AI SEO, GEO and AEO Explained: What the Terms Actually Mean

One agency emails to say your business needs “GEO” now. A LinkedIn post insists the future is “AEO”. Someone else is selling “AI SEO”. And the person who looks after your website shrugs and says it’s all just SEO.

They’re mostly describing the same job: being a business that AI tools know about and mention when a customer asks for a recommendation. Google itself says optimising for its AI search is “still SEO”. Below is what each term means, where it came from, and what that means for a local business, including the questions to ask anyone selling them to you as separate services.

A word on bias before we start: Get Found sells AI SEO, so we have an interest in this topic. We’ll stick to what Google, Bing, OpenAI, Perplexity and the original research actually say.

What is AI SEO?

SEO (search engine optimisation) is the work of helping your business get found in search engines like Google. AI SEO extends that to the answers AI tools write. Here’s how we define it:

AI SEO (you’ll also hear GEO or AEO) is making sure AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews know who you are, trust you, and mention you when someone asks for a recommendation. It builds on good local SEO: consistent business details, genuine reviews, clear content that answers real questions, and a website AI crawlers can actually read.

AI Overviews are the AI-written summaries Google shows above its normal results for some searches. An AI crawler is the automated program an AI company uses to read websites.

“Mention you” is the goal, not a promise. Nobody controls what an AI tool says, and anyone who guarantees you a recommendation is guessing. The foundations in that definition are ordinary local SEO: an accurate Business Profile, genuine Google reviews and a website that explains what you do.

This article is about the words. For the practical side (how the tools find businesses, what helps, what to ignore and how to check where you stand), read our practical guide to AI SEO for local businesses.

The AI SEO terms in one table

Term	Stands for	Where the term comes from	What people usually mean
SEO	Search engine optimisation	The established industry term	Getting found in search engines such as Google, including Maps
AI SEO	A plain-English label rather than an acronym	Industry usage	Getting your business mentioned in AI-written answers (sometimes also using AI tools to do SEO work)
GEO	Generative engine optimisation	A 2023 research paper	Getting your content used and cited in AI-written answers
AEO	Answer engine optimisation	Industry and marketing usage; no clear origin	Much the same; some people also include featured snippets and voice-assistant answers
LLMO	Large language model optimisation	Industry usage	Much the same, named after the type of AI model behind tools like ChatGPT
AIO	AI optimisation, or AI Overviews	Industry shorthand	Either the work itself or Google’s AI summaries, so check which is meant

GEO: the one term with a clear origin

“Generative engine optimisation” has a traceable starting point. It comes from a paper called GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, written by researchers from Princeton University and IIT Delhi, with two independent researchers. It first appeared as a preprint in November 2023 and was accepted to KDD 2024, the Association for Computing Machinery’s annual data-mining conference.

The researchers assembled a benchmark of 10,000 search queries and tried different edits to web content to see which ones made that content show up more in AI-generated answers. Adding citations, quotations and statistics did best. Keyword stuffing offered little to no improvement.

You’ll often see the paper summed up as “GEO boosts visibility by up to 40%”. The figure is in the paper, but it needs three caveats before it means anything to a business owner:

• It was mostly a lab test. The main experiments used a simulated AI search engine the researchers built themselves, not ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews. A smaller test on Perplexity used a 200-question subset, with the source text uploaded as files rather than found on the live web.
• “Visibility” meant words in the answer. The paper measured how much of an AI answer was drawn from a source and where it appeared, not traffic, rankings, enquiries or sales.
• Results varied. The paper says the effect differed across subject areas. Lower-ranked sources gained most, and for the source already ranked first, some methods reduced visibility.

So the paper gave the practice a name and some useful early evidence about which edits helped in its tests. It didn’t prove that a GEO service will get your business named by ChatGPT. (Our generative engine optimisation page explains how we use its findings, without the hype.)

AEO: an industry term, not a new discipline

“Answer engine optimisation” has no equivalent paper behind it. It’s an industry term: trade press, consultancies and agencies use it for optimising content so AI tools quote or cite it. We couldn’t find a reliable source for who coined it or when, so treat any confident origin story with suspicion.

Some people use AEO more broadly, to include Google’s featured snippets (the boxed answer at the top of some results) and answers from voice assistants. Nobody owns the definition, so when someone says AEO, it’s fair to ask what they mean by it.

What Google and Bing say about GEO and AEO

Google’s guide to optimising for its generative AI features addresses both acronyms by name. It says AEO and GEO are terms you may see used for work focused on visibility in AI search experiences, and then gives its position:

“From Google Search’s perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.”

The same guide explains why. Google’s AI features are “rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems”, so ordinary SEO best practice still applies. It also tells site owners to prioritise effective SEO over “AEO/GEO hacks”, naming tactics such as llms.txt files and “chunking” content for AI as ones you can ignore for Google Search.

Bing’s position is similar. Its Webmaster Guidelines say Bing and Copilot search experiences rely on the same crawling, indexing and ranking foundation as traditional search, and that SEO best practices also support eligibility for AI-generated answers and citations.

Each speaks only for its own search engine, not for ChatGPT or Perplexity. But together they undercut the idea that AI search needs a separate discipline.

So what is actually different?

If it’s still SEO, is anything new? A little.

Being named matters more than being clicked. A customer who gets their answer from an AI summary may never reach the links below it. In a Pew Research Center study of 900 US adults, people clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits where an AI summary appeared, against 15% where none did. It’s a US snapshot, but it shows why being mentioned counts as well as being linked.

Google isn’t the only one reading your site, either. ChatGPT and Perplexity don’t publish how they choose which businesses to name, but they do publish how they find pages. ChatGPT can search the web and use location to find local results, and OpenAI says sites that block its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers”, according to its crawler documentation. Perplexity searches the web in real time, cites its sources with numbered links, and runs its own PerplexityBot crawler for its search results. Block these crawlers and you make it harder for those tools to show your pages, or rule out ChatGPT’s search answers altogether.

And AI answers can be wrong. OpenAI says ChatGPT’s search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated or incorrect, and Google’s AI Overviews help page says they “can and will make mistakes”. An AI tool can only repeat what it finds, so out-of-date details about your business are a live risk.

So there are a few genuinely new checks, and none of them needs a new acronym. For what to do about each, see our guides on appearing in Google AI Overviews and why ChatGPT recommends your competitor.

Why you’re being sold three acronyms

If the work overlaps this much, why so many labels? The Reuters Institute’s 2026 journalism and technology predictions forecast more digital marketing agencies “repurposing their services to include AEO and GEO”. It’s only a forecast, but it explains the emails.

A Forrester analyst made a related point in a November 2025 blog post, arguing that the specialist software firms popularising these acronyms tend to exaggerate SEO and AEO’s differences, and describing AEO as “significantly, but not fundamentally, different” from SEO. It’s one analyst’s opinion, though a useful corrective. Put plainly, a new label is easier to sell than more of the same SEO.

Using the words GEO or AEO isn’t a warning sign in itself; the label just tells you very little. If someone offers GEO or AEO as a separate service, ask:

• What will you do under this label that isn’t part of good SEO?
• How will you measure it, and over how many checks? AI answers change from one day to the next, so a single screenshot proves little.
• Are you guaranteeing I’ll be recommended? If yes, walk away.
• Do I need to pay for SEO and GEO and AEO, or is it one piece of work?

Quick answers

Is AI SEO called GEO?

Often, yes. AI SEO, GEO, AEO and LLMO are all used for making a business visible in AI-written answers. GEO is the term with an academic origin; AI SEO is the plainer label. Google treats all of it as “still SEO”.

Is AEO taking over SEO?

No. Google and Bing both say their AI search features rest on the same foundations as ordinary search, so AEO work sits on top of SEO rather than replacing it. What has changed is where customers see you and how you check it.

Do I need separate GEO and AEO services?

For a local business, it’s unlikely. The work behind every label here comes down to the same foundations: a site search engines and AI crawlers can read, clear content, accurate business details and a complete Google Business Profile. Google says Business Profiles can help your products and services be visible in both AI responses and ordinary search results. That’s one piece of work, whatever it’s called, and it’s how we approach answer engine optimisation: as part of AI SEO, not an extra.

Where to go from here

If you want to do it yourself, start with the practical AI SEO guide linked near the top of this article, which walks through the steps in order.

If you’d rather have help, Get Found has 22 years’ experience and works with businesses across the UK from Worcester and Stockport, with no long contracts. Our free visibility audit checks where you appear on Google, on Maps and in the main AI tools, including asking those tools about your trade and town. You can read more about our AI SEO service or get in touch.