Learn About AEO, GEO, and SEO

You'll hear a lot of names for search work: SEO, AEO, GEO, AI SEO. If you're deciding what to pay for, you need to understand what people mean by them. But you also need to get specific about what someone will do and how you'll judge the result.

Imagine you get one proposal for GEO and another for AEO. Both include editing your site and researching the sources cited in AI answers. Different names, much of the same work. To compare them, follow an actual finding through to the task the team would complete.

Understand what the names mean

SEO is search engine optimization: work on being found in conventional search results. AEO is answer engine optimization, with an emphasis on appearing in generated answers, their citations, and how information is presented. GEO is generative engine optimization. People use it for work intended to improve how a business appears in generated answers, so it overlaps heavily with AEO and AI search optimization.

AI SEO is particularly easy to misunderstand. Someone might mean using AI to do SEO tasks. Someone else might mean improving a site's representation in AI search. Before comparing services with that label, ask each supplier which meaning they're using.

The work doesn't fall neatly into those names. Making a page accessible to a crawler, answering a buyer's question clearly, and checking an inaccurate description on another site could all be part of the same project. Your report still needs to say what it measured: crawl access, an organic position, or an appearance in a generated answer.

Find the page that needs attention

For example, an AI answer recommends your product but cites an independent comparison with an outdated specification. You can check your product page and make sure it has the current specification. But that comparison belongs to another publisher. Editing your page doesn't directly change what they've written.

Now you have a concrete task. Verify the current specification, find the incorrect statement, and request an update through the publication's correction process. You can check whether the correction was made without first agreeing on whether to call the project AEO or GEO.

Then keep observing the answers. Correcting the source gives readers better information. It doesn't guarantee the service will cite that source next time. Record the work you completed and investigate what happens in later answers, keeping those as separate measures.

Compare what you'll get and how you'll measure it

For Google's AI features, its site-owner documentation explains that established SEO practices still matter. A proposal focused on AI should account for your site's accessibility and content requirements. Check those directly. A page can be accessible and accurate and still not appear in a particular answer.

Ask each supplier to walk through an assignment and show the report it produces. Which engines does it include? How often does it collect answers? Who edits your site? Who researches the external sources? Those details tell you what you're buying.

Once you understand what a client means, there's little reason to argue over the name. If they call it GEO, use that term and explain the work: collect answers to agreed questions, research their sources, correct errors you can substantiate, and review what later observations show.

For the measurements, read the guides to AI search visibility and citations and mentions. The terminology glossary gives you definitions to use when comparing reports.