AEO vs GEO vs AI SEO: what is the difference?
In short
AEO, GEO and AI SEO are three names for the same work: getting AI assistants to name and cite your company. Answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) are used interchangeably by most tools, and AI SEO usually means adding AI assistants to ordinary search work. The names differ more than the work does.
Where each name comes from
| Name | Stands for | Usually means |
|---|---|---|
| AEO | Answer engine optimization | Being named and cited in AI answers |
| GEO | Generative engine optimization | The same, under the name a 2023 research paper gave it |
| AI SEO | Search engine optimization for AI | Search work that also covers AI assistants |
The name GEO comes from a research paper, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, published at the KDD conference in 2024. It measured how changes to a page affect whether an AI engine uses it.
AEO is the older name. It was used for writing pages that answer a question directly, so a search engine or a voice assistant could read the answer out. It now covers AI assistants too.
The software directories treat the names as one field. G2 files generative engine optimization under its Answer Engine Optimization category.
The work is the same under every name
Whichever name a team uses, the work comes down to the same five tasks.
| Task | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Let crawlers in | Can the assistant read my site at all? |
| Find buyer questions | What does a buyer ask before they know my name? |
| Ask and keep the answers | Who is named today, and on which pages does that rest? |
| Change the pages | What would make an assistant name me next time? |
| Measure again | Did the change move the answers? |
AI SEO teams often do the first and fourth tasks as part of search work and skip the middle ones. The middle ones are where you find out what the answers actually say.
What the research found that matters more than the name
The GEO paper found that some changes to a page raised its visibility in generated answers by up to 40 per cent in its tests. Adding sources, quotations and statistics were among the ones that helped.
The same change can help one site and hurt another. In the paper, adding citations to sources raised the visibility of a site ranked fifth by 115.1%, and lowered the visibility of the site ranked first by 30.3%.
So no single tactic is safe to copy. The only way to know what a change did is to measure the answers before and after it, on your own questions.
Measuring is harder than it sounds, because answers change on their own. A 2026 preprint, CITECHOICE, found that about one in seven regenerations of the same answer flipped whether a given source was cited. It is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed.
Which name to use
Use the one your buyers and colleagues use. The tools themselves are split: Profound says AEO, AthenaHQ says GEO, and Scrunch says AEO/GEO. We use AEO, and we mean the same thing by all three.
When you compare tools, ignore the name and ask what each one measures. Ask whether it keeps the full answers, whether it counts questions with your name apart, and whether it tells you why you were not named.
Questions
Is GEO different from AEO?
Not in practice. GEO is the name a 2023 research paper used, and AEO is the name most tools use. Both mean being named and cited in AI answers.
Is AI SEO a separate job?
Usually it is search work that also checks AI assistants. The checking part is the same as AEO.
What should I measure, whatever I call it?
How often AI assistants name you in answers to questions that do not already contain your name. See what AEO is for why.
Does the GEO research prove a tactic works?
It shows that some changes helped on average in its tests, and that the same change can hurt a site that already ranks first. Test any change on your own questions before you trust it.