Key Takeaways
- AEO (answer engine optimisation) is about being the source an answer draws on. GEO (generative engine optimisation) is the same idea named for generative models. Vendors use both, plus “AI SEO”, for roughly one job.
- It is not a replacement for SEO. An answer engine builds its answer from pages it has crawled and trusts, so being findable and credible in the classic sense is the entry requirement.
- What genuinely changes: the unit of success moves from a position to a citation, structure matters more, and verifiable specifics beat persuasive adjectives.
- What genuinely does not change: technical health, clear structure, real expertise and honest facts. Anyone selling AEO as a brand-new discipline with brand-new tactics is selling a rename.
AEO means answer engine optimisation: making your content the source an AI-generated answer draws on and cites. GEO — generative engine optimisation — is the same idea named after generative models rather than answers. You will also see “AI SEO” and “AI search optimisation”. They describe roughly one job, and the honest framing is that this is an extension of search work rather than a replacement for it: the engines building these answers are drawing on pages they have already crawled and decided to trust.
The Three Names, and What Each One Emphasises
| Term | Stands for | What it emphasises |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Search engine optimisation | Ranking a page in a list of results a person then clicks |
| AEO | Answer engine optimisation | Being the source an answer is built from, whether or not anyone clicks |
| GEO | Generative engine optimisation | The same, framed around generative models specifically |
| AI SEO / AI search optimisation | No agreed definition | Usually a vendor’s label for the above, sometimes for using AI to do SEO — a different thing entirely |
The distinction worth holding on to is between optimising for AI and using AI to optimise. They get sold under the same heading and they are unrelated. This page is about the first.
AEO vs SEO: What Actually Differs
| Classic SEO | Answer / generative engines | |
|---|---|---|
| The goal | A position in a list | Being quoted, and named as the source |
| The winning unit | A page | A passage — often a few sentences that answer cleanly |
| How you measure it | Position, clicks, impressions | Whether you appear in answers, and how you are described. Harder, and the tooling is young |
| What earns it | Relevance, authority, technical health | The same, plus being easy to extract: clear question-shaped headings, direct answers, real specifics |
| What kills it | Being outranked | Being vague. A model cannot quote an adjective |
| Traffic effect | A click | Sometimes no click at all — but a named mention at the moment of decision |
That last row is the genuinely uncomfortable one, and worth being honest about: some of this visibility does not produce a visit. You are being recommended rather than visited. For a considered purchase that is often still valuable — being the firm the answer named is a strong start to a conversation — but it will not show up as a session in your analytics.
What Actually Makes a Page Quotable
Everything on this list is also good SEO, which is the point.
- Answer the question in the first sentence under the heading. Then explain. A model extracting an answer takes the clean sentence, not the paragraph that builds to it.
- Use the question as the heading, in the words people actually use. Our own exports are full of question-shaped searches; those are literal headings.
- Give verifiable specifics. Figures, ranges, named standards, dates. “Published UK list prices start around £74 per user per month” is quotable; “affordable pricing” is not.
- Attribute anything you did not measure yourself. Models and readers both weigh sourced claims more heavily.
- Keep the entity consistent. Same business name, address, service description everywhere. An engine that cannot tell who you are will not name you.
- Use structured data honestly. FAQPage, Organisation, Service, Breadcrumb — matching what is visibly on the page. Marking up things that are not there is the fastest way to be distrusted.
- Say when your answer does not apply. Caveats are distinctive, and distinctive text is what gets quoted.
Where the Opportunity Is Right Now
One observation from the keyword research behind this site, offered as an observation rather than a promise: the AI-search terminology cluster in our own UK exports runs to several hundred phrases, and effectively all of them carry a difficulty score of zero. Volumes per phrase are small — tens per month — but there are hundreds of them and almost nobody has written properly about them.
That is what an emerging category looks like before it consolidates: low competition, fragmented phrasing, high intent. It will not stay that way. The businesses that write clear, honest, specific answers now are the ones the engines will have been drawing on for a year by the time it does.
The practical version of that is unglamorous: take the twenty questions your customers actually ask, answer each properly on a page of your own, and keep the answers accurate. That is the entire strategy, and it is the same strategy that worked before any of this had an acronym.
What Not to Do
- Do not rewrite your site for a rename. If your technical health, structure and expertise are sound, you are most of the way there already.
- Do not mark up claims that are not on the page. Structured data is a description, not an assertion.
- Do not publish generated filler at volume. Answer engines are being trained to prefer distinctive, sourced, specific writing. Bulk output is the opposite of that.
- Do not abandon classic measurement. Positions, impressions and clicks are still the most reliable signals you have; AI visibility sits alongside them, not instead.
- Do not pay for “guaranteed AI citations”. Nobody controls what a model quotes. Anyone guaranteeing it is describing something they cannot deliver.
The companion piece, how to get cited by AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity, is the practical checklist. Our UK search page covers how we handle both together.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?
Making your content the material a generative AI answer is built from and cites. In practice it means being crawlable and credible in the classic sense, then writing so answers can be extracted cleanly: question-shaped headings, the answer in the first sentence, and verifiable specifics rather than adjectives.
What is answer engine optimisation (AEO)?
The same job named for answers rather than for generative models: being the source an AI answer draws on and names. AEO, GEO and "AI SEO" are used interchangeably by most vendors, so ask what someone means before comparing offers.
What is the difference between AEO and SEO?
SEO aims at a position in a list of results a person clicks. AEO aims at being quoted in the answer above that list, sometimes with no click at all. The winning unit shifts from a page to a passage, and vagueness becomes fatal because a model cannot quote an adjective. The underlying requirements — technical health, structure, real expertise — are the same.
Is AI search optimisation a real discipline or just a rename?
Mostly an extension, partly a rename. The genuinely new parts are measurement, entity consistency and writing for clean extraction. The claim that it requires a completely new set of tactics does not survive contact with how these engines actually build answers — from pages they have crawled and trust.
Do we need to do AEO if our SEO is already good?
You are most of the way there. The additions are small and cheap: put the real question in the heading, answer it in the first sentence underneath, add verifiable figures with attribution, keep your business details identical everywhere, and make sure your structured data describes what is visibly on the page.
Want to know whether AI answers currently mention you at all?
Book a free strategy call. We check what the answer engines say about your business today, what they cite instead of you, and what would have to change — and the audit is yours either way.
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