Customers now find businesses in several ways: a classic Google search, a featured answer at the top of the results, or a recommendation from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews. Three terms describe the work behind this visibility: SEO, AEO and GEO. Here is what each one means and how they fit together.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) improves a website's visibility in search engines such as Google and Bing. It covers technical health (crawling, indexing, speed, mobile usability), relevant content, authority from other websites, and a good experience for visitors.
What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) focuses on giving clear, accurate, useful answers to the specific questions people ask. That means understanding real customer questions, answering them directly, and structuring the supporting information so search systems can interpret it. Depending on the search, AEO can support featured answers, snippets and conversational results.
What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) focuses on how discoverable and well represented your brand is in AI-generated answers and recommendations. It goes beyond your own website: technical access for relevant crawlers, clear and consistent company information, authoritative content, credible mentions on other sites, and measuring how AI systems actually describe you.
How they compare
- SEO asks: can search engines find, understand and rank my pages?
- AEO asks: do my pages give the best, clearest answer to the questions customers ask?
- GEO asks: when an AI assistant answers a question in my field, is my business mentioned, and is it described accurately?
The three overlap heavily. All of them depend on useful information, sound technical foundations, credibility and a website that search systems can access. In practice they work best as one coordinated strategy, not three separate projects.
Which one does your business need?
- If your website has technical problems or thin pages, start with SEO fundamentals. Everything else builds on them.
- If customers ask many questions before buying, invest in AEO: strong FAQs, comparisons and clear service explanations.
- If customers increasingly use AI assistants to compare providers, add GEO: test how AI tools describe you today, fix inaccurate or missing information, and build genuine references.
A word of caution
No one can guarantee that ChatGPT, Gemini or Google will mention or recommend a particular business, and there is no special file or schema that guarantees inclusion in AI features. Be wary of anyone who promises otherwise. What you can do is improve the quality, clarity, accessibility and authority of your information, then measure the results honestly over time.
Where to start
A practical first step is an audit: review your website's technical health, list the questions your customers ask, and test how a selected set of those questions are answered across Google and AI assistants today. That baseline shows where to focus.
AppSage provides combined AEO and GEO services alongside SEO, content marketing and local SEO. Request an AI search visibility assessment to see where your business stands.