AEO fundamentals

SEO vs AEO vs GEO: one table, one decision.

Three acronyms, two practices. SEO optimizes for a position in a list of links; AEO and GEO are the same job under two names — being the business an AI answer names. Ten rows that show exactly where they differ, five situations that say which to work on first, and links out for the depth.

Updated 2026-09-19

If you are holding all three terms at once, you want one table and one decision, not three essays. Here is the table. The decision is underneath it. And the honest summary fits in a sentence: SEO is the practice of winning a position in a list of links; AEO and GEOare the same practice — being the business an AI answer names — under a practitioner's name and a researcher's name respectively. Everything that follows is that sentence, row by row.

The table

What it optimizes for

SEO

A position in a list of links.

AEO

Being the business an AI answer names, cites or recommends.

GEO

The same as AEO — the name comes from a 2023 research paper rather than from practitioners.

Where the result appears

SEO

The organic results under the ads (and, increasingly, under an AI Overview).

AEO

Inside the answer: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini.

GEO

Same surfaces. The paper called them “generative engines.”

Who reads the output

SEO

A person scanning ten links and choosing one.

AEO

A person reading two to four names with reasons, often choosing without clicking.

GEO

Same.

What the machine reads about you

SEO

Your pages, your links, your technical health.

AEO

Your pages, plus everything written about you elsewhere, plus whether the search crawlers can reach you.

GEO

Same; the paper's evidence is that pages carrying quotations, statistics and citations get drawn into answers more.

What transfers from classic SEO

SEO

—

AEO

Indexing, readable pages, site health, being written about. Most of it.

GEO

Same.

What is genuinely new

SEO

—

AEO

Question-shaped pages, entity consistency across the web, crawler policy for search bots, measuring answers rather than rankings.

GEO

Same, with the paper's specific emphasis on evidence-shaped content.

How it is measured

SEO

Rank, impressions, clicks.

AEO

Mention rate, citation rate, position in the answer, competitors named — on a fixed question set, re-asked over time.

GEO

Same in practice; the paper used a position-adjusted word count and a model-scored impression.

Fastest honest indicator

SEO

Search Console, in days to weeks.

AEO

Bing standing after IndexNow submission — roughly 87% of ChatGPT's citations match Bing's top results (Seer Interactive, 2026), a correlation, not a mechanism.

GEO

Same.

Special markup required?

SEO

Structured data helps rich results.

AEO

No. Google states none is required for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Schema is for unambiguous parsing and must match the visible page.

GEO

No.

Who sells it under this name

SEO

Everyone, for twenty years.

AEO

Practitioners and tools focused on small and mid-size businesses; the name most owners search.

GEO

Researchers, enterprise vendors and agencies; the name most marketers search.

Descriptive rows are our reasoning. The Bing correlation is Seer Interactive's 2026 measurement; the markup statement is Google's own; GEO's origin and evidence are read directly from Aggarwal et al. (arXiv:2311.09735) on the linked page. No cost or time figures appear here — those live on the cost page with their sources.

Why the middle column exists at all

The reason a second practice appeared is not fashion. It is that the first one's prize moved. 48% of Google searches now return an AI Overview above the organic results (Similarweb, March 2026), and where one answers first there are 61% fewer organic clicks on searches where an AI Overview answers first (Similarweb, 2026). A ranking under an answer is a ranking most people never scroll to. Being in the answer became the prize, and a practice grew up around winning it. Two corners of the industry named it at once.

The decision, by situation

Yes

You rank well on Google and rarely appear in AI answers. The most common situation and the best one to be in: the foundation is done, and the answer layer is the work. Start with a scan to see which questions you are losing, then question-shaped pages and entity consistency.

It depends

You rank poorly and appear in no AI answers. Do the shared foundation first — indexed, readable, consistent, written about — because it serves both games and neither works without it. The answer layer follows in the same quarter.

Yes

You are a local service business. The answer layer favors you: local, specific questions have thin competition, and engines answer them from exactly the kind of page a local business can write in a week. Classic SEO for a national keyword does not.

It depends

You are a national brand with an SEO team. Keep the team; add measurement of answers to what it already measures, and treat the answer layer as the new top of the same funnel. The governance question — who may change the site — is usually the real blocker.

No

You are choosing between an AEO vendor and a GEO vendor. That is not a choice; it is a naming difference. Ask both the same three questions — which questions, which engines, do I see the answers — and choose on those.

  • One foundation serves all three names. Do it once.
  • One measurement — the same questions, re-asked — tells you which game you are losing. Run it before you buy anything.
  • One vocabulary question, answered: two practices, three words.

08 · FAQ

The three-way questions, answered once.

SEO vs AEO vs GEO — what is the actual difference?
There are two practices, not three. SEO optimizes for a position in a list of links. AEO and GEO both optimize for being the business an AI answer names — they are the same job under two names, one coined by practitioners and one by a 2023 research paper. Every row in the table on this page that compares AEO to GEO says 'same,' and that is the honest answer. The real decision is between the first practice and the second, and for most businesses the answer is both, in an order.
Is SEO dead?
No — it changed shape. 48% of Google searches now return an AI Overview above the organic results (Similarweb, March 2026), and where one answers first there are 61% fewer organic clicks on searches where an AI Overview answers first (Similarweb, 2026). That is not the end of search; it is search with a new layer on top that takes the clicks the links used to get. Being indexed and ranking is still the entry ticket to that layer on Google. What died is the assumption that the ranking is the whole prize.
Which should I invest in first?
The shared foundation, then the answer layer, then whichever surface your buyers actually use. The shared foundation — indexed, readable, consistent, written about — serves all three names at once and is not optional. The answer layer is where a small business gets the most for the least right now, because the questions are specific and the competition is thin. The five situations at the bottom of this page are the decision, situation by situation.
Do I need a different vendor for AEO and GEO?
No, and a vendor who tells you that you do is selling the vocabulary. Ask any vendor the same three questions regardless of the name on the door: which questions will you ask the engines about me, which engines, and will I see the actual answers or only a score. The name they use for the practice tells you about their marketing; the answers to those three tell you about the product.
Where does GEO's 'up to 40%' come from?
From the paper that coined the term — Aggarwal et al., posted November 2023, accepted to KDD 2024 — which tested nine content changes on a research benchmark and reported that its methods could boost visibility 'by up to 40%' in generative engine responses. The paper, its numbers as printed, and what it does not prove have their own page here, linked below. The short version: real quotations, real statistics and real citations helped; keyword stuffing scored below the baseline.
Does the work ever finish?
Not in the way an SEO campaign used to. 40–60% of the sources AI cites change every month (eMarketer, 2026), so the shortlist in an AI answer is recomposed constantly. That is bad news if you are in it and reason to start if you are not — and it is why the honest shape of this work is a standing measurement with fixes, not a project with a launch date.

Keep reading

AEO fundamentals

AEO vs SEO

What transfers, what's new, and which to work on first — without the 'SEO is dead' hysteria.

AEO fundamentals

AEO vs GEO

The acronym disambiguation page: what GEO means, who uses which term, and why the work is the same.

AEO fundamentals

GEO research

One paper, one benchmark, one results table — and what 'up to 40%' does and does not mean.

Costs & pricing

How much does AEO cost

The full price ladder — DIY, tools, software, agencies — with every number sourced and dated.

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