AEO vs SEO vs GEO: What Actually Differs

SEO earns a ranked link on a search results page. AEO and GEO earn a place inside an AI-written answer, as a mention, a citation or a recommendation. AEO and GEO are two names for nearly the same goal. The difference that matters is between ranking and being used in the answer. Most of the groundwork is shared, but the metrics and some of the levers are new.

On this page

• What does each term mean?
• How do SEO, AEO and GEO compare side by side?
• Where does the work overlap?
• What does GEO add that SEO does not cover?
• From MentionX data: why rankings aren't enough
• Worked example: one team, two scoreboards
• How the terms get used in practice
• Which should you prioritise first?
• How should budget and team roles split?
• How do you explain the difference to a CMO in 30 seconds?
• How to report SEO and GEO together
• What common mistakes should you avoid?
• Does GEO change how you write?
• Sources

Updated 31 October 2026. Anything marked "Our view" is MentionX's opinion, not documented engine behaviour. The worked example uses a fictional company.

What does each term mean?

• SEO (search engine optimization): improving pages and sites so they rank in search engines like Google and Bing and earn clicks.
• AEO (answer engine optimization): making content easy for systems that give one answer to use and quote. The term began with featured snippets and voice assistants.
• GEO (generative engine optimization): improving how often and how well your content and brand appear in answers generated by large language models. The term was coined in a 2023 research paper by Aggarwal and colleagues (arXiv).

How do SEO, AEO and GEO compare side by side?

Where does the work overlap?

More than most vendors admit. Google states that its AI features rely on the same crawling, indexing and ranking systems as regular Search, and that there are no special requirements beyond normal SEO best practices (Google Search Central). If Googlebot can't reach a page, AI Overviews won't cite it.

Shared work includes:

• Crawlable, fast, indexable pages.
• Clear titles and headings that match the question.
• Genuinely useful content written for people (Google's helpful content guidance).
• Links and mentions from reputable sites.

What does GEO add that SEO does not cover?

1. Prompt tracking instead of keyword tracking. People ask long, conversational questions. You track a fixed set of prompts and see whether you appear, not where you rank.
2. Off-page source mapping. In AI answers, the sources cited are often review sites, Reddit threads, YouTube videos and listicles. You find out which ones the engine trusts for your category and work to be included there.
3. Entity consistency. The model needs one clear picture of who you are. Inconsistent descriptions across your site, LinkedIn and directories lead to vague or wrong answers.
4. Crawler policy for AI bots. You decide which AI user agents can read your site, such as OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot for search versus GPTBot for training (OpenAI).
5. Variance-aware measurement. The same prompt can return different answers. You measure rates over many runs.

From MentionX data: why rankings aren't enough

Method. We ran read-only aggregate queries over completed MentionX runs from 22 August to 29 October 2026 (UTC): 2,154 runs across 18 projects, mostly B2B software. Engines were called through their APIs with web search or grounding on, which can differ from the consumer apps. Brands are anonymised.

Answers depend on the question type. Share of answers that mentioned the tracked brand:

Citations spread thin. The runs produced 9,750 citations from 2,152 different domains. Even the most-cited domains each accounted for only about 1% of citations, and 39.2% of runs cited nothing at all.

How to read it. A brand can rank well for its own name and for "X vs Y" searches and still be close to invisible when a buyer asks "what should I use for this problem?". SEO dashboards rarely show that, because they track positions on keywords, not inclusion in answers to open questions. The long tail of cited domains also means there's no single "AI ranking" to win. You're competing across many sources at once.

Caveats. 18 projects, uneven engine coverage, API rather than app answers, and automated extraction. Use the pattern, not the exact numbers.

Worked example: one team, two scoreboards

Illustrative example. Ledgerline is a fictional AP automation company, and the numbers are invented.

Ledgerline's SEO report looks healthy: top-three rankings for its brand name, "Ledgerline pricing" and "Ledgerline vs CompetitorA", and page one for "AP automation software". The CMO asks why sales keeps hearing "ChatGPT recommended someone else."

The SEO lead runs 30 buyer prompts across three engines, twice each. Ledgerline is mentioned in nearly every branded and comparison answer. On the 18 discovery prompts ("how do mid-sized companies automate invoice approvals?"), it's mentioned in 7 of 108 answers and recommended in 2.

The cited sources explain it. Most discovery answers cite two roundups, a review site's category page and a forum thread. Only one of those ranks in Google's top 10 for the head keyword, so the SEO report never flagged them.

The plan keeps SEO running and adds three GEO tasks: get accurate coverage on the two roundups, publish an answer-first guide on invoice-approval workflows, and report discovery-prompt mention rate monthly next to rankings.

How the terms get used in practice

Our view: the label matters less than the scope. Vendors, agencies and job ads use AEO, GEO, "AI search optimization" and "LLM SEO" almost interchangeably. When someone pitches you "GEO", ask three questions. Do they track a fixed prompt set across several engines? Do they map and work on third-party sources? Do they report rates with sample sizes? If the answer to all three is no, it's SEO with a new name, which may be fine, but you should know what you're buying.

Inside your own team, pick one term and define it in a sentence. Mixed vocabulary in reports confuses leadership more than any metric.

Which should you prioritise first?

Use this order on a limited budget:

1. Fix blockers. Crawling, indexing and rendering issues hurt both channels.
2. Restructure your top 10 pages to answer first with question headings. This helps snippets, AI Overviews and LLM answers at once.
3. Run a baseline across engines with 20-50 real buyer prompts.
4. Close source gaps. Go after the third-party pages that are cited for your category but don't mention you.
5. Report on rates monthly alongside your SEO dashboard, not instead of it.

How should budget and team roles split?

You do not need a new department. A workable split for a mid-sized marketing team:

Start by moving a small, fixed share of content and PR time to GEO tasks for one quarter, measure the change in mention and citation rates, then decide whether to grow it. Label any forecast you make to leadership as an estimate until you have two or three months of your own data.

How do you explain the difference to a CMO in 30 seconds?

"SEO gets us a link on Google. GEO gets us named when someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI for a recommendation. Same foundations, new scoreboard. We'll keep SEO running, add a monthly AI visibility report, and spend some budget on getting into the sources AI engines cite."

How to report SEO and GEO together

Leadership doesn't need two separate decks. A single monthly page works if it keeps the scoreboards apart but side by side:

• SEO: organic sessions, conversions and rankings for your top commercial keywords, as you report today.
• GEO: mention rate and recommendation rate on discovery prompts, by engine, with the number of answers behind each figure. Keep branded prompts in a separate line so they don't flatter the average.
• Sources: the five domains cited most for your category, and whether each one mentions you.
• Bridge metric: AI referral sessions from GA4, and Search Console clicks on the pages you've rewritten answer-first.

Google says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in the Search Console Performance report under the "Web" search type (Google), so it's already inside your SEO numbers, just not separated. Say that on the slide, so nobody double-counts.

Our view: the bridge metrics are supporting evidence, not the headline. Much of the effect of AI answers happens without a click. If you only report traffic, you'll undervalue the work and may cut it just as it starts to show up in answers.

What common mistakes should you avoid?

• Treating GEO as a separate team from SEO. You'll duplicate work and argue over pages.
• Chasing one screenshot. A single answer proves nothing because answers vary.
• Rebranding SEO as GEO without changing anything. If you don't track prompts or work on off-page sources, it's still just SEO.
• Reporting only branded prompts. Branded and comparison answers almost always name you, so they make visibility look far better than it is for buyers who don't know you yet.
• Measuring once and declaring a trend. Answers vary between runs, so wait for at least two or three monthly scans with the same prompts and settings before you call a change real.
• Ignoring Bing. Several assistants use Bing's index for web results, so check Bing Webmaster Tools too (Bing crawlers).

Does GEO change how you write?

Less than you might expect. Google's guidance for its AI features is to keep following normal SEO best practices and to focus on helpful, people-first content (Google, Google). The writing habits that help in AI answers mostly help human readers too:

• Answer the question in the first two sentences.
• Use headings that match the follow-up questions a buyer would ask.
• Put comparisons in tables, with the criteria stated.
• Date your facts, especially pricing and features.
• Say who the product is for and who it isn't for.

What changes is the unit of review. In SEO you judge a page by whether it ranks. In GEO you also check whether individual passages make sense when lifted out on their own, because engines often quote or summarise a section rather than the whole page.

Sources

• Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization
• Google Search Central, AI features and your website
• Google Search Central, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
• OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI crawlers