SEO vs AEO vs GEO in plain English

The three terms side by side

	SEO	AEO	GEO
Goal	Rank in search results	Be the answer on the page	Be named in an AI answer
Where	Google and Bing results	Featured snippets, AI Overviews, voice	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot
Buyer sees	A list of links	One answer, often with a link	A written reply naming brands
Measure	Rankings, clicks, enquiries	How often you are the answer	How often you are named

SEO aims at the list of results on Google or Bing, so that people click through to your site.

AEO aims at the answer that sits above the links. Google describes featured snippets as special boxes where the format of a regular search result is reversed, with the descriptive snippet shown first. AI Overviews are another: at Google I/O in May 2026, Google said AI Overviews had over 2.5 billion monthly active users and AI Mode had passed 1 billion.

GEO aims at AI assistants that write an answer from several sources. The term comes from a research paper, "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, first posted in November 2023 and accepted to the KDD 2024 conference. It called GEO "the first novel paradigm to aid content creators in improving their content visibility in generative engine responses". For scale, OpenAI said in March 2026 that ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly active users.

The lines blur: AI Overviews are written by AI, so some people file them under GEO.

Where SEO, AEO and GEO overlap

• Your pages have to be found. Google says there are no extra requirements or special optimisations needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show in Google Search with a snippet, and SEO best practices remain relevant. OpenAI says sites that opt out of its OAI-SearchBot crawler will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.
• Your pages have to say clearly what you do. In our weekly We asked ChatGPT runs, the brands named most often usually had pages saying, in plain words, who they serve and where. More on that in Why ChatGPT recommends your competitors and not you.
• Other sites have to mention you. In our runs, ChatGPT's answers cited round-up lists, directories and news sites as well as the brands' own pages.

What's different in practice

The result looks different. SEO earns you a link in a list. AEO earns you a quoted answer. GEO earns you a mention inside a written reply, sometimes with a link.

AI answers move around. When we asked ChatGPT for the best employment law firm in the UK for a small business, it named 14 different firms across five asks, and no firm came up every time. For accounting software in India, it gave the same four names in all five asks.

Outside sources can matter a lot. When we asked about accounting firms in Dubai, all six firms ChatGPT named were in the top 10 of one local business blog's list, and ChatGPT showed that site as a source in every answer. People's posts can count too, as we cover in Does LinkedIn help you show up in ChatGPT? Sources also change by market, as our GEO agency in Dubai guide shows.

How each one is measured

SEO: where you rank for your buyers' searches, the clicks you get and the enquiries they bring. Google Search Console shows clicks and impressions.

AEO: whether your page is the one quoted in the answer box or linked in an AI Overview. Google counts sites that appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode in the overall search traffic in Search Console, under the "Web" search type in the Performance report.

Clicks tell only part of the story. In a Pew Research Center study of 900 US adults' browsing in March 2025, people who saw an AI summary on Google clicked a regular search result in 8% of visits, against 15% for those who did not see one. They clicked a link inside the summary in 1% of visits.

GEO: how often an assistant names you across several asks, and which sources it cites. You can test it by hand with our 5-minute check. Bing Webmaster Tools also added an AI Performance report, in public preview, in February 2026 that counts how often your pages are cited as sources in Microsoft Copilot and AI summaries in Bing.

Which one should a small business start with?

Start with the shared base, then add what fits how your buyers search.

• Make sure you can be found. Check that Google and Bing can index your site, and that you haven't blocked AI crawlers by accident.
• Write pages that say who you help, where, and roughly what it costs. These can help with all three.
• Answer common buyer questions near the top of the page. A short, direct answer is easy for a reader, or a tool, to quote.
• Then check whether AI assistants name you. If your buyers ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for recommendations, test those questions. If they mostly use Google, SEO and AEO are likely to matter more for now.

FAQ

What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO? SEO is about ranking in search results. AEO is about being the answer shown in featured snippets, AI Overviews and voice assistants. GEO is about being named or cited by AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini.

What is the difference between AEO and GEO? AEO aims at one answer shown on a search page or read out by a voice assistant. GEO aims at the written replies of AI assistants, which often name several brands. Google's AI Overviews sit somewhere between the two.

Is GEO the same as SEO? They share a base, and Google says SEO best practices remain relevant for its AI features. GEO adds its own goal, being named in AI answers, and its own measure, how often you are named across several asks.

Can anyone promise a place in ChatGPT's answers? No. Answers change from one chat to the next, and no agency can control what an assistant says, so be wary of anyone who promises a top spot.

Check where you stand

Want to know where you show up today, in Google and in AI answers? Run our free AI visibility checker. If you'd like help with SEO, AEO and GEO together, see our AI Search service.