What are GEO and AEO, and are they different from SEO?
GEO (generative engine optimisation) and AEO (answer engine optimisation) are new names for one aim: getting your business used and named when an AI such as Google AI Mode or ChatGPT writes an answer. Google says that for its own search this "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO" 2. Most of the work is old housekeeping. Three parts are new.
Two new acronyms, each with a monthly fee beside it
The agency proposal on Mr Kwok's desk has two lines he has never seen before: GEO, and under it AEO, each with a monthly fee. He runs an air-conditioner servicing firm in Kwun Tong, and asks what every owner asks: is this a new van, or the old van with a fresh coat of paint?
His website already does honest work: every district he covers, the price of a standard clean, a WhatsApp number someone answers. A few years ago customers typed three words into Google and phoned down the list. Now some type the whole job into Google AI Mode or ChatGPT and read what the AI writes back.
Who can service three split units in a Kwun Tong office this Saturday and quote me on WhatsApp?
Mostly it is the work he already paid for under a new name. Three parts really are new, and they are worth knowing before anyone sends an invoice.
GEO came out of a lab; AEO is an older habit with a new badge
GEO, generative engine optimisation, is work that makes a page more likely to be used and named when an AI writes an answer. The term comes from a paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, first posted in November 2023 and presented at KDD 2024 1.
AEO, answer engine optimisation, looks at the same moment from your page's side: is your paragraph the one lifted out as the answer? That habit is older than AI chat: Google introduced featured snippets (the answer box above the ordinary links) in January 2014, and wrote in 2018 that publishers shared tips on winning one 4. We found no reliable record of who first said AEO, or when.
| Label | The question it asks | Where the work lands |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Is my page found, ranked and clicked? | Google can find and store the page; clear titles; fast, useful pages |
| AEO | Is my paragraph the one lifted as the answer? | A direct answer under each customer question |
| GEO | Is my business named when an AI writes the answer? | Quotable facts with sources, the door open to AI crawlers, SEO underneath |
In practice the two new words are used loosely, often for the same thing, and Google files both under SEO 2.
The research rewarded proof and punished repetition
The paper's authors built 10,000 test questions, rewrote one source page per question in nine ways, and measured how much of the AI's answer each version won 1.
| Change made to the page | What the paper found |
|---|---|
| Citations, quotations or statistics added | Visibility up by as much as 40% |
| Quotations added, tested on Perplexity (another AI search tool) | 22% better than the unchanged page |
| Keyword stuffing (repeating the search words), tested on Perplexity | 10% worse than the unchanged page |
| Citations added to the page ranked fifth | Up 115%, while the top-ranked page lost 30% |
If you run a small firm, read the last row twice. The authors' reading: an AI that writes from what a page says leans less on backlinks (links to you from other sites), so a lower-ranked site has room 1.
The small print: most tests ran on an engine the authors built themselves. The paper measured rewritten text, not firms that won customers.
Google's verdict: for its search, this is still SEO
Google's guide for site owners is blunt: "From Google Search's perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO" 2. A page must be indexed (stored in Google's catalogue) and eligible to show with a snippet (the preview under a result), and "There are no additional technical requirements" 3.
Google even lists what you can ignore for its search: llms.txt files, "chunking" content into tiny pieces, rewriting just for AI, chasing inauthentic mentions. Structured data is not required either 2.
One switch is new: your site must be included in the generative AI features setting in Search Console (Google's free dashboard for site owners) 2. And Google speaks only for Google: ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot send their own crawlers (the robots that read websites for them).
Under the bonnet, three parts really are new
Being quotable. An AI lifts a paragraph, not a whole page. A paragraph that answers one question by itself, with no "as mentioned above", can be lifted whole.
Saying it plainly, with a source. The paper's best rewrites added evidence 1. For Mr Kwok, that means prices, districts, hours and licence numbers written as sentences, not locked inside a PDF or a photo.
Letting the right robots in. Each AI company sends its own crawler, and robots.txt (the file telling crawlers where they may go) treats each separately. Shut the wrong door and it costs you: OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot, its search crawler, "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers" 5.
None of this replaces the old engine. A page Google cannot index is out of the running for its AI answers too 3.
Three questions to ask before you pay for GEO
Which pages will change, and how? A good answer names them.
How will you measure it? An honest answer names a method, such as asking the AI a fixed set of customer questions each month and recording who is named.
What happens to the SEO? A plan that drops the basics of being found by Google to pay for GEO has sold the engine to buy the paint.
Treat any promise of citations with care: no AI company publishes the rule that decides what it cites.
A two-minute test you can run tonight
Open ChatGPT or Google AI Mode and type the job the way a customer would: one full sentence, with your district in it. Read which firms are named. One answer proves little, but it shows the shape of the gap.
Mr Kwok's site already does most of the old work. What it needs is a check against the three new parts. Our free scan runs that check on yours.
Questions people ask
What does GEO stand for?
Generative engine optimisation: work that makes a page more likely to be used and named when an AI writes an answer, in Google AI Mode, ChatGPT or Perplexity. The term comes from a research paper by Aggarwal and colleagues, presented at KDD 2024 1.
What does AEO mean?
Answer engine optimisation: writing a page so a paragraph of it is chosen as the answer, in an answer box, a voice reply or an AI summary. Google introduced featured snippets, its answer boxes, in 2014 4. We found no reliable record of when the term itself appeared.
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
In practice, little; the words are often used for the same work. Where a line is drawn, AEO is about your paragraph being lifted as the answer, and GEO about your business being named when an AI writes one. Google treats both as SEO 2.
Is GEO just SEO with a new name?
For Google Search, Google says so: it "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO" 2. Outside Google, three things are new: paragraphs that stand on their own, facts stated plainly with a source, and access for each AI crawler 5.
Can anyone promise that ChatGPT will cite my business?
No. The GEO paper measured average gains across a large set of test questions, not a result for any one site 1. You control the housekeeping and the three new parts; what to cite stays the AI's decision.
Next: Which AI crawlers should you allow in robots.txt, and which should you block?
Sources
- arXiv (KDD 2024), GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (Aggarwal et al.), 28 June 2024. Accessed 13 November 2026.
- Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, undated. Accessed 13 November 2026.
- Google Search Central, AI features and your website, undated. Accessed 13 November 2026.
- Google (The Keyword), A reintroduction to Google's featured snippets, 30 January 2018. Accessed 13 November 2026.
- OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers, undated. Accessed 13 November 2026.