Read enough agency websites about AI search and you'll notice something odd: some treat AEO and GEO as basically synonyms, describing identical work under two different labels. Others insist on a sharp distinction. Both camps aren't wrong exactly, the field is young enough that the vocabulary hasn't fully settled, and pretending otherwise just adds confusion to an already confusing space. Here's the version that's actually useful.
Where the Terms Genuinely Overlap
All three disciplines, SEO, AEO, and GEO, share a foundation: crawlable, well-structured, authoritative content that a system, human search engine or AI model, can find and trust. The content interventions that help one often help the others. This is exactly why some agencies fold them into one service line rather than three, and it's a defensible position, not laziness.
Where a Useful Distinction Exists
SEO targets ranking in traditional blue-link search results. Success looks like a position on a results page, measured by rank tracking and organic clicks.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) targets extraction, being lifted verbatim or near-verbatim as a direct answer by systems like Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and voice assistants. The core technique is a tight, self-contained answer block a system can lift cleanly. Success looks like appearing as the surfaced answer for a specific query.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) targets synthesis, being cited as a source inside a broader, generated answer from systems like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini that construct a response from multiple sources rather than lifting one passage. Success looks like citation frequency across tracked queries, not a single ranking position.
The practical difference: AEO is closer to featured-snippet optimisation applied across more surfaces. GEO is closer to building the kind of topical authority and citation-worthy content that gets referenced when a model is synthesising an answer from several sources at once.
A concrete way to feel the difference: a well-formatted extraction block, a tight 40-60 word direct answer right after the H1, is an AEO technique aimed at a specific query. A quarterly proprietary research report with original data is a GEO asset, it doesn't answer one specific question, it becomes a source multiple AI models reach for across many related questions over time.
Why This Matters Less Than the Label Suggests
In practice, most serious programmes run all three together, because the technical foundation (crawlability, structured data) and much of the content strategy (statistics, named expertise, authoritative citations) serve all three simultaneously. Our own SEO/GEO/AEO work is built around exactly this integration rather than treating them as three separate purchases.
Where the distinction earns its keep is in measurement and prioritisation: knowing that AEO wins are trackable per-query and often faster to show up (2-8 weeks), while GEO citation-building compounds more slowly but persists differently once a model's associations with your brand solidify, helps set realistic expectations for what a programme delivers and when.
What to Actually Ask an Agency
Skip the terminology debate entirely and ask about outcomes: which specific platforms do they track and optimise for, how do they measure success on each, and can they show real citation results, not just a description of their process. An agency that answers that concretely understands the substance regardless of which label they put on the service.
FAQ
Are AEO and GEO actually the same thing?
They overlap heavily and some agencies use the terms interchangeably, but there's a useful distinction: AEO focuses on extraction, being lifted as a direct answer by systems like Google AI Overviews and Perplexity. GEO focuses on generative synthesis, being cited as a source inside an AI model's constructed answer, as with ChatGPT or Claude. The underlying content quality that earns both overlaps significantly.
Does traditional SEO still matter if we're focusing on AEO/GEO?
Yes, it's the foundation the other two sit on top of. AI crawlers still need to successfully crawl and parse your site, exactly like traditional search bots, and domain authority built through traditional SEO continues to influence whether AI models trust a source enough to cite it. AEO and GEO are additive layers, not replacements.
Why do different agencies define these terms differently?
Because the field is genuinely new enough that terminology hasn't fully standardised yet. Some agencies use AEO as an umbrella term covering all AI search optimisation. Others treat GEO as the umbrella and AEO as one tactic within it. Neither is objectively wrong, ask any agency to define their specific usage rather than assuming a shared vocabulary.
Which term should I use when hiring an agency?
Don't lead with the label, lead with the outcome: being cited by ChatGPT, appearing in Google AI Overviews, showing up in Perplexity results. A genuinely capable agency will map that outcome to specific tactics regardless of which term they use to describe their service.