What Is AEO? AEO vs GEO vs SEO Explained

One discipline, too many acronyms#

You will see four labels used for the same job. AEO (answer engine optimization) is common with marketers. GEO (generative engine optimization) comes from a 2023 research paper by Aggarwal and colleagues that coined the term and tested tactics on AI search. LLMO (large language model optimization) and AI SEO show up in agency pitches. Do not let anyone sell you four separate services. The work is the same: make your brand easy for AI systems to find, understand, trust and repeat.

This course uses AEO as the umbrella term. When a source uses GEO, we keep their wording.

Google's position: for Google, it is still SEO#

In May 2026 Google published a Search Central guide, “Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search.” Its message is blunt: optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO. Google's AI features are built on its core ranking and quality systems. To be eligible, a page must be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet.

The guide also says what you do not need: no special schema.org markup, no Markdown copies of pages, no new AI text files, and no chopping content into tiny chunks. It states that Google Search does not use llms.txt. What it does push is unique, first-hand, non-commodity content. Pages that only restate what already exists add little.

What is genuinely different outside Google#

Classic search returns a ranked list of links and lets the user choose. An answer engine reads sources for the user and writes one answer. Four things follow from that.

• Synthesis replaces the list. The user often reads the answer and never clicks. Your content can shape the answer without earning a visit.
• Citations are a small, rotating set. An answer may link a handful of sources, and the set changes from run to run. Being one of them is the new “page one.”
• Recommendations name brands directly. Ask “best invoicing tool for a five-person agency” and the engine names products. If you are not named, you are not considered, no matter where your page ranks in Google.
• Different engines, different pipes. ChatGPT search relies on OpenAI's own crawler, OAI-SearchBot, and on third-party search providers. Perplexity runs PerplexityBot. Claude runs Claude-SearchBot and draws on a search stack Anthropic doesn't fully document. Blocking or ignoring them has consequences Google's guide does not cover.

Classic SEO vs AEO at a glance#

From rankings to being cited and mentioned#

Here is the mental shift. In SEO you asked, “Where do I rank for this keyword?” In AEO you ask, “When someone asks this question, how often am I in the answer, and is my site one of the sources?” Ranking position barely exists in AI answers. Research by SparkToro and Gumshoe found that brand recommendation lists almost never repeat exactly across runs. You will learn to track how often you appear across many runs instead.

Two outcomes matter, and they are different. A mention is the engine naming your brand. A citation is the engine linking to your page as a source. You can be mentioned without being cited (the engine learned about you elsewhere) and cited without being recommended (your guide was useful, but a competitor got named). Track both.