GEO vs AEO vs SEO: what's the difference?
By Sarmed, co-founder of Impleko
The short answer: SEO (search engine optimization) gets your pages ranked in search results. AEO (answer engine optimization) shapes your content so search engines and AI tools can use it as a direct answer. GEO (generative engine optimization) gets your business named inside answers written by AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews. They overlap heavily. AI assistants still lean on pages that rank and sources they trust, so SEO is the base, and AEO and GEO build on it.
SEO vs AEO vs GEO at a glance
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stands for | Search engine optimization | Answer engine optimization | Generative engine optimization |
| Goal | Rank in the list of results | Be the direct answer to a question | Be named in an AI assistant's answer |
| Where you show up | Google and Bing results, Google Maps | Featured snippets, AI Overviews, voice answers | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google's AI Overviews |
| What it rewards | Relevant pages, links, technical health | Clear questions with direct answers | Consistent facts, trusted third-party sources, quotable pages |
| Main unit of work | Pages and keywords | Questions and answers | Your business's facts and reputation across the web |
| How it's measured | Rankings, traffic, calls | Snippets and AI Overview appearances | How often you're named, and against whom |
What is SEO?
SEO is the work of getting your website to rank in search engines for the searches your customers make. It covers three things: technical health (pages Google can load, read and index), relevance (a page that matches each search) and authority (links and mentions from other sites). For local businesses, it also covers Google Maps, where your Google Business Profile, reviews and consistent business details decide who shows up. SEO is measured in rankings, traffic and the calls and leads that traffic brings.
What is AEO?
AEO is writing and structuring content so a search engine or AI tool can lift it as the answer to a question. In practice that means a question as a heading, a one- or two-sentence answer straight underneath, then the detail. FAQ sections, definitions, short lists and tables all help, as does structured data (schema markup) that labels questions and answers for machines. AEO started with featured snippets and voice search, and it now feeds Google's AI Overviews too.
What is GEO?
GEO is the work of getting your business mentioned and recommended in answers written by AI assistants. The term comes from a 2023 research paper, "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", accepted at the KDD 2024 conference, which found that the right changes to a page can raise its visibility in AI-generated answers by up to 40 percent. In the researchers' tests, adding statistics, quotations and citations to sources were among the most effective changes.
For a business, GEO comes down to four things AI assistants check before naming you:
- The same facts everywhere: your name, services, location and hours agree across your website, Google Business Profile and directories
- Trusted third-party sources: reviews, directories, industry lists and local guides that mention you
- Quotable pages: sentences that make sense on their own, with specific facts and numbers
- Structured data: schema markup, and an llms.txt file that summarizes your site for AI tools
How SEO, AEO and GEO overlap
Most of the work counts three times. A fast, well-structured page that answers a question in its first sentence, on a site other trusted sites mention, helps your rankings, your chances of being the featured answer and your chances of being named by ChatGPT.
| Tactic | Helps SEO | Helps AEO | Helps GEO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fast pages Google can index | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| A page for each service and question | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Answer in the first sentence under each heading | Some | Yes | Yes |
| FAQ sections with FAQ schema | Some | Yes | Yes |
| Links and mentions from other sites | Yes | Some | Yes |
| Reviews on Google and industry sites | Yes, for local | No | Yes |
| The same business details on every listing | Yes, for local | No | Yes |
| Statistics, quotes and cited sources | Some | Some | Yes |
| Tracking the questions customers ask AI | No | No | Yes |
Pages that AI Overviews cite are often ordinary articles, not long guides. In an Ahrefs study of about 174,000 pages cited in Google's AI Overviews, the median cited article was 1,166 words.
How to measure each one
- SEO: rankings for the searches that bring customers, organic traffic, and calls and form requests from search, in Google Search Console and your analytics.
- AEO: how many of your target questions show your page as a featured snippet or a cited source in an AI Overview.
- GEO: run the same set of customer questions through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews every month, and record how often you're named, which competitors are named instead, and which sources each answer cites.
GEO results move differently by assistant. Assistants that search the web live can reflect changes to your site and listings within weeks; answers that rely mostly on a model's training data change more slowly.
Which one does your business need?
Start with SEO if your site is slow, hard to index, or has one page trying to cover every service. Nothing else works well on a weak foundation.
Add AEO if your customers ask a lot of questions before they buy, such as cost, timing, comparisons or "is this normal?". Answer-first pages win snippets and AI Overview citations.
Add GEO if your customers ask ChatGPT or other assistants for recommendations, which is now common for local services, software and professional services. If a competitor is named and you aren't, GEO is the fix.
For most businesses the honest answer is all three, in that order, run as one plan rather than three projects.
How Impleko runs them
We run SEO and AI visibility as one plan: technical fixes and local SEO first, then answer-first pages, structured data and third-party listings, with a monthly report on the questions we track in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews. Our content team writes every page to work for Google and for AI answers.
Questions about GEO, AEO and SEO
Is GEO replacing SEO?
No. AI assistants pull heavily from pages that already rank and sources that are already trusted, so SEO remains the foundation. GEO adds the work AI answers reward on top of it: consistent facts across the web, third-party mentions and pages that are easy to quote.
Is AEO the same as GEO?
They overlap but aren't the same. AEO is about formatting content so it can be used as a direct answer, in featured snippets or AI Overviews. GEO is broader: it's about whether AI assistants name your business at all, which also depends on reviews, listings and mentions on other sites.
What does GEO stand for in marketing?
In marketing, GEO stands for generative engine optimization: getting a business named in answers from AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. It's unrelated to geo-targeting, which means aiming ads at a location.
Can you do GEO without SEO?
Not well. If search engines can't index your site, or nothing trustworthy links to it, AI assistants have little to go on. Fix the SEO basics first, then add GEO.
How long does GEO take to work?
It depends on the assistant. Those that search the web live, like Perplexity and ChatGPT with search, can reflect fixes to your site and listings within weeks. Answers based mainly on a model's training data update more slowly, sometimes over months.
Can you guarantee ChatGPT will recommend my business?
No one can. Each assistant chooses its own answers. What can be done is fixing the facts and sources assistants read about you, then tracking every month how often you're named.