GEO vs AEO vs SEO: what each one means and which you need

What is GEO?

GEO, or generative engine optimization, is the work of getting your content used and cited in answers that an AI model writes. The term comes from a 2023 paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and five co-authors, accepted to the KDD 2024 conference. It describes generative engines as tools that answer a question by "synthesizing information from multiple sources and summarizing them using LLMs".

The paper's point is that a site owner has little say over this. In its words, content creators "have little to no control over when and how their content is displayed". The authors tested changes to source pages on a benchmark of queries and report that "GEO can boost visibility by up to 40% in generative engine responses". They also found that what works differs by subject, so there is no single GEO recipe.

In practice, GEO covers three things: being in the sources an AI tool reads, being named in its answer, and being the linked citation under it.

What is AEO?

AEO, or answer engine optimization, is the work of making your page the answer itself rather than one link in a list. Before AI chat tools, it mostly meant Google's featured snippets, the boxes that show an answer above the results, and voice assistants that read one answer aloud. Google describes a featured snippet as a box where "the format of a regular search result is reversed, showing the descriptive snippet first".

Today AEO and GEO name the same goal: being the answer when someone asks an AI tool. Google's own guide puts them side by side as "terms you may see used to describe work specifically focused on improving visibility in AI search experiences". If there is a difference, AEO leans on clear question-and-answer pages, and GEO leans on how often AI answers name and cite you.

GEO vs AEO vs SEO compared

What Google says about AEO and GEO

Google's answer is that you do not need a separate playbook for its AI features. Pages in AI Overviews and AI Mode come from the normal search index, and the same rules decide whether a page can be shown.

From Google's documentation:

• A page must be indexed and allowed to show a snippet. For AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google says: "There are no additional technical requirements."
• No special files are needed. Google says you "don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features", and that Google Search ignores llms.txt files.
• Traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in Search Console's Performance report, under the "Web" search type. It is not split out as its own report.

ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude run their own search crawlers, so they need a check of their own.

How AI answer engines find your pages

An AI tool can only cite a page its crawler is allowed to read. Each engine names its search crawler separately from the crawler it uses for training, so you can allow one and block the other.

• ChatGPT: OpenAI says OAI-SearchBot "is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features", and that sites that block it "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers". GPTBot is the separate crawler for model training.
• Perplexity: PerplexityBot "is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity", and Perplexity says it is not used to crawl content for training.
• Claude: Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot "may reduce your site's visibility and accuracy in user search results". ClaudeBot is the crawler that collects training data.

So the first GEO check is your robots.txt and your CDN or firewall rules. Our guide to auditing AI crawler permissions walks through it.

What GEO tools measure

A GEO tool asks AI engines a set of prompts on a schedule and records whether your brand is named, linked or left out. CitedIndex lists 136 AI visibility tools and agencies. Here is what they cover, from our own datasheets on 23 October 2026:

• 128 of the 136 track answers in ChatGPT.
• 98 track Perplexity.
• 98 track Gemini.
• 91 track Google AI Overviews.
• 64 track Claude.
• 55 track Google AI Mode.
• 39 track Microsoft Copilot.

Beyond tracking, 111 of them also help you change your content, and 72 cover technical AEO work such as schema and crawler access.

ChatGPT is covered almost everywhere. Copilot and Claude are not, so check those engines first if your buyers use them. To compare tools on engines, price and update speed, see the best AI visibility tools. For how to read the numbers these tools report, see how to measure AI share of voice.

Which one do you need?

Most sites need all three, in this order: SEO, then clear answers to the questions your buyers ask, then tracking.

• If your pages do not rank on Google yet: Start with SEO. AI Overviews and AI Mode draw from the same index, so there is nothing for them to cite.
• If buyers ask questions before they buy: Write clear answers to those questions, one per section, with the answer in the first sentence. That is AEO, and it helps every engine.
• If buyers ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for a shortlist: Check that OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot can read your site, then track how often you are named with an AI visibility tool.
• If you want someone to do the work: Compare agencies that do GEO and AEO on what they publish about their AI search results.

Sources

Every outside page below was read on 23 October 2026.

1. Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD 2024 arxiv.org
2. Google Search Central, Optimizing for generative AI search developers.google.com
3. Google Search Central, AI features and your website developers.google.com
4. Google Search Central, Featured snippets and your website developers.google.com
5. OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI crawlers developers.openai.com
6. Perplexity, Perplexity crawlers docs.perplexity.ai
7. Anthropic, How Anthropic crawls the web support.claude.com
8. CitedIndex, how we research and rank listings