxes, spoken answers from assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant, and the summaries in Google's AI Overviews.

Most AEO work is about format. Put the question in the heading, answer it fully in 40 to 60 words straight after, then add the detail. Use lists and tables for steps, prices and comparisons. Add FAQ schema so search engines can read each question and answer as a pair.

• Headings worded the way people actually ask, including “how much”, “how long” and “which is better”.
• A complete short answer first, so it still makes sense when quoted on its own.
• Numbers, ranges and named sources rather than vague claims.
• One topic per page, so the right page is the obvious one to quote.

What is GEO?

GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is the work of making AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google's AI Mode more likely to mention, quote or link to your business when they write an answer. The term comes from a 2023 research paper by researchers from Princeton, IIT Delhi and other institutions, presented at the KDD conference in 2024.

That paper tested which edits made a page more visible in AI answers. Adding quotations, statistics and citations to sources raised visibility by roughly 27% to 41%, while keyword stuffing, an old SEO habit, gave little or no improvement.

Where AEO is about one answer to one question, GEO is about reputation. When someone asks ChatGPT for a good CA firm in Tambaram, it builds a shortlist from what the web says about each option: business listings, reviews, articles and forum threads. That's why mentions on other websites matter so much more for GEO than for the other two.

Is AEO the same as GEO?

They overlap a lot, but they aren’t the same thing. AEO aims to be the quoted answer to a specific question. GEO aims to be one of the businesses an AI tool recommends in a longer answer, which depends more on your reputation across the web than on any single page.

• What they share: both reward clear pages that answer real questions, accurate business details, schema and a site search engines can crawl.
• Where they differ: AEO is won mostly on your own pages. GEO is won largely off them, through listings, reviews, articles and discussions that mention you.
• How you check them: AEO wins are visible in Google's results. GEO has to be tested by asking AI tools the questions your buyers ask, because answers vary by tool and by day.

In practice one plan covers both, so you don't need two agencies or two budgets.

Where do AIO, LLMO and AI SEO fit?

They're mostly other names for the same AI-focused work. People use them loosely, so here's what each one usually means.

• AIO (AI optimisation): a broad label for making content work in AI-driven search. Some people use it for Google's AI Overviews specifically.
• LLMO (large language model optimisation): helping language models understand your brand and mention it. Very close to GEO.
• AI SEO: usually SEO planned with AI answers in mind. Sometimes it just means using AI tools to do SEO tasks, so ask which is meant.
• AI search optimisation: an umbrella term for AEO and GEO together.
• Search everywhere optimisation: being findable across Google, AI tools, YouTube, social media and marketplaces.

If an agency sells several of these as separate services, ask what work actually differs between them. Usually very little does.

Is SEO being replaced by AEO or GEO?

No. AI answers have changed how people search, but AI tools still rely on search engines to find and check their sources. Dropping SEO to chase AI mentions usually leaves you weaker in both.

• 900Mpeople use ChatGPT every week, according to OpenAI (February 2026). Many of them ask it which business to choose.
• NoneGoogle says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond normal SEO.
• 38%of AI Overview citations came from pages in Google's top 10 (Ahrefs, 2026). Clear answers can be cited from lower down, but they still need to be indexed.
• 4.4×the value Semrush estimated for each visitor arriving from AI search, compared with a typical organic visitor, because they come closer to a decision.

So the realistic picture is three layers: SEO as the base, AEO as the way you format answers, and GEO as the reputation you build around them.

One business, three results: a worked example

Take an imaginary dental clinic in Velachery. Here's what each kind of work looks like for the same clinic, and what a win would be.

Notice that the GEO result depends on things outside the clinic's own website. That's the biggest practical difference between the three.

What should a small business do first?

Start with the SEO basics, write every new page in an AEO-friendly format, then build the outside signals GEO needs. Here's a sensible 30-day order for most small businesses in India.

1. Week 1: Open the doors. Check that your robots.txt file and firewall aren't blocking Googlebot, Bingbot or OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot. Claim your Google Business Profile and Bing Places listing.
2. Week 1: Make your details match. Use the same name, address, phone number and one-line description on your website, Google, Bing, LinkedIn and the directories that matter in your trade, such as Justdial, IndiaMART or Practo.
3. Week 2: Answer real questions. List the 20 questions customers ask before buying. Answer the most common ones on your service pages, using question headings and short answers.
4. Week 2: Add schema. Organization or LocalBusiness schema for who you are, and FAQ schema for your question-and-answer sections.
5. Week 3: Add facts with sources. Price ranges, timelines, numbers from your own work and named experts give AI tools something specific to quote.
6. Weeks 3–4: Earn mentions. Ask happy customers for reviews that mention the service, and pitch one or two local publications or best-of lists.
7. Week 4: Test and repeat. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot your ten most important buyer questions. Note who they name and which sources they cite, then repeat every month.

How to measure SEO, AEO and GEO

Each one needs its own scorecard, but all three should lead back to the same number: enquiries.

• SEO: rankings for your main searches, clicks in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and enquiries from organic visits.
• AEO: how many featured snippets and People also ask boxes you hold for your target questions. Tools such as Semrush track these.
• GEO: a fixed list of 20 to 30 buyer questions asked in each AI tool every month, recording whether you're named and which sources are cited.
• AI visits: in Google Analytics 4, visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com appear as referrals. ChatGPT also adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to many of its links.

Our analytics and reporting service sets up these reports so you can see all three in one place.

AEO vs SEO vs GEO: FAQs