SEO, AEO and GEO: what they are and how they differ

SEO, AEO and GEO are three kinds of optimization that do not compete, they stack: SEO gets your site found and ranked on Google, AEO makes your content the answer that gets quoted, and GEO makes generative AI mention and recommend you by name. Solid SEO is the foundation for the other two.

What are SEO, AEO and GEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is optimizing your site to appear in search results such as Google's. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is getting search engines and assistants to quote you as the direct answer. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is getting an AI such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude to mention and recommend you when it answers.

They do not compete: they stack. SEO makes your site crawlable and indexed; AEO turns your content into answers that can be quoted; GEO consolidates who you are (your entity) so AI recommends you by name. This table compares them:

What is generative engine optimization?

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of making your brand and content easy for generative AI such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity to find, understand, cite and recommend when it writes an answer. It works on your entity (who you are) as much as on your pages.

The term was popularized by the paper by Aggarwal et al. (KDD 2024). The full technical definition and the three layers of work are in What exactly is GEO?.

What is GEO in LLM?

In the context of an LLM (a large language model, like the ones behind ChatGPT), GEO is the set of actions that influence whether the model mentions you when it answers. There are two routes: what the model retrieves live from the web (your HTML, structured data and llms.txt) and what it already knows about you from training (consistent mentions and data about your entity).

• Live retrieval: AI crawlers read your site. What matters is HTML that shows without JavaScript, valid structured data and a clear llms.txt.
• Model memory: what it learned in training. You influence it with consistent mentions and data about your brand in trusted sources.

What is the difference between GEO and AEO?

AEO aims to make your answer the one a search engine or assistant quotes directly for a specific question. GEO aims to make a generative AI mention and recommend you by name inside its own answer. AEO optimizes the answer; GEO optimizes the entity (who you are). In practice they overlap and are worked on together.

Example with a real question: “which AI agency do you recommend in Monterrey?”. With AEO, your page answers that question in its first lines and a search engine quotes it. With GEO, when ChatGPT builds its recommendation, it names your company. The first depends on how you write the answer; the second, on AI being clear about who you are.

The boundary is not official and many people use the two terms as synonyms. GEO is more common in the technical literature and AEO in blogs and commercial tools.

Which one do you need first?

• Your site is not crawled well or does not show up on Google: start with technical SEO.
• You have content but nobody quotes it: rewrite the answers with AEO (direct answer first, plus structured data).
• AI does not mention you or mixes you up with another company: work on identity with GEO.

Is GEO better than SEO?

No, it is complementary. SEO makes you findable and ranks your pages; GEO makes AI mention and recommend you. If your site cannot be crawled, GEO has little to work with; if your SEO is already solid, GEO adds the identity and citation layer.

Which one pays more depends on where your customer asks: if they search on Google, SEO weighs more; if they ask an AI, GEO does. Usually you need both, starting with the technical base.

Is SEO still worth it in 2026?

Yes. SEO is still the foundation: search engines still send traffic, and AI crawlers also read your site, so a crawlable, fast, well-structured site helps both. What changed is that SEO alone is no longer enough: it pays to add quotable answers (AEO) and presence in AI (GEO).

Solid SEO covers a good part of what GEO needs in its first layer: AI being able to read your site. If your content depends on JavaScript to show up, start there.

What are the 4 pillars of SEO?

There is no official list, but the most common breakdown is: technical SEO (Google can crawl and index your site), content (you answer what people search for), on-page SEO (each page is well structured) and off-page SEO, or authority (other sites mention and link to you).

Each pillar also serves AI:

1. Technical SEO. Crawling, indexing, speed, sitemap, canonical and HTML that can be understood without running JavaScript. For AEO and GEO: AI crawlers also read your HTML; if the content only appears with JavaScript, they may not see it.
2. Content. Answering search intent in depth with concrete data. For AEO: put the direct answer in the first lines under each question.
3. On-page SEO. Titles, descriptions, headings, internal links and structured data (schema). For AEO and GEO: they help the machine understand what each page is about.
4. Off-page SEO (authority). Inbound links, mentions, reviews and consistent profiles. For GEO: AI relies on consistent mentions and data about your entity (for example Wikidata and sameAs).

What does AEO mean in marketing?

AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. In marketing it means making your content the answer that a search engine, an AI summary or an assistant shows or says out loud when someone asks a question, before they click a list of links.

How it is done, in five keys:

1. Use your customer's real question as the heading.
2. Answer in the first 40 to 60 words under that heading.
3. Mark up the FAQs with structured data (FAQPage) that exactly matches what is visible on the page.
4. Back it up with concrete data: figures, names and dates.
5. Keep the update date visible and review the content again.

The full method is in What AEO is and how it differs from SEO and GEO (in Spanish).

Where to start

Before changing anything, measure where you stand: what AI says today when people ask about your business and who shows up instead. The AI visibility audit is free and needs no sign-up. If you would rather talk it through, message me on WhatsApp.

Irving Varela — Ph.D, PMP, PMI-CPMAI, PSM I Founder and Lead AI Consultant, Varela Insights · Monterrey, Mexico. View full profile →