TL;DR: AEO and GEO are the same discipline under two names. SEO is a genuinely different one. What matters most is whether a web search fires when the question is asked.
The three terms
SEO, search engine optimization. Rank a page in a list of links.
AEO, answer engine optimization. Get named inside a generated answer.
GEO, generative engine optimization. Get named inside a generated answer.
AEO and GEO are the same thing. GEO came out of academic work and AEO came out of the practitioner side. "LLM SEO" and "AI SEO" are more names for the same job. The GEO guide covers what the GEO name means, what LLM SEO is and how to do the work.
AEO vs SEO at a glance
| SEO | AEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of work | Keywords | Questions |
| Goal | Rank a page in a list of links | Get your brand named in a generated answer |
| Off-site signal | Backlinks | Mentions on the sources engines cite |
| Winners per query | Roughly one top result | Several brands share each answer |
| Success metric | Position and clicks | Share of answers that name you |
| Tracking | Rank trackers | An AEO tracker that asks the engines directly |
GEO vs SEO comparison
| SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Target | A URL's position in a list | Your brand's presence in an answer |
| Unit of demand | Keywords | Questions |
| Primary off-site lever | Backlinks | Mentions on sources the engines retrieve, reviews |
| Content optimized for | Depth and coverage | Extraction and directness |
| Number of winners | Roughly one per result | Several brands per answer |
| Main failure mode | Ranking for nothing that converts | Publishing for questions nothing retrieves |
Several brands share every AI answer, so a small brand has a realistic way in.
What the data says about specific questions
In a Peak Answer study of 198 questions in 30 niches (3,064 classified citations), the share of citations going to the brand's own site rose as questions got more specific. The figures are descriptive, and the question specificity study has the method and limits.
What transfers from SEO
- Technical crawlability. If a bot cannot read the page, nothing else matters.
- Genuine subject expertise, expressed clearly.
- Clean information architecture and internal linking.
- Ranking itself. Google AI Overviews draw heavily on top organic results, so position still buys you presence in at least one major answer surface.
What does not transfer
- Keyword volume as a target. A high-volume question the model answers from memory is worth nothing to you.
- Backlink accumulation as the primary off-site lever. Being mentioned matters, and the link itself matters much less.
- Length as a proxy for quality.
- Winner-take-all thinking. Several brands share every answer.
| SEO | AEO / GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Target | A URL's position | Your brand's presence in an answer |
| Primary off-site lever | Backlinks | Mentions on retrieved sources, reviews |
| Content optimized for | Depth and coverage | Extraction and directness |
| Number of winners | Roughly 1 | Several |
| Where volume data comes from | Real, measured | Estimated, nobody has ground truth |
| Main failure mode | Ranking for nothing that converts | Publishing for questions nothing retrieves |
Retrieval versus knowledge
The distinction that matters is retrieval versus knowledge, and it cuts across all 3 acronyms.
When a model runs a search before answering, content and placement work. When it answers from training data, they do not, and only long-run presence helps. Every practical decision follows from which mode a given question triggers. This is measurable per question.
Google AI Overviews in the data
Peak Answer ran 198 buying questions across 30 niches (15 tech and 15 non-tech), split into 3 bands by how specific the question is: general (69 questions), medium (45) and specific (84). Google showed an AI Overview on 12 of the 198 questions, which is 6.1%.
By band:
| Band | Questions | With an AI Overview |
|---|---|---|
| General | 69 | 11 (15.9%) |
| Medium | 45 | 1 (2.2%) |
| Specific | 84 | 0 |
For the questions that did get an AI Overview, the share of its citations that pointed to a brand's own site (first-party) was 29.6% on general questions and 75.0% on medium ones. There is no figure for specific questions, since none triggered an Overview. For comparison, ChatGPT's first-party share on the same questions was 35.6% general, 55.2% medium and 60.3% specific. Google's regular organic results were 30.5%, 46.8% and 49.9%.
The cells here are small. The medium band rests on 1 AI Overview, the specific band is empty, and the general band has 11. The pattern is descriptive and not a result to lean on. All it says is that, in this sample, AI Overviews turned up mostly on broad questions and rarely on specific ones.
How much do ChatGPT and Google overlap?
Peak Answer compared the domains ChatGPT cited with Google's organic results on the same 198 questions across 30 niches. Of the 198 questions, 195 could be compared, and on average 13.5% of the domains ChatGPT cited also showed up in Google's results for that question. Going the other way, 6.8% of the domains in Google's top 10 were cited by ChatGPT. Overlap was lower on specific questions (8.5% and 4.3%, across 83 questions) than on general ones (16.1% and 8.5%, across 68 questions), and the ChatGPT and Google overlap study has the method and limits.
Tools in each category
SEO tools find and rank a URL. AEO and GEO tools ask a question and record what the answer said. A handful of things sit in both camps, since a page a bot cannot read is invisible either way.
SEO. Google Search Console is the only one of these with real measured data about your own site, and it is free, so it is the first one to open. Past that, Ahrefs and Semrush for keywords and backlinks, Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to crawl a site the way a bot does, and Google Analytics for what the traffic then did. None of them report whether ChatGPT names you, and none of them claim to.
AEO and GEO. These ask real buying questions on the AI engines and record who gets named in the answer. Peak Answer is one of them. Others in the category are Profound, AthenaHQ, Otterly, Rankscale, Trakkr, ZipTie.dev, Knowatoa and BabyLoveGrowth. They differ on 2 things that matter more than the rest: how many engines they cover, and whether they stop at the report or also do the work that closes the gap. The comparisons go through them one at a time, and AI visibility tools by price does the arithmetic on what a tracked question costs. For a wider list that includes SEO suite add-ons, see best AI visibility tools in 2026. To follow the same questions over time, the AEO tracker shows which engines name you and when that changes.
Both. Anything that checks whether a machine can read your page serves both disciplines at once: a robots.txt checker, a sitemap checker and a structured data validator. Peak Answer's free tools cover those with no account needed, and so do plenty of others. The AEO checker is a good first stop.
FAQs
Use whichever term your team already uses, AEO or GEO. It has no bearing on the work.
You don't need separate content for AEO and SEO. One well-structured, answer-first, expert page serves both.
There's no reliable AEO ranking factor list, so treat any published one with suspicion. What exists is a measurable feedback loop: measure, change something, measure again.
Google AI Overviews appeared on 12 of the 198 questions above (6.1%), mostly on general questions. The sample is small, so use it as a rough picture.
Yes, you still need SEO alongside AEO. Crawlability, expertise and internal linking carry over, and top organic results feed Google AI Overviews.
SEO ranks a page in a list of links for a keyword. AEO gets your brand named inside an answer that an AI engine writes for a question. The groundwork is shared, but the target and the way you measure it are different.
No, you don't have to choose between AEO and SEO. Crawlability, clear content and a good reputation help in both. Most of your existing SEO work carries over, and AEO adds question tracking and a focus on the sources engines cite.
Ranking on Google helps with AI answers to a degree. Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT's web search pull from pages that already perform. Ranking helps you get considered, and being clear and direct on the page helps you get quoted.
Start AEO by checking whether AI crawlers can reach your site. It is free and takes about a minute. After that, run an AI visibility checker to see how engines answer questions in your niche.
SEO ranks a page in a list of search results. GEO gets your brand named inside an answer that an AI engine writes. The technical groundwork overlaps, and the targets and off-site levers are different.
ChatGPT and Google mostly don't cite the same sites. In a study of 198 questions, 13.5% of the domains ChatGPT cited also appeared in Google's results for the same question, on average per question. The overlap was lowest for specific questions.
Yes, GEO and LLM SEO are basically the same. GEO, AI SEO and LLM SEO all describe getting your brand mentioned in AI-generated answers.