What's the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
They aim at different spots on the same results page. SEO aims for a high ranking, AEO for the answer box or the spoken answer, and GEO for a mention inside an answer that AI writes.
Picture someone searching "how long does a new website take?". The ten blue links are SEO territory. The short answer quoted at the top, in a featured snippet or an AI Overview, is AEO. And when the same person asks ChatGPT "which agency builds websites fastest in Leicestershire?" and gets three names with a reason for each, being one of those names is GEO.
Our guides to AEO and GEO explain each term in full. This page is about how they compare, and what that means for where you spend your time.
- SEO: get the page crawled, indexed and ranked for the searches your buyers make.
- AEO: make one passage on that page the clearest, most quotable answer to a specific question.
- GEO: make your business the one AI tools name and cite, using your site and everything said about you elsewhere.
AEO vs SEO: which matters more?
Neither works well alone. AEO without SEO has nothing to stand on, and SEO without AEO leaves the answer to someone else.
Answer engines quote pages they already trust. Google's AI Overviews are built from Google's own search index, and ChatGPT search leans on Bing's results. If your page doesn't rank anywhere near the question, it's rarely the page that gets quoted.
But ranking isn't enough on its own any more. A page can sit in the top three and still lose the answer to a competitor whose page says the same thing in one clear sentence. That's the gap AEO closes.
Where does the work overlap?
Almost everywhere. Most of what helps one helps the other two, which is why the labels matter less than the work.
- Pages that search engines and AI crawlers can reach and read, with the key copy in the static HTML.
- One page per service or topic, with a clear focus.
- Specific facts: prices, timings, locations, what's included and how to start.
- Structured data that matches the words on the page.
- Trust: links, mentions, reviews and a track record that other sites back up.
What's actually different in the work?
Four things change as you move from SEO to AEO to GEO. None of them replaces what came before.
- The unit: SEO thinks in keywords and pages. AEO thinks in questions and passages. GEO thinks in buyer conversations and businesses.
- The format: AEO puts a one or two sentence answer straight after each question heading, so it can be lifted out whole.
- The sources: GEO puts far more weight on what other sites say about you, from comparison lists and directories to reviews, forum threads and press.
- The measure: SEO counts rankings and clicks. AEO counts answer appearances. GEO counts mentions, citations and how the answer describes you.
Do you need a separate agency for each?
No. Splitting them up usually means three teams editing the same pages with three different goals.
Because the work overlaps so much, it's cheaper and faster when one team owns the plan. The same rewrite that sharpens a service page for Google also gives an assistant a clear sentence to quote, and the same press coverage that earns links also gives AI tools a third-party source to check you against.
How do you cover all three, step by step?
These are the seven steps we work through, in order. Steps one to three are SEO. Four and five are AEO. Six and seven are GEO.
- Fix the foundations: indexing in Google and Bing, crawler access, page speed and key copy in the HTML.
- Build one page for each service and each big buyer question, with clear titles and internal links.
- Earn the rankings for those pages with useful depth and links from relevant sites.
- Rewrite headings as the questions people ask, and answer each one in the first one or two sentences.
- Add the specific facts and the structured data that back those answers up.
- Get mentioned where AI tools read: comparison lists, directories, reviews, forum threads and press.
- Measure all three every month: rankings and clicks, AI Overview appearances, and a fixed set of buyer questions run through the main assistants.
How do you measure SEO, AEO and GEO?
With three different scorecards, checked side by side. A month where rankings dip but AI mentions rise isn't a bad month.
For SEO, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools show rankings, impressions and clicks. For AEO, Search Console counts AI Overview and AI Mode appearances in its Performance report, and you can check featured snippets by hand. For GEO, run the same buyer questions in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot every month, and log who's named and which sources are cited.
What about AI SEO and LLM SEO?
They're more names for the same territory. AI SEO is the umbrella most people use, and LLM SEO puts the focus on how language models come to know a business.
If someone sells you AEO, GEO and AI SEO as three separate packages, ask what each one does that the others don't. The honest answer is usually very little.