By
Austin Coker
Reading time: 13 min
You have two proposals open. One agency wants a monthly retainer for AEO. Another wants about the same budget for GEO. Both decks are full of ChatGPT screenshots, and both promise your brand will show up when buyers ask AI what to buy.
Here is what you need to know before you sign either. The GEO vs AEO debate is mostly a naming fight. The two terms come from different places, but the work behind them overlaps almost completely, and both sit on top of SEO. You should buy one program, not two retainers.
In this article, you’ll find a side-by-side comparison of AEO and GEO, what Google has published about both, how ChatGPT and Perplexity differ from Google, a step-by-step way to run one program that covers the work, and answers to the questions buyers ask most.
AEO (answer engine optimization) is about becoming the direct answer to a question. GEO (generative engine optimization) is about getting your brand cited or recommended inside an AI-written answer. They target slightly different surfaces, but the tactics are nearly identical. If someone is selling them to you as separate services, ask what you would get from one that you would not get from the other.
AEO stands for answer engine optimization. It started before generative AI was mainstream. When Google began pulling a single answer to the top of the results page in featured snippets, and when voice assistants started reading one answer aloud, marketers needed a name for the work of winning that spot.
The goal of AEO has always been narrow. You want your page to be the answer. Not one of ten blue links. The answer.
The tactics follow from that. You phrase headings the way people ask questions. You put a clear, direct answer in the first sentence or two under each heading. You make sure the page is indexed and Google is allowed to show a snippet from it. Most good SEO teams were doing this years before anyone called it AEO.
What changed is the surface. Featured snippets and People Also Ask still exist, but AI answers now sit above or alongside them. That is why the AEO label got stretched to cover AI search, and why it now collides with GEO.
GEO stands for generative engine optimization. The term was popularized by a 2023 paper titled GEO: Generative Engine Optimization by Aggarwal et al., a team from Princeton and collaborators. It was published at KDD 2024. The researchers tested ways a source could raise its visibility inside answers written by generative engines.
When people ask “what is GEO SEO,” they usually mean this: the part of search work focused on getting your brand cited or recommended inside AI-written answers. That covers ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Copilot.
The unit of success is different from AEO in one way that matters. An AI answer can cite several sources and recommend several brands at once. You are rarely trying to be the only answer. You are trying to be one of the sources the model trusts enough to name, ideally the one it recommends first.
If you want the longer version, our guide to generative engine optimization goes deeper on how this works in practice.
Almost everywhere that matters.
Both depend on your pages being crawlable, indexed and eligible to be quoted. Both reward content that answers a specific question clearly and early. Both benefit when other credible sites talk about your brand, because AI systems and search engines use those signals to decide who to trust.
The real difference is scope. AEO grew up around one answer box. GEO grew up around AI answers that pull from many sources. In 2026, the practical work for both is the same list of tasks. An agency that does one well is already doing most of the other.
That is the core point for you as a buyer. If one agency charges for AEO and a second charges for GEO, you are likely paying two teams to rewrite the same pages and chase the same mentions. You end up with duplicated effort and two sets of reports that do not agree.
Google addressed this directly. In May 2026 it published Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search. The guide defines both AEO and GEO, then makes its position plain:
“From Google Search’s perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.”
Google explains that its AI features are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems. They use retrieval and grounding to pull from indexed pages, and they use query fan-out, which breaks one question into several related searches behind the scenes. If your pages do not rank and are not trusted in normal search, they have a hard time showing up in AI Overviews or Google AI Mode.
The guide also includes a mythbusting section. For Google Search, it says you can ignore llms.txt files and special AI markup. You can ignore “chunking” your content into fragments. You do not need to rewrite content just for AI, and you should not seek inauthentic mentions. It also warns against overfocusing on structured data, which is still useful for rich results but is not a shortcut into AI answers.
The requirements Google does state are basic. Your pages must be indexed and eligible to appear as snippets. To measure how you show up, Google points to the Generative AI performance report in Search Console.
One more line from that guide is worth keeping in mind when you read proposals. Google warns that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems. If an agency claims its software knows exactly why Google’s AI picked a competitor over you, treat that claim with suspicion.
Read as a buyer, this guide removes a lot of what gets sold as GEO. If a proposal leans on llms.txt files, AI-specific markup or rewriting your whole site into short chunks, you are paying for work Google has told you it does not need.
Yes, and this is where many proposals get sloppy. Google’s guide covers Google only. Other AI platforms run their own crawlers and their own retrieval, and they do not promise to follow Google’s rules.
ChatGPT search relies on a crawler called OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI’s documentation states that sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Anthropic runs Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User for Claude’s web search, which we cover in more detail in our Claude SEO guide. Perplexity runs PerplexityBot.
The practical consequence is simple. If you block these search crawlers, you remove yourself from those answers. A security rule, a CDN setting or a blanket robots.txt block added during an “AI scraping” scare can quietly cut you out of ChatGPT and Perplexity while your Google rankings look fine.
The content side carries over well. Pages that answer questions clearly, rank in traditional search and get mentioned by credible third parties tend to perform across platforms. What does not carry over is access and measurement. Each platform needs its own crawler check, and each needs to be tracked separately.
You do not need AEO or GEO as standalone products. You need a search program that covers classic rankings, direct answers and AI citations together.
The weighting depends on how your buyers search.
If you run an ecommerce brand, AI recommendations carry a lot of weight. Buyers ask questions like “best electrolytes with no sweeteners” and act on the brands that come back. Being named in that answer is worth more than ranking fifth for the same phrase.
If you sell SaaS or high-value B2B services, buyers often use AI to build a shortlist before they ever visit a vendor site. Being cited in that early research shapes who gets the demo request or the call.
If your SEO foundation is weak, start there. Google has said its AI features run on core ranking systems. Without indexed, trusted pages, no amount of AI-focused work will hold up.
The red flag is a proposal that splits the work. Separate retainers for SEO, AEO and GEO usually means three reports, three teams and no one accountable for whether a buyer actually finds you.
Start with the pages that matter commercially. Confirm they are indexed, load properly and are eligible to show snippets. Check that they rank for the searches your buyers use. Google’s AI features pull from the same index and quality systems, so this step is not optional. It is the base everything else sits on. Our breakdown of GEO vs SEO covers where the two diverge and where they don’t.
Every page that targets a question should answer it in the first sentence or two. Use headings that mirror how people ask. Follow the answer with the detail a serious buyer needs to make a decision. You are not rewriting content “for AI.” You are writing it the way a busy buyer wants to read it, which is also what makes it easy to cite.
Prioritize questions with commercial intent. “Best X for Y,” “X vs Y” and “X alternatives” queries tend to drive the recommendations that turn into revenue. Definitions and top-of-funnel explainers can wait until those pages are in good shape.
AI answers lean on what other sites say about you. Reviews, comparison articles, industry roundups, podcast pages and community threads all shape whether a model names your brand. Focus on real coverage in places your buyers already read. Google specifically warns against seeking inauthentic mentions, and fake placements tend to collapse anyway.
Treat this as entity work. Your brand name, what you sell and who you serve should be described consistently everywhere you appear.
Check robots.txt, your CDN and any firewall or bot-management rules. Make sure OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User and PerplexityBot can reach the pages you want cited, alongside Googlebot. Decide deliberately which crawlers you allow. Blocking a training crawler is a separate decision from blocking a search crawler, and mixing them up is how brands disappear from ChatGPT answers.
For Google, use the Generative AI performance report in Search Console. For ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, build a fixed list of buyer prompts and track whether your brand is cited or recommended, and where it appears in the answer. Run the same prompts on a regular schedule so you can see movement over time.
Tie this back to revenue where you can. Many AI answers are zero-click search moments, so citations will not always show up as traffic. Look at branded search, direct visits and pipeline sources alongside citation counts.
GEO and AEO are not a new channel that replaces search. They are the newest surfaces inside search. Your buyer might see an AI Overview, click a paid ad, ask ChatGPT for a second opinion and then search your brand name before converting. Each of those moments is part of one decision.
That is why splitting the work fails. Your SEO team optimizes pages, your PPC team bids on the same queries, and a separate GEO vendor reports AI mentions in a dashboard no one connects to revenue. Nobody owns the full path from question to customer.
The better setup is one team that sees all of it. When paid search shows which queries convert, that should shape which questions your content answers first. When AI answers start recommending a competitor, that should change what you pitch for third-party coverage. When organic rankings drop, you should know whether AI citations are dropping with them.
At 95 Projects, we run SEO, PPC and GEO as one senior-led program for ecommerce brands, SaaS companies and B2B services firms. That approach made Buoy the number one ChatGPT recommendation for “best electrolytes with no sweeteners” in 21 days (Buoy case study), and it brought Constant Hire more than $70K from ChatGPT in four months (Constant Hire case study). If you want to see how our AI search services would fit your business, get in touch.
Austin Coker is the CEO and founder of 95 Projects. He has worked in SEO since 2020, when he built and sold an ecommerce brand that grew mainly through search. He founded 95 Projects in 2022 to help SaaS, ecommerce, and B2B service companies show up wherever their buyers search, from Google to ChatGPT and AI Overviews.
Have questions about working with us? Book a 30-minute strategy call to discuss your goals and see if we’re a good fit.
No-pressure conversation
Clear next steps (if we’re a fit)
Talk directly to an expert
GEO SEO is search work aimed at getting your brand cited or recommended inside AI-written answers. It builds on standard SEO, since Google says its AI features use the same core ranking and quality systems. The extra work is mostly earning third-party mentions, opening access to AI search crawlers and tracking citations by prompt.
They are not identical, but they overlap so much that you should treat them as one job. AEO focuses on being the direct answer, while GEO focuses on being cited inside AI-written answers. The tactics are nearly the same, so paying for both separately usually means paying twice.
Not for Google. Google’s May 2026 guide says you can ignore llms.txt and special AI markup for Google Search. OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity describe search access in terms of their crawlers, not llms.txt, so it should not be the centerpiece of any proposal you pay for.
It helps with rich results, but it is not a shortcut into AI answers. Google’s guide specifically warns against overfocusing on structured data for AI features. Keep it accurate and in place, then put your effort into content quality, indexing and brand mentions.
Only if you are willing to disappear from those platforms’ answers. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and the same logic applies to Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User and PerplexityBot. If you want to limit AI training, handle that separately from search crawler access.
No. Google states that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems. Use the Search Console Generative AI performance report for Google data, and treat third-party tools as directional tracking rather than a view into how Google decides.
