AEO vs GEO: what's the difference, and where does SEO fit?

Why you'll find two opposite answers

Search this question and you'll meet two camps. One says AEO and GEO are separate disciplines — AEO for featured snippets and voice answers, GEO for chat assistants. The other says they are two names for one job. Both have a point, because people use the terms in different ways.

The useful view sits in the middle. The tactics overlap heavily, and the result you care about is the same: whether AI answers name your brand. That result is your AI visibility, and you can measure it whatever you call the work behind it.

Where AEO and GEO come from

Answer engine optimization is the older term. It was used for featured snippets, “People also ask” boxes and voice assistants — places where a search engine lifts one answer from one page. As AI assistants arrived, the name stretched to cover them too. The full picture is in our guide to answer engine optimization.

Generative engine optimization has a clear starting point. The term comes from a 2023 research paper, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, by Pranjal Aggarwal and co-authors, presented at KDD 2024. It studied how changes to content affect its visibility in generative engine responses, and the authors reported gains of up to 40% in their tests. The name has since moved from research into marketing — see generative engine optimization for what the practice covers today.

The difference between AEO and GEO in practice

Where people do draw a line between the two, it usually runs along five points. Treat them as tendencies, not rules.

• Answer shape. AEO optimizes for the short answer: a question, a two- or three-sentence reply, a list or a table that can be lifted whole. GEO optimizes for synthesis: enough depth and specifics that a model can build its own answer from your material.
• Query type. AEO fits direct questions with one right answer — what is, how long, how much. GEO fits open questions — which is best for, X or Y, what should I use — where the engine weighs options.
• Surface. AEO grew up on search engines: snippets, voice results and now Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. GEO is usually aimed at chat assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude.
• Signals. AEO leans on the structure of your own pages. GEO also leans on the wider web — reviews, comparisons, press and forums that describe your brand.
• Outcome. AEO asks whether your page supplies the answer. GEO asks whether your brand appears in the answer, and how it is described.

Most real questions blur these lines. “Best accounting software for freelancers” is a direct question and an open one at the same time. That is why most teams end up doing both, whichever label they use.

One question, seen three ways

Take the question “What's the best accounting software for freelancers?” and look at it through each lens. The work overlaps more than the labels suggest, but each lens checks a different thing.

• SEO: does your “accounting software for freelancers” page rank for that keyword, and does the result earn clicks?
• AEO: does the page open with a short answer an engine can lift — who the product suits, what it costs, one plain verdict — and does a snippet or an AI Overview use it?
• GEO: when ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity answer, is your brand named, is it recommended, and is it described the way you would describe it? Do the reviews and comparisons behind the answer mention you at all?

SEO vs AEO vs GEO

The three-way comparison adds the layer the other two depend on. SEO earns rankings and clicks on a results page. AEO and GEO earn a place inside the answer — often with no click at all. The table after the article puts all three side by side.

SEO is not optional in this picture. According to Google's guidance on AI features, a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and nothing special is needed beyond that. Assistants that search the web need crawlable pages too. The line between the first two gets its own page: AEO vs SEO.

Other names for the same work

AEO and GEO are not the only labels. You'll also see LLM SEO, LLMO, AI SEO and AIO. Each stresses something different — the model, the search feature, the AI layer — but they point at the same answers.

When a plan or proposal uses any of these names, ask two questions. Which AI answers should change? And how will we see that they did? A plan that can't answer the second one is hard to judge.

Which should you focus on first?

Don't pick by acronym. Pick by where your buyers ask and what they ask.

• If your buyers start on Google, put the AEO side first: answer-first sections, clean structure and the pages Google already ranks. Our guide on how to rank in AI Overviews covers Google's answers.
• If your buyers ask chat assistants, put the GEO side first: comparison and “best for” pages, specific facts, and mentions on the sites those assistants cite.
• If you don't know, find out before you plan. Put the questions your buyers ask to each engine and see who gets named.
• Either way, keep SEO healthy. It feeds both.

How to check whether AEO or GEO is working

The same test works for both. Write down the questions a buyer would ask — not keywords, full questions. Put each one to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and to Google's AI features if they matter to you. Ask more than once, because answers vary between runs.

Then record four things: whether your brand is mentioned, whether it is actively recommended, where it sits among the brands named, and whether the engine cites a source about you. Note which competitors appear instead. Being mentioned is not the same as being recommended, so keep the two apart. The exact definitions are on the AI visibility page.

Our free AI visibility checker puts up to 20 of your questions to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity and e-mails you one report with the results. Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Claude and Microsoft Copilot can be added as paid add-ons. If you want to track the same questions over time — monthly reports, more brands or more engines — write to info@llamat.com about a custom solution.