AI search
SEO vs AEO vs GEO: what is the difference and which one matters?
Three acronyms, one goal. A clear comparison of traditional SEO, answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization.
New acronyms appear every year, which makes it easy to feel behind. Here is a plain comparison.
SEO: search engine optimization
The practice of helping pages rank in search engine results. It covers technical health, content, links and user experience. The outcome is a click from a results page.
AEO: answer engine optimization
Optimising content so it can be used as a direct answer: featured snippets, voice assistants and AI answer boxes. It favours concise, well-structured answers to specific questions.
GEO: generative engine optimization
Optimising for AI systems that generate answers from many sources, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. The outcome is being cited or mentioned inside the generated response.
How they overlap
- All three reward clear, trustworthy, well-organised content.
- All three depend on crawlable, fast pages.
- Structured data helps all three. See the schema markup guide.
How they differ
- Success metric: SEO measures rankings and clicks. AEO and GEO also look at mentions, citations and share of answers.
- Format: SEO pages can be long. Answer-focused content leads with a short, direct answer. See answer-first content.
- Competition: an answer may cite only a few sources, so being picked matters more than being tenth.
What to do
Treat SEO as the foundation, then layer on answer-first structure, entity consistency and AI crawler access. Our AI search optimization and SEO services work together for this reason.
Frequently asked questions
Should I stop doing SEO and focus on GEO?
No. GEO builds on SEO. If your pages are not crawlable, fast and useful, AI systems will not use them either.
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- #GEO
- #AI search
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