What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO? SEO is the work of getting your pages crawled, indexed and ranked in a list of search results. AEO (answer engine optimisation) is the work of getting your content chosen as the direct answer to a question, and GEO (generative engine optimisation) is the work of getting your brand mentioned and cited inside answers that AI tools write themselves. They share one foundation, so most of the work overlaps, but the goal and the way you measure it change.
You will also see all three lumped together as "AI SEO". That is a loose label rather than a separate discipline, and it is a fair summary of where the work now sits: the same site, the same reputation, judged by software that writes an answer instead of listing ten links.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation is making your site easy for search engines to crawl and understand, and giving them good reasons to rank it. That means technical health, useful pages written around what people search for, and signals of trust such as links and reviews. The reward is a position in the results and a click.
What is AEO?
Answer engine optimisation is shaping a page so a search feature or assistant can lift a clear answer straight from it. Think of the direct answer at the top of a results page, a spoken reply from a voice assistant, or the passage Google quotes in an AI Overview. "AEO" is an industry term, not a formal standard, so people use it slightly differently. We use it to mean winning the single answer to a single question.
What is GEO?
Generative engine optimisation is the practice of making your content more likely to appear in responses written by generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI Mode. The term comes from a research paper, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (Aggarwal et al., first submitted to arXiv on 16 November 2023, revised 28 June 2024 and accepted to KDD 2024). The authors tested ways of changing content on a benchmark of queries and report that these methods can boost visibility in generative engine responses by up to 40%. They also found the results vary by domain, so a tactic that works for one kind of site may do little for another.
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
AEO is about being the one answer a feature picks for a specific question. GEO is about being a source an AI tool names or cites while it writes a longer response, often built from several pages. The lines blur in practice, and the same changes usually help both: a clear answer near the top of the page, facts that can be checked, and a brand that is described consistently across the web.
SEO vs AEO vs GEO: how do they compare?
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank and earn the click | Be the chosen answer to a specific question | Be mentioned and cited in an AI-written response |
| Where you appear | Lists of results and map listings | Direct answers, AI Overviews, voice and assistant replies | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and AI Mode responses |
| What wins | Crawlable, relevant pages with links, reviews and good page experience | Answer-first pages, plain factual sentences, clear entity details | Checkable facts and a brand described the same way on many trusted sources |
| How you measure | Rankings, impressions, clicks, enquiries | Presence in answers for a fixed list of questions | Mentions and citations across a fixed set of prompts, plus referral visits |
What stays the same?
More than most vendors admit. Google's documentation on AI features and your website (Google Search Central, last updated 10 December 2025) says: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." A page has to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet to be used as a supporting link.
So the basics still do the heavy lifting:
- Crawlable pages. If a page cannot be fetched, indexed and read as text, nothing downstream can use it. This is the job of technical SEO.
- Clear facts. Prices, opening hours, services, locations and credentials stated plainly on the page, not buried in images or scripts.
- Reputation and reviews. Real customer feedback and mentions on sites other than your own.
- Links. Other credible sites pointing at yours still signal that you are worth quoting.
What is actually new?
Six things, and the first one drives the rest.
1. Being quoted inside the answer. A Pew Research Center study of the browsing of 900 US adults found that people clicked a traditional result link in 8% of visits to pages with an AI summary, against 15% of visits to pages without one. Only 1% of visits to pages with a summary included a click on a link inside the summary itself. Pew's data covers March 2025, when about one in five Google searches produced an AI summary (Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025). If fewer people click through, being named in the answer is where a lot of the visibility now sits.
2. Entity clarity. An AI tool has to be sure who you are before it names you. Use the same business name, description, location and service wording on your site, your profiles and your listings. Schema markup can help, as long as it matches the visible text on the page. Our note on Google's stricter JSON-LD parser covers one way structured data quietly breaks.
3. Answer-first pages. Put the direct answer in the first two or three sentences under a heading written as the question. Follow it with the detail. A reader gets the point at once, and a machine can lift the passage without having to untangle it.
4. Which sources AI tools cite. Different tools draw on different sources, and the mix changes. We do not publish a fixed list because it would date quickly. Ask your real customer questions in each tool, note which pages and sites get cited, and treat those sites as part of your off-site plan.
5. AI crawler access. The bots that feed AI answers are separate from Googlebot, and they are often blocked by accident in robots.txt or by a firewall. The vendors document them:
- OpenAI runs OAI-SearchBot for search, GPTBot for model training and ChatGPT-User for actions a person starts. Its crawler documentation says: "Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers." Each setting is independent, so you can allow search and disallow training.
- Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot in robots.txt so your site can appear in its search results. Its bot guide adds that Perplexity-User, which fetches pages when a person asks a question, "generally ignores robots.txt rules", so a firewall may need to allow both.
- Anthropic lists ClaudeBot (model development), Claude-SearchBot (search indexing) and Claude-User (user requests). Its crawler article says the bots honour robots.txt, and that blocking Claude-SearchBot may reduce visibility in search results.
Our piece on whether your website is ready for AI agents goes into what happens once these tools start acting on a page rather than just reading it.
6. Measuring mentions instead of rank. There is no rank 1 inside a written answer. Google says AI feature traffic is counted in the overall Search Console numbers under the Web search type, with no separate report. For the other tools, you track mentions and citations yourself, which is why a fixed list of prompts matters.
What should a small business do first?
You do not need a new strategy. Work through this in order:
- Check who can fetch your site. Read your robots.txt and your firewall rules for the bots above. Allow the search bots you want to appear in. Decide on the training bots separately.
- Fix the foundations. Make sure your key pages are indexed, load fast and show their content as plain text. A technical SEO audit finds the gaps.
- Rewrite your top pages answer-first. Start with the ten pages that bring in enquiries. Add a question-style heading and a two or three sentence answer under it.
- Make your business easy to identify. Match your name, address, services and descriptions across your site, Google Business Profile and directories.
- Earn mentions elsewhere. Reviews, trade bodies, local press and partner sites give independent backing to what your own site says about you.
- Start a monthly prompt log. Run 20 to 30 real customer questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode, and record whether you are mentioned, whether you are cited and who is cited instead.
Our blueprint for AI optimisation covers what gets a business cited in more detail. If you would rather have the audit, the page rewrites and the monthly measurement handled for you, that is what our AI SEO service does.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
SEO gets your pages crawled, indexed and ranked in search results. AEO (answer engine optimisation) gets your content chosen as the direct answer to a question. GEO (generative engine optimisation) gets your brand mentioned and cited inside answers that AI tools write. The foundation is the same, but the goal and the way you measure it differ.
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
AEO is about being the single answer a search feature or assistant picks for a specific question, such as a featured answer or a voice reply. GEO is about being a source that a generative AI tool names or cites when it writes a longer response. In practice the two overlap heavily, and the same page changes often help both.
Is AEO replacing SEO?
No. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and a page still has to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet. AI answers sit on top of the same crawling and indexing that SEO already covers.
Do I need special structured data to appear in Google AI answers?
No. Google states that there is no special schema.org structured data you need to add for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Structured data is still worth having, as long as it matches the text visitors can see on the page.
Should I block AI crawlers in robots.txt?
It depends on which crawler. OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic each run separate bots for training and for search. If you want to appear in ChatGPT search answers, OAI-SearchBot must be allowed, and blocking GPTBot only opts your content out of model training. Decide bot by bot rather than blocking everything with a single rule.
How do I measure AEO and GEO?
Rankings do not capture it. Pick 20 to 30 questions your customers really ask, run them monthly in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode, and record whether your business is mentioned, whether your site is cited, and which other sources appear. Google counts AI feature traffic inside the normal Web results in Search Console, so you will not find a separate report there.
Where to start
If you want to know whether AI tools can find you, quote you and name you today, start with our AI SEO service, or talk to the team. You will get a straight answer on what is blocking you and whether it is worth fixing.
Jinnat Ul Hasan
Founder & CEO, Whizz People
