By A10 Digital. Published .
SEO helps your website rank in search results. AEO helps you become the direct answer to a question. GEO helps AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s AI results find and recommend you. They overlap heavily, and good SEO is the foundation of the other two.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the work of helping a website appear in search results when people look for what it offers. It covers the technical health of the site, the content on its pages, and the signals of trust around it, such as links and reviews.
What is AEO?
Answer engine optimisation, or AEO, is about being the direct answer. When Google shows a short answer above the results, or a voice assistant reads one out, that answer was taken from a page that stated it clearly. AEO is the practice of writing and structuring pages so they can be used that way.
What is GEO?
Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, is the newest of the three. It is the work of making a business easy for generative AI tools to find, understand and reference. These tools do not show a list of links. They write an answer, and may name only a few businesses in it.
How do GEO, SEO and AEO differ?
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where you appear | Search results | Direct answers and voice results | AI assistants and AI search results |
| What it rewards | Relevant, trusted pages | Clear, short answers to questions | Consistent facts about your business across the web |
| How it is measured | Visits and enquiries from search | Whether your answer is the one shown | Whether AI tools mention you |
Do you need all three?
For most businesses they are one piece of work, not three. AI tools draw largely on the same web that search engines do. So the order matters: get the SEO foundations right, write pages that answer real questions plainly, and keep your business details consistent wherever they appear.
What changes with GEO and AEO is the emphasis. Vague marketing language gives an AI tool nothing to quote. A plain statement of what you do, where, and for whom gives it everything it needs. Schema markup is one way to state those facts in a form machines can read.
Is SEO being replaced?
No. AI answers are built from web pages. A business with weak SEO has little for an AI tool to find. What is changing is how many people get their answer without clicking, in AI Overviews and in Google AI Mode, which makes being named in that answer more valuable.
Related service: GEO and AEO from A10 Digital.