Answer engines · comparison

AEO vs GEO vs SEO — what's the difference?

Last updated 5 September 2026

SEO gets you found. AEO gets you quoted. GEO gets you recommended. Three names, three lenses, one underlying question: can a machine understand, trust and recommend your business?

Get a free AI Visibility Snapshot→What is AEO?

At a glance

The three, side by side

Approach	Optimises for	Where you see it	Primary levers
SEO	Ranking a page in a list of results	Google and Bing results, Maps	Keywords, links, technical health
AEO	Being cited in a direct answer	AI Overviews, featured snippets, voice	Structured data, answer-first content
GEO	How generative AI represents and recommends you	ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity	Entity clarity, trusted third-party sources

Read the middle column and the difference is obvious. SEO asks where do I place? AEO asks am I the answer? GEO asks when a machine describes my market, what does it say about me?

Why it changed

What actually shifted

For twenty years the job was to place a link in a list, and the searcher chose from that list. Increasingly the machine chooses first and presents two or three options — or one spoken answer with no list at all.

That is the whole shift. Not that search died, but that being findable stopped being the same thing as being chosen. A business can rank first and still never be named in the answer sitting above it.

It also changes who competes with you. Ask an AI for a local supplier in many industries and it will often name national platforms and directories rather than the independent businesses in that trade — the aggregators, not the operators.

In practice

Which should you do first?

SEO first — always. It is the foundation. An answer engine cannot cite a page it cannot find, crawl or trust.
Then AEO. Reshape the content so it can be lifted whole: the question asked plainly, answered in a self-contained paragraph.
Then GEO. Make the entity unmistakable and get corroborated by sources the models already trust.

In reality you do not run three projects. Clean schema, a consistent entity and honest answer-first content improve all three at once — which is why splitting the work across three suppliers usually wastes money.

What is AEO? What is GEO? AEO agency London AI SEO agency London Free AI Visibility Snapshot

We do not guarantee rankings or AI mentions. We improve the public signals AI, Google and Maps use to understand, trust and recommend a business.

FAQ

AEO, GEO and SEO — answered plainly.

What is the difference between AEO, GEO and SEO?SEO optimises for ranking a page in a list of results. AEO optimises for being cited in a direct answer, such as an AI Overview or featured snippet. GEO optimises for how a generative model represents and recommends a business across a whole response. In short: SEO gets you found, AEO gets you quoted, GEO gets you recommended.

Which should I do first, SEO or AEO?SEO first, because it is the foundation. An answer engine cannot cite a page it cannot find, crawl or trust. In practice the work overlaps: clean structure, a clear entity and answer-first content improve all three at once.

Is SEO dead now that AI answers questions?No. Search still sends substantial traffic and the signals AI systems rely on are largely the same signals SEO has always built: crawlable content, a clear entity, structured data and genuine trust. What has changed is that ranking alone no longer guarantees the click.

Do I need three separate agencies for SEO, AEO and GEO?No. They are three lenses on one underlying problem — whether machines can understand, trust and recommend your business. The same schema, entity and content work serves all three, which is why splitting them across suppliers usually wastes money.

How do I know which one is failing for my business?Measure it rather than guess. A free AI Visibility Snapshot shows what ChatGPT, Google and Gemini currently say about your business, which competitors get named instead, and where the gap actually is.