SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the work of ranking a page in a list of search results.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) is the work of becoming the source an answer engine quotes when it responds to a question. The output is a citation, not a position.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) is used almost interchangeably with AEO. Where a distinction is drawn, GEO refers specifically to visibility inside generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, while AEO also covers featured snippets and other answer formats that predate generative AI.
In practice, the three overlap heavily. A page must usually rank before it can be cited, so AEO and GEO are largely SEO plus an extraction discipline plus per-platform measurement.
Let us be honest about the acronyms
A great deal of what is being sold as AEO and GEO is SEO with a new invoice.
Here is what is genuinely new:
The output is a citation, not a click. In AI Mode, roughly 93% of sessions end without a click. The mention is the outcome. That genuinely changes what you are optimising for and how you report it.
Extraction is a separate skill from ranking. A page can rank first and never be quoted. Writing self-contained, liftable passages is a real discipline that most content teams do not have.
Measurement is per-platform, and the platforms barely correlate. With 91% of cited URLs appearing in only one LLM, there is no single visibility to win.
Bing suddenly matters. ChatGPT search is Bing-backed. Most agencies have ignored Bing for a decade and it now gates access to a platform with hundreds of millions of monthly users.
Here is what is not new:
Technical SEO. Crawlability, indexation, rendering, speed, schema. All of it still applies, unchanged.
Content quality and depth. Still decisive.
Authority and entity. Named authors, real credentials, real citations. This mattered before and it matters more now.
Links. Still how authority is established.
So roughly 80% of AEO is SEO. The 20% that is new is extraction discipline, per-platform measurement, and Bing.
Anyone selling you AEO as a fundamentally new discipline at a new price is repackaging. Anyone telling you nothing has changed has not looked at the click data.
A working comparison
| SEO | AEO / GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in the list | Be the cited source |
| Output | A click | A citation, and sometimes a click |
| Primary KPI | Position, click-through rate | Citation rate, mention rate |
| Where it happens | The SERP | Inside the generated answer |
| Requires ranking? | Yes | Yes, almost always |
| Requires extractable writing? | Helps | Decisive |
| Measured how? | Rank tracker, GSC | Per-platform LLM tracking, plus GSC and Bing |
| Platform correlation | One Google | Six engines, weakly correlated |
What actually changes in the work
Writing changes most. The answer moves to the first 90 words. Sentences become self-contained. Headings become questions. Transitions get cut. This is the biggest practical change and it is a writing problem, not a technical one.
Technical work gains three additions. Bing indexation. AI crawler permissions in robots.txt. Server-side rendering of anything you want quoted.
Measurement changes completely. Per-platform citation tracking rather than a single rank. And an honest baseline, because AI answers vary run to run and a small sample is noise.
Reporting changes. Add an AI visibility section. Almost nobody is doing this yet, and being the agency that shows a client whether ChatGPT recommends them is a retention advantage available today for the cost of one dashboard panel.
Off-page changes in emphasis. Being in the roundups, comparison posts and Reddit threads that LLMs synthesise from matters more than it did, because that is where the model actually looks when it is asked who is best.
Should agencies sell AEO as a separate service?
We would not, and we do not.
Most of the work is technical SEO and content quality. Repackaging existing work as a new discipline at a new price is the sort of thing that gets found out, and it deserves to be.
What we would do instead: include AI visibility in the SEO scope, do the extraction work as standard, measure per platform, and report it monthly.
That is honest, it is defensible on a call, and it is a genuine differentiator right now, because almost nobody is reporting it.
→ White-label SEO · White-label SEO reporting
What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimisation: the work of becoming the source an answer engine quotes when responding to a question. The output is a citation rather than a ranking position.
What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimisation: visibility inside generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. It is used almost interchangeably with AEO.
What is the difference between AEO and SEO?
SEO optimises for a position in a list of links. AEO optimises for being quoted inside a generated answer. They overlap heavily, because a page must usually rank before it can be cited, but ranking alone does not make content extractable.
Is AEO just SEO with a new name?
Roughly 80% of it is SEO. What is genuinely new is that the output is a citation rather than a click, that extraction is a distinct writing discipline, that measurement is per-platform across weakly-correlated engines, and that Bing now gates ChatGPT visibility.
Should I sell AEO as a separate service?
We would not. Most of the work is technical SEO and content quality. Include it in the SEO scope and report it, rather than charging separately for work you were already doing.
Can AEO work without SEO?
No. Answer engines retrieve from search indexes. A page that cannot rank cannot be a candidate for citation.
Still Have Questions on Your Mind?
Contact our support team and we’ll guide you every step of the way.