SEO, AEO and GEO are three different jobs. Here is what each one does, and how we do it.
SEO gets your pages found and indexed. AEO gets a page chosen as the answer to a question. GEO gets your business named when an assistant writes its own answer. They sit on top of each other, and most of what is sold under these three names is measurement. This page explains each one in plain language, says what moves it and what we do about it, and publishes the measurement method in full so you can check the work.
The long and short of it is that a search engine returns a list, an answer engine returns a sentence, and a generative engine returns an opinion about who to call. Each one reads a different part of what you have put into the world, and each one fails for a different reason.
So we treat them as three layers with three checks, and we show you the check. What follows is the same explanation we give on a call, with nothing held back for the paid version.
What each one is, what moves it, and what we do.
Every number below carries a named source and a date, and links to it. If a claim cannot carry all three, it is not on this page.
SEO
Search engine optimization is the work of getting your pages crawled, indexed, understood and ranked by Google and Bing.
It is over twenty years old and it still matters, because Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot answer from their own search indexes. If a page is not in the index, no assistant that reads that index can find it. That being said, ranking alone is worth less than it was: Ahrefs measured in February 2026 that click-through on top-ranking content drops by about 58% where an AI Overview appears, and Ahrefs Brand Radar found in August 2025 that only about 12% of the sources AI engines cite also sit in Google’s top ten.
What moves it
- A site every crawler can reach, including the AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended)
- One page per topic, with a title and an opening paragraph that say what the page is
- Fast pages, a clean sitemap, one canonical address per page
- For a local business, a Google Business Profile that says the same thing your site says
What we do
Technical audit of crawler access, sitemap, canonicals and speed. One topic per page. Search Console wired up and actually read.
How we check it
Indexed pages and search impressions in Search Console, before and after, dated.
AEO
Answer engine optimization is structuring a page so a system that answers questions directly, an AI Overview, a featured snippet, a voice assistant, a chatbot, can lift the answer straight out of it.
The unit is the question, not the keyword. Retrieval systems judge a page mostly on how it opens, so a page that answers the question in its first paragraph gets chosen over one that builds up to it. The research backs this: Princeton’s generative engine optimization study (arXiv:2311.09735, November 2023) found optimized content earned up to 40% higher visibility in generative responses, and the methods that worked best were citing sources, adding statistics and adding quotations.
What moves it
- The first paragraph answers the question outright, in about 200 words or fewer
- Question-shaped headings, one claim per section, so any section stands on its own
- A visible FAQ with FAQPage schema that mirrors it word for word
- A named source and a date on every number
What we do
We rewrite page openings to answer first, restructure headings around the questions buyers type, add FAQPage and Article schema that match the visible text, and put sourced numbers into the body copy.
How we check it
A fixed list of buyer questions. For each one, whether your page is the one being quoted.
GEO
Generative engine optimization is getting your business itself, its name, what it does, where and for whom, recognized and recommended when ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude compose an answer from many sources.
It is less about any one page and more about whether every place a model reads says the same thing about you. The engines pull heavily from places you do not control. A Semrush analysis of more than 150,000 citations from June 2025, charted by Visual Capitalist in August 2025, ranked Reddit first with a citation frequency of 40.1%, and Profound’s analysis of 680 million citations (June 2025) ranks it first among the top sources for Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. So most of the GEO work happens off your own site.
What moves it
- The same name, description and category language on your site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directories
- Organization and Person schema on every page, on one shared graph, with no stray vocabulary
- Third-party mentions: roundups, directories, trade press, the forums where your category gets discussed
- Your own copy citing outside sources, because content that cites gets cited
What we do
Entity classification check (what the engines currently think you are), a consistency pass across every surface, the schema graph, and ecosystem placement done by a person. Never automated posting.
How we check it
A frozen set of 20 buyer questions across five engines, monthly. Mentioned, cited, or who appeared instead.
Everywhere a model reads, in the order it tends to trust.
Only the first one is yours. The GEO work is mostly about the other four agreeing with it.
Your own site
The pages, how they open, and the machine-readable layer underneath them. The only source you fully control.
Google Business Profile and directories
For a local business this is often the first entity record a model finds, so it has to match the site word for word.
Reviews
Models read how customers describe you and feed it back as the description. Tone counts, and so does volume.
Forums and communities
Reddit and its kind are among the most-cited sources in AI answers. Real answers from a real person hold up; anything automated gets removed and hurts the entity.
News, roundups and third-party lists
“Best X in Y” pages get cited out of all proportion to the traffic they carry. One good placement can outweigh a month of posting.
How we measure, with nothing hidden.
Most tools in this category report a score and keep the method to themselves. Here is ours. Run it yourself if you like; the number will be the same.
What we will not do.
Each of these is something you will be offered elsewhere.
A free check first, then a 3-week Fix, then a monthly plan.
The free AI visibility check, the AI Visibility Fix at 3 weeks from $2,500 as the way in, then a monthly plan from $1,500, month to month. The check is yours to keep whether we work together or not. The Fix puts the structure in place and includes the 90-day re-run on the same question set, and the monthly plan measures it, holds it and keeps moving it with AI Share of Voice reporting. What each plan covers, and what it does not, is laid out on the AI Visibility page.
Questions people ask about SEO, AEO and GEO
What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
SEO gets your pages found and indexed by search engines. AEO gets a specific page chosen as the direct answer to a specific question, in an AI Overview, a featured snippet or a chatbot reply. GEO gets your business itself named and recommended when an assistant like ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity composes an answer from many sources. They stack: SEO is the foundation, AEO is the page, GEO is the entity.
Do I still need SEO if I am doing GEO?
Yes. Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot answer from their own search indexes, so a page that is not indexed cannot be retrieved by them at all. What has changed is that ranking is no longer enough on its own: Ahrefs Brand Radar found in August 2025 that only about 12% of the sources AI engines cite also sit in Google’s top ten. You need the foundation, and then you need the two layers above it.
Is AEO the same thing as GEO?
They overlap, and most answer surfaces now run the same generative machinery, so in practice one plan covers both. The useful distinction is scale. AEO is page-level: structure this page so it gets lifted as the answer. GEO is entity-level: make every place a model reads agree on who you are, so you get named even when no single page of yours is quoted.
Can I see the actual answers, or just a score?
Every answer, verbatim, dated, per question and per engine. The AI Share of Voice number is built from those answers and you can read the answers. We do not report a score we cannot show the source of.
How do I know whether it worked?
The same question set is re-run against the same five engines, monthly and then in full at 90 days, against the dated baseline. Movement is reported per engine and per question, so you can see which questions moved and which did not. Structural fixes usually show first, at about 30 to 60 days. Entity and ecosystem work runs longer, and we say so up front.
Does this work for a small local business?
Often better than for a large one. Answer engines pull from whoever answered the question best, and a well-structured page from a small firm regularly beats a large competitor’s marketing copy. The honest exception: if your buyers do not ask an assistant before they call you, this is the wrong place to spend. The free check will show that, and we will tell you.
Worth finding out what the engines currently say about you?
The free check puts a few of the questions your buyers type to ChatGPT, reads your site, and shows you the one answer that matters most, word for word, in a minute or two. No email to see the result. If it shows that your buyers are not asking assistants about your category yet, we will say so, and you can spend the money somewhere else.
Rather start with the wider picture of where the business loses hours? Run the Bottleneck Finder™, the free three-minute diagnostic on this site, tested across 57 industries.