AEO vs SEO vs GEO: What's Different and Do You Need All Three?

SEO, AEO and GEO in one sentence each

If you are asking "what is AEO?", or how GEO vs AEO vs SEO compare, start with these three definitions.

• SEO (search engine optimization) is making your pages easy for search engines to crawl, understand and rank, so they appear in the results list and get clicked.
• AEO (answer engine optimization) is getting your content used as the direct answer to a question: in a featured snippet, a Google AI Overview, a voice assistant reply or an AI chat answer.
• GEO (generative engine optimization) is getting your brand mentioned, cited and described accurately in answers written by generative AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Mode.

The terms arrived in that order. Google began showing featured snippets, short answers above the results, around 2014. Jason Barnard of Kalicube says he coined "answer engine optimization" in 2017, as voice assistants and answer boxes grew. "Generative engine optimization" was named in a November 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues at Princeton, Georgia Tech, the Allen Institute for AI and IIT Delhi. It found that adding quotations, statistics and cited sources to content could raise its visibility in AI answers by up to 40%. Google launched AI Overviews in the US in May 2024, which pulled all three ideas into the same results page.

AEO vs SEO

The difference is what counts as a win. In SEO, a win is a high ranking and a click. In AEO, a win is your content being the answer, whether or not anyone clicks.

That changes how you write. A page built for SEO might target a keyword and cover the topic in depth. A page built for AEO puts the answer to the main question in the first one or two sentences, in plain words, then adds the detail. A page that does both well is easy to rank and easy to quote.

It also changes what you measure. With over 80% of Google searches now showing an AI Overview, many people read the answer and never click. Your rankings can hold steady while your traffic falls. AEO asks a different question: was our content the one Google used? Our AI Overviews tracking guide covers how to check.

The two are closely linked. Google's AI Overviews only use pages from its normal index, so a page that fails at SEO cannot win at AEO on Google. But a good ranking does not guarantee you become the answer. Ahrefs found the share of AI Overview citations coming from top-ten pages fell from 76% to 38%, as Google started searching around each question rather than just for it.

AEO vs GEO

AEO and GEO overlap so much that many people use them as the same thing. The difference is mostly in emphasis.

• AEO grew out of featured snippets and voice search. It focuses on questions and answers: being the content an engine uses to answer "how", "what" and "why" questions.
• GEO grew out of generative AI. It focuses on brands: being named, cited and described accurately when an AI writes an answer, especially for "best", "vs" and "which should I choose" questions.

In practice, AEO is more about your content, and GEO is more about your brand. An AI can use your article to explain a topic and still recommend a competitor's product. Our article on why ranking on Google doesn't get you recommended by AI shows how that happens.

Side-by-side comparison

SEO vs AEO vs GEO at a glance

For a deeper look at how AI engines pick the passages they cite, see how AI search engines choose what to cite. For the core GEO playbook, see our GEO guide.

What Google says

On 15 May 2026, Google published its first guide to optimizing for its AI features, "Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search". It names AEO and GEO directly and says optimizing for generative AI search "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO," as Search Engine Journal reported.

The guide lists several things you do not need to do, according to SEJ and Frase's summary:

• No new machine-readable files, AI text files such as llms.txt, special markup or Markdown.
• No need to break content into small chunks; Google's systems can pick out the relevant part of a longer page.
• No need to write in a special style for AI or target every long-tail variation.
• No special schema markup is required for AI features, though structured data still helps with rich results.
• Chasing inauthentic brand mentions "isn't as helpful as it might seem."

And it lists what does matter: pages that are indexed and eligible for a snippet, solid technical SEO, good page experience, current Merchant Center and Business Profile data, and "non-commodity content", meaning original insight that an AI could not easily produce itself.

This is good, clear advice for Google. It is not the whole picture. The guide only covers Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude work differently. They often answer from what they learned in training rather than searching. They draw heavily on third-party sources for comparison questions. And each one favours different sites, which our article on the Fudan University study showed clearly.

Where the work really differs

If the foundation is shared, three things are genuinely different about AEO and GEO.

1. Measurement

SEO tools measure rankings and clicks. They cannot tell you whether your content was used in an AI Overview, or whether ChatGPT recommended you. For that you need to track answers directly, across engines, from each market you sell in, and over several runs, because AI answers change. Our article on multi-country tracking explains why one location is not enough.

2. Off-site work

SEO and AEO are mostly done on your own site. GEO is not. Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands found branded web mentions correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks. AI engines learn which brands belong to a category from how often they are discussed together across the web, on review sites, in forums, in industry articles and in comparisons. That makes GEO close to PR and reputation work, which our AI reputation article covers.

3. Rankings stop being enough

Rankings and AI mentions are related but not the same. Seer Interactive found Google page-one rankings correlated with GPT-4o brand mentions at about 0.65. But Chatoptic found the order of brands in ChatGPT matched Google's order at just 0.03. Ranking first tells you very little about being recommended first.

Do you need all three?

You need one programme that covers all three, not three separate teams or budgets. Here is how that looks for a mid-size company:

One search programme, three layers

The order matters. Fix the SEO base first, because it supports the other two. Then reformat your most important pages for AEO, which is usually quick. GEO is the slowest, because it depends on what others write about you, so start tracking early to see where you stand.

If you are deciding whether to hire for this, our guide to what an AI SEO agency does covers what to look for.

How to start

1. List your buyer questions. 50 to 100 questions your customers actually ask, from "what is" to "which is best for".
2. Check where answers appear. Which questions trigger an AI Overview? What do ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity say? Whose content and which brands appear?
3. Fix the SEO basics on the pages that should answer those questions: indexable, fast, clear, no duplicate content.
4. Rewrite for AEO. Put the direct answer in the first paragraph. Use specific facts, numbers and named sources. Follow with detail.
5. Work on GEO off-site. Get accurate listings on review and comparison sites, earn mentions in industry content, and keep your facts consistent everywhere.
6. Track answers, not just rankings. Re-check the same questions weekly, across engines and countries, and watch whether you are named, how you are described and who appears instead.

Step 6 is what LaCleo GEO does. It tracks your buyer questions across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity in 37 countries, shows how each answer describes you against competitors and with what sentiment, and gives a specific fix for each gap. Our SEO and GEO service covers all three layers, with a person reviewing every step.

Related reading on LaCleo

• GEO: why generative engine optimization is the new SEO
• How AI search engines choose what to cite
• LLM SEO explained
• Why ranking on Google doesn't get you recommended by AI
• How to rank in Google AI Mode
• GEO audit: what it is and how to run one

Statistics with sources

Figures used in this article, with the source and the caveat that applies

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between AEO and SEO?

SEO aims to get your pages ranked in the list of search results so people click through. AEO aims to get your content used as the direct answer itself, in a featured snippet, an AI Overview, a voice reply or an AI chat answer. SEO is measured in rankings and clicks; AEO is measured in whether your content is the answer, often with no click at all.

What is the difference between AEO and GEO?

They overlap heavily and many people use them as synonyms. AEO is the older term and centres on answering questions directly, including in featured snippets and voice search. GEO, named in a 2023 research paper, centres on generative AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and on being mentioned, cited and described accurately in their answers.

Is AEO replacing SEO?

No. Google's May 2026 guide says optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO, and that a page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear. Studies also link Google rankings to AI mentions: Seer Interactive found a correlation of about 0.65. AEO adds to SEO; it does not replace it.

What does Google say about AEO and GEO?

In its May 2026 guide, Google says optimizing for generative AI search "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO." It says no llms.txt file, special markup or schema is required, that content does not need to be split into chunks, and that original, non-commodity content will likely matter most. The guide covers only Google's own AI features, not ChatGPT or Perplexity.

Does a mid-size company need SEO, AEO and GEO?

It needs one search programme that covers all three, not three teams. The shared base of crawlable, indexed, clear and trusted content serves all of them. What differs is mostly measurement and off-site work: AEO and GEO need you to track answers and brand mentions across AI engines, and GEO in particular needs mentions and accurate listings on other people's sites.

How do I start with AEO?

List the questions your buyers ask, check which trigger AI Overviews or AI answers, and see whose content is used. Then rewrite your key pages so each answers its main question clearly in the first paragraph, with specific facts. Keep your SEO basics in place, and start tracking whether your content and brand appear in answers, not only in rankings.

Sources

Matt G. Southern, Search Engine Journal, "Google's new AI search guide calls AEO and GEO 'still SEO'", May 15, 2026. Frase, "AEO and GEO are still SEO: what Google's official AI guide actually says", June 2026. Google Search Central, "Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search", May 2026. Pranjal Aggarwal et al., "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", arXiv, November 2023; KDD 2024. Kalicube, "AIO, GEO, LLMO, AEO: the industry keeps renaming the methodology Jason Barnard coined in 2017". Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable, "Over 80% of Google searches have AI Overviews", October 2026. Seer Interactive, "What drives brand mentions in AI answers?", January 2025. Chatoptic, "Google ranking and ChatGPT visibility study", September 2025. Ahrefs, "AI Overview brand visibility factors (75K brands studied)", May 2025. Search Engine Journal, "Google AI Overview citations from top-ranking pages drop sharply". All figures verified November 2026.

Quotes from Google's guide are as reported by Search Engine Journal and Frase. Correlation studies show association, not cause, and each covers a limited set of queries or models. The origin of the term AEO is as stated by Kalicube.

This article is updated when Google or the major AI engines change their guidance. If you spot something that has moved, tell us and we will correct it.