SEO, AEO and GEO: What Changed, and What to Actually Do About It
Search now answers questions instead of listing links. A plain explanation of answer engine and generative engine optimisation, and what deserves your time.
Three acronyms are being sold hard right now. Two of them describe something real. None of them replaces the thing underneath.
What each one means
SEO — search engine optimisation. Being found in a list of links.
AEO — answer engine optimisation. Being the source a machine reads out when it answers directly: featured snippets, People Also Ask, voice assistants. The user gets an answer instead of a list.
GEO — generative engine optimisation. Being cited by an AI assistant composing a response — ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, AI Overviews in Google.
The direction is consistent: search increasingly answers, rather than pointing. That matters because an answer with no click still shapes what the buyer believes about your category — and about who to trust in it.
What has genuinely changed
Fewer clicks per search. When the answer sits at the top of the page, informational searches produce fewer visits. That does not make the ranking worthless — being the cited source is brand exposure at the exact moment of research — but it does change what you should measure.
Being quotable matters. Machines lift passages. A page that answers a specific question in a clean, self-contained paragraph gets used. A page that buries the answer in paragraph nine of an SEO essay does not.
Entity clarity beats keyword density. These systems try to establish what you are, where you operate and whether you are credible. Consistent naming, a real address where applicable, structured data and matching profiles across the web do more than repeating a phrase.
What has not changed
Everything expensive.
A fast, well-structured page still wins. Original information still wins — none of these systems can cite an insight that exists nowhere. Genuine expertise still wins, because the models are trained toward it and the humans reading the answer can smell filler.
The uncomfortable truth is that AEO and GEO are mostly good SEO with tighter formatting discipline. Anyone selling GEO as a separate service with a separate retainer should be asked exactly which activities differ from the SEO they were selling last year.
What to actually do
Answer one question per page, early. State the answer in the first hundred words, then expand. This serves snippets, AI citations and impatient humans identically.
Write in extractable blocks. Question as a heading, direct answer immediately below in two or three sentences. Detail after that.
Add structured data. Organization, Service, FAQPage, Article, Breadcrumb. It costs an afternoon and it tells machines what your page is instead of leaving them to infer.
Publish something only you know. Your own numbers, your own process, your own before-and-afters. Generic advice cannot be cited as a source because a hundred other pages say it too.
Keep your entity consistent. Same business name, number and address everywhere — site, Google Business Profile, directories, social. Contradictions dilute confidence.
Measure differently. Track impressions and average position in Search Console, not just sessions. A rise in impressions with flat clicks may mean you are winning the answer box, which is not failure.
Where to spend if you are small
If you have limited hours, the order is unglamorous:
- Fix site speed and mobile layout.
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile properly, if you serve a local area.
- Publish six pages that answer the six questions your customers actually ask you on the phone.
- Add structured data.
- Then, and only then, worry about acronyms.
Steps one to four cover most of what SEO, AEO and GEO ask for. The rest is formatting.
Questions people ask
- What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
- SEO is optimising to appear in a list of links. AEO is answer engine optimisation, being the source a machine reads out in a featured snippet, People Also Ask box or voice answer. GEO is generative engine optimisation, being cited by an assistant such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot when it composes a response.
- Does AEO or GEO replace SEO?
- No. Both sit on top of the same underlying work. A page that is badly structured, slow or thin does not get quoted by a machine any more than it ranks in a list.
- How do you get cited by an AI assistant?
- Answer a specific question completely and early on the page, keep claims concrete and checkable, and make the page crawlable by the assistants' own bots. Vague marketing prose is not quotable.
- What should a small business do first?
- The basics: a fast, well structured site, pages that answer real questions buyers ask, and accurate business information wherever it is listed. Those feed rankings and citations at the same time.