GEO vs AEO vs SEO: what's the difference, and which do you need?

SEO, AEO and GEO in one table

The three overlap a lot. They're less three different jobs than three views of one: helping people find you when they ask a question, whether the reply is a list of links, one answer, or a few sentences written by AI.

SEO: ranking in the list of links

Search engine optimization is the oldest of the three. It means making pages that search engines can find, understand and trust, so they rank high for the searches that matter to you. For a local business that includes your own website and your map listing, like Google Business Profile.

SEO is still the base for the other two. AI assistants search the web before they answer, and Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode are “rooted in” the same ranking and quality systems as its normal results. A page Google can't index can't appear in its AI answers either.

AEO: being the answer

Answer engine optimization started with featured snippets and voice assistants, which read out one answer instead of a list. To be that answer, a page had to say it plainly and early. AI assistants made this matter more, because nearly every question now gets a short written answer first.

AEO is mostly about your own pages: headings that match the questions people ask, a clear answer in the first sentence, specific facts like prices and opening hours. Our AEO guide shows how to rewrite a page this way.

GEO: being named by AI

Generative engine optimization comes from a 2023 research paper that tested which changes make a page more visible in AI-generated answers. Citing sources, adding quotations and adding statistics helped most; keyword stuffing made pages less visible.

GEO goes beyond your own website. When ChatGPT recommends a dentist or a hotel, it often bases the answer on guides, directories and review sites, so what those sites say about you matters as much as your own pages. Our GEO guide covers how AI picks the businesses it names.

Is GEO just SEO with a new name?

Google thinks so. Its guide to AI features defines both terms and then says: “optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.” It tells site owners to put effective SEO ahead of “AEO/GEO hacks”, and to check what a GEO or AEO service actually advises before paying for it.

That's right about the basics, but three things really do change when the answer is written by AI:

• Fewer clicks. In a Pew Research study of real Google searches, people clicked a result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, and in 15% when none did. Being named in the answer matters more than being the fourth link below it.
• A few names, not ten links. An AI answer names only a handful of businesses. If you're not one of them, you're not on the page at all.
• Other sites speak for you. AI repeats what guides, review sites and directories say. Your own website is only part of the picture.

Which one should a local business work on first?

All three, in this order. Each step makes the next one work:

1. 01SEO basics: be findable. Your site loads, can be indexed by Google and Bing, and lets AI search crawlers in. Your Google Business Profile and Bing Places listings are complete.
2. 02AEO: answer the questions customers ask. Say what you do, where, for whom and for how much, in plain text. Add a short FAQ with the questions your staff hear most.
3. 03GEO: be described on the sites AI trusts. Find which guides, review sites and directories AI cites for your kind of business in your city, and work on being on them, with the same facts everywhere.
4. 04Measure what AI says. Ask the questions your customers ask in ChatGPT, Google and Copilot, see whether you're named, and check again after each change.

Hiring help: questions to ask a GEO or AEO agency

Many agencies now sell GEO or AEO. A good one will do the work above and show you how they measure it. Be careful if they:

• Promise a place in ChatGPT. No one can guarantee what an AI assistant says. Answers change between runs and between people.
• Lead with llms.txt or special “AI files”. Google says you don't need them, and there's no evidence they help. See what the evidence says about llms.txt.
• Offer bought mentions or fake reviews. Google warns that inauthentic mentions don't help as much as people think, and fake reviews break Google's rules for Business Profiles.
• Can't show a before and after. Ask how often you're named today, for which questions, and how they'll show it changed.

Questions

Sources

1. Google Search Central: Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search
2. Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (KDD 2024)
3. Pew Research Center: Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results (July 2025)
4. stuckUP: AI Visibility Index, October 2026, our data