SEO vs AEO vs GEO: What Is the Difference and Which Do You Need?
SEO decides which page you land on. It does not decide who an AI tool recommends. That is the whole difference, and it is why a business can sit on page one of Google and still never be named when a buyer asks ChatGPT who to hire. The two overlap, and we will show you where. We will also show you where they do not, and give you a 15-minute test to see which gap you have.
Quick answer
SEO (search engine optimisation) gets your pages to rank in lists of results on Google and Bing. AEO (answer engine optimisation) and GEO (generative engine optimisation) are two names, with fuzzy edges, for getting your business named and described correctly in answers from AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. You need SEO as the foundation. You need AI visibility work as well if your buyers ask AI before they buy. Test both to find your bigger gap.
What do SEO, AEO and GEO each mean?
There is no official rulebook for any of these. These are the working definitions most practitioners use.
- SEO is work to make your pages rank high in search results. You change page content, links and site health.
- AEO is work to be the answer a tool gives. Think answer boxes, voice replies and AI summaries.
- GEO is work to be named and described well in text that an AI model writes. Think ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.
Many people use AEO and GEO for the same thing. We call all of it AI search optimisation, because buyers do not care what the acronym is. They care whether you show up. We will use “AI visibility” below.
Common mistake: buying “GEO” from someone who cannot say what they will change on your site, or what they will measure. If they cannot explain the work in plain words, you are paying for a label.
How do SEO, AEO and GEO compare side by side?
The core difference is what you are trying to win. SEO wins a position in a list. AI visibility wins a mention inside an answer, and that mention depends on what the whole web says about you.
The three labels side by side. The bottom row is where most plans go wrong.
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in the list | Be the direct answer | Be named in an AI-written answer |
| Where you show up | Google and Bing results | Answer boxes, voice, AI summaries | ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity |
| Main levers | Pages, links, site health | Clear question-and-answer content | Facts and proof about you across the web |
| What you measure | Rankings, clicks, enquiries | Are you the one quoted? | How often you appear, and how accurately |
| Typical failure | Traffic that does not convert | Content that answers nothing specific | A brand AI cannot verify |
Why doesn’t ranking on Google mean AI recommends you?
Because AI tools build answers from different evidence than a ranking list uses. In August 2025, Ahrefs matched 15,000 long-tail prompts against Google’s and Bing’s results. For ChatGPT, only about 8% of in-text citations pointed to a page in Google’s top 10 for the same query. More than 80% of citations came from pages that did not rank anywhere for the original prompt. Perplexity was the most similar to Google at 28.6%.
The reason is “query fan-out”. An assistant does not search for your exact question once. It runs several related searches, merges the results, and favours pages that do well across them. A page that answers one sub-question well can be cited even though it does not rank for the main phrase.
Google’s own AI Overviews behave differently. An earlier Ahrefs study, cited in the same article, found 76% of AI Overview citations came from pages in the top 10.
How much each tool’s citations overlap with Google’s top 10. Different Ahrefs studies, so read the shape, not the decimals.
This matches what we see in audits. Keyword optimisation for SEO does not necessarily contribute to your AI visibility. SEO determines which page you land on. It does not determine the results of your AI recommendations.
Common mistake: showing your SEO report as proof you are fine on AI. Rankings, traffic and AI mentions are three different numbers. Track all three.
Where do SEO and AI visibility overlap?
They overlap on the foundation. Honest agencies will tell you that, and we will too. Google’s page on AI features says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, no special optimisations needed, and no need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup. Your page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. The advice is to write helpful, people-first content, keep important content as text, link your pages together and make sure structured data matches the visible text.
So for Google’s AI features, good SEO is most of the job. It is also the base for everything else:
- If a crawler cannot read your page, neither Google nor ChatGPT can use it.
- Clear headings, plain answers and a fast site help people and machines.
- Named authors and honest dates build trust in both.
Where they separate is proof from other people. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands in May 2025 and found brand mentions across the web correlated with Google AI Overview visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks. Ahrefs is clear that this is correlation, but it suggests that being talked about in the right places matters more than a link count. Peec AI’s analysis of about 30 million AI citations in the US in March 2026 found Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Forbes, G2, Yelp, Facebook, Medium and TechRadar at the top. Peec sells monitoring tools and every industry has its own favourites, but the point stands: AI cites plenty of places beyond your site.
What does each job look like on a Monday morning?
This is the part most articles skip. The three jobs involve different tasks.
| Task | SEO | AI visibility |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Check rankings and click-through for target phrases | Run 20 buyer prompts and log who is named |
| Tuesday | Fix page titles, internal links and speed | Fix facts that AI repeats wrongly, at their source |
| Wednesday | Publish a page for a target keyword | Publish a page that answers one buyer question directly, with a price or range |
| Thursday | Build links to key pages | Earn a mention or review on a site AI already cites in your category |
| Friday | Review traffic and enquiries | Review how often you appeared, and which tools named you |
If your agency’s weekly work looks like only the left column, you are buying SEO. That is fine, as long as the label on the invoice says so.
What does the research on “GEO” actually show?
Not much that is settled. A 2024 academic paper, accepted to the KDD conference, introduced the term and tested changes to content such as adding statistics, quotations and citations. The authors report visibility gains of up to 40% in their tests. That is a lab benchmark of generative engines, not a promise for your business, and “up to” is doing a lot of work. The practical lesson is modest and sensible: specific, evidence-backed content is easier for an AI tool to use than vague claims.
Be wary of anyone selling a guaranteed GEO result. AI answers vary so much that SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai found the same brand list came back less than 1% of the time across repeated runs in late 2025. Leading brands still appeared in 55% to 77% of answers in one category, so the useful measure is how often you appear, not where you rank in a single reply.
Which do you need first? A 15-minute test
Check both sides and compare. You do not need a tool.
- Google check (5 minutes). Search your three most valuable buyer phrases in a private window. Note whether you appear on page one.
- AI check (10 minutes). Open a logged-out ChatGPT window with search on. Ask the same three questions in plain buyer language, three times each. Note how many of the nine answers name you. Repeat in Perplexity if you can.
- Compare. Use the matrix below.
Where to start. Strength of your SEO basics on one axis, how much your buyers use AI on the other.
- Weak on Google, weak in AI. Start with SEO basics: crawlability, readable pages, one site, named authors. This fixes both at once.
- Strong on Google, weak in AI. This is a common case once a business has invested in SEO, and it is the gap most likely to cost you enquiries. Start with AI visibility: brand consolidation, proof, mentions, pricing clarity.
- Weak on Google, named in AI. Rare. Protect what you have and build the SEO foundation.
- Strong on both. Keep a monthly log and defend your position.
How much do your buyers use AI? Ask five recent customers how they found and checked you. Many will mention ChatGPT or Google’s AI summaries. Pew Research Center found in April 2025 that people who saw an AI summary on Google clicked a result link in 8% of visits, against 15% for those who did not. If a lot of your research happens before your site loads, the part of the job that AI visibility covers gets bigger.
Our order of work. When both are weak we go technical first, then content strategy, then off-site. Fix the site so it can be read, publish the answers buyers need, then earn mentions. We fix the site first, then we start driving people to it.
What should you ask an agency before you sign?
Use these. They separate real work from relabelled SEO.
- “What will you change on my site in the first 30 days, specifically?”
- “How will you test whether AI tools name us, and how often?” (Good answer: a set of buyer prompts, repeated runs, logged monthly. Bad answer: “we’ll monitor mentions”.)
- “Which tool do you use to measure, and is it a third party?” (You want measurement they did not build themselves.)
- “What will you do about proof from other sites?”
- “What will you not promise?” (If they guarantee rankings, citations or leads, walk away.)
Our own answer to number five: we cannot promise rankings, citations or revenue, and nobody honest can. We promise to measure the same way every month and to show you what moved. In the MVPs case study the starting point was a 0% AI citation rate and a #23 AI search rank, and the programme reached #2 on three of four platforms through sustained content, mention and trust work. It built up month by month.
Where should you go from here?
Run the test above, then work through our AI search optimisation checklist, which scores you out of 100 across seven areas. If you want to know what is stopping you today, read Why isn’t my business showing up in ChatGPT?. For the services themselves, see AI search optimisation and SEO.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO aims to rank your pages in lists of search results. GEO aims to get your business named and described well in answers written by AI tools. They share foundations such as crawlable pages and clear content, but GEO leans more on proof from other websites.
Is AEO the same as GEO?
Often, yes. People use the two names loosely and there is no official definition. Some say AEO is about direct answers and GEO is about how AI describes your whole brand. The work overlaps heavily.
Do I need SEO if I do AEO?
Yes. A page that cannot be crawled or understood cannot be used by Google or AI tools. Google also says there are no extra requirements for its AI features beyond the SEO basics.
Is SEO dead because of AI?
No. For Google’s AI Overviews, ranking pages still supply most of the citations, with 76% from the top 10 in one Ahrefs study. Click behaviour is changing, though. Pew found fewer link clicks when an AI summary appears.
Which should a small business do first?
Fix the SEO basics so your site can be read, then check whether AI names you. If you already rank but AI never mentions you, move straight to brand consolidation, proof and mentions.
How much does AI search optimisation cost compared with SEO?
It depends on the scope, so we do not publish a fixed price. Ask any provider for a 30-day work list and a measurement method before you agree a budget.
Sources
- Ahrefs, “Only 12% of AI Cited URLs Rank in Google’s Top 10 for the Original Prompt”, 11 August 2025.
- Ahrefs, “An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied)”, 26 May 2025.
- Google Search Central, “AI features and your website”.
- Peec AI, “Top domains cited by AI search: Analysis based on 30M sources”, March 2026.
- Pew Research Center, “Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results”, 22 July 2025.
- SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai, AI recommendation consistency study, as reported by Search Engine Journal, 30 January 2026.
- Aggarwal et al., “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, arXiv 2311.09735, accepted to KDD 2024.
Want us to do this for you?
We run SEO and AI visibility work together, because the two share a foundation and a measurement habit. Book a free call and we will show you where you stand on both.
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