AEO and GEO are two names for the same goal: getting your brand named and cited in the answers AI tools write. The AEO vs GEO difference is origin, not the work: AEO came from the SEO industry, and GEO from a 2023 research paper. AEO (answer engine optimization) was first used for featured snippets and voice assistants, and is now used for AI answers too. GEO (generative engine optimization) is the name that paper gave this work for engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. SEO (search engine optimization) is ranking your pages in the list of links a search engine shows.
The tactics for AEO and GEO overlap almost completely, so pick one label and stay with it. What differs across all three is what you measure. SEO counts rankings and clicks. AEO and GEO count how often AI answers name your brand, where in the answer, in what tone, and which websites the answer cites as its sources.
| Dimension | SEO | AEO | GEO |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you optimise for | A high ranking for your page, and the click | Being the one direct answer to a question | Being named and cited inside an AI-written answer |
| Where it shows | Google and Bing results pages | Featured snippets, voice assistants, and now AI answers | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews |
| What you measure | Rankings, impressions, clicks | Whether your answer is the one shown or read out, and now AI mentions | Share of answers that name you, position, tone, cited websites |
| Example tool type | Google Search Console, rank trackers | Rank trackers that record featured snippets, AI visibility trackers | AI visibility trackers that rerun the same questions |
| Example query | “sunscreen no white cast” | “which sunscreen does not leave a white cast?” | “Suggest 3 sunscreens for Indian skin that leave no white cast” |
What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
SEO (search engine optimization) ranks your pages in the list of links on Google and Bing. AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) get your brand named and cited inside the answers ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews write. AEO and GEO are two names for one job.
AEO vs GEO: what is the difference between AEO and GEO?
AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) differ in origin, not in the work. AEO is the older SEO industry term, first used for featured snippets and voice assistants. GEO comes from a 2023 research paper about AI-written answers. Both mean getting your brand named and cited in AI answers, and both are measured the same way.
In day-to-day work there is almost no difference. Both aim to get your brand into the answer a buyer reads. Both rest on the same three things: pages that answer questions plainly, facts about your brand repeated on other websites, and a site that AI crawlers can reach. The two terms differ in origin and scope.
- Origin. AEO came out of the SEO industry, when the answer meant a featured snippet or a reply from a voice assistant. GEO was named in the research paper GEO: Generative Engine Optimization by Aggarwal et al., first posted in 2023 and published at KDD 2024.
- Scope. AEO covers any engine that gives one direct answer, including a snippet or a spoken reply. GEO covers engines that write a new answer from several sources, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
- Measurement. The numbers are the same. An AEO report and a GEO report both track how often answers name you, where, in what tone, and which sites they cite.
Adding citations, quotations and statistics raised a page’s visibility in AI answers by up to about 40% in a GPT-3.5 test setup. (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024)
Is AEO part of GEO?
Under the older meaning of AEO, GEO is part of AEO. In that usage AEO covers featured snippets, voice answers and AI answers, and GEO is the AI-written part.
Many teams now use both words for AI answers only. In that usage AEO and GEO are synonyms for one field.
No standards body defines either term. For planning, treat AEO and GEO as one job. On your website and in reports, use the word your buyers or clients search for, and define it once.
What are SEO, GEO and AEO in digital marketing?
In digital marketing, SEO, GEO and AEO are three parts of search work. SEO gets a page ranked and clicked in the list of links. AEO and GEO get the brand named when a buyer asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or a Google AI Overview what to buy. SEO is the base, because AI answers draw on web pages.
What is the full form of AEO, GEO and SEO?
AEO stands for answer engine optimization, GEO for generative engine optimization and SEO for search engine optimization. AEO and GEO aim at the answers AI tools write, such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. SEO aims at the list of links on Google and Bing.
GEO stands for generative engine optimization: helping AI tools include your brand when they write a reply from several web pages. The definition and a checklist are in what is GEO.
AEO stands for answer engine optimization: helping a search or AI tool pick your page or brand as the direct answer to a question. What is AEO goes deeper.
SEO stands for search engine optimization: helping your pages rank in the list of links.
Is GEO replacing SEO?
No. AI answers draw on web pages, and an engine that cannot crawl or index your page is unlikely to cite it, so SEO stays the base for GEO and AEO. GEO vs SEO sets out what Google and OpenAI say on this, and AEO vs SEO covers the same question for AEO. Which search index each AI engine uses maps where each engine finds its pages.
What do SEO, AEO and GEO look like for one buyer question?
For one buyer question, SEO puts your page in Google’s list of links, and AEO and GEO get your brand named inside the ChatGPT answer. On some engines that list of brands changes when the buyer asks in Hinglish. Take one question from Depra AI’s own study: a buyer in India who wants a sunscreen that does not leave a white cast.
- On Google (SEO). The buyer types a few words, such as “sunscreen no white cast Indian skin”. Google shows a list of links and, for some queries, an AI Overview above them. SEO decides whether your product page, or a review that mentions it, is in that list. Google AI Mode and the Gemini app are two more Google surfaces, each with its own answer. How Google AI Mode differs from AI Overviews and Gemini covers what a brand can track on each.
- In ChatGPT (GEO and AEO). The buyer types the whole question: “I want to buy a sunscreen that doesn’t leave a white cast on Indian skin. Which one is best?” The reply names a handful of sunscreens and links the pages it drew on. There is no second page of results. A brand left out of that short list does not reach this buyer through the answer.
- In Hinglish. Many Indian buyers type the same question in Hinglish, which is Hindi and English mixed and written in English letters. Same need, same engine, and the list of brands in the answer can change. How to write Hinglish prompts for AI tracking shows real pairs from the study.
In August 2026, Gemini cited at least one source in 90.0% of English answers and in 41.3% of Hinglish answers to the same 10 buying questions (October 2026 re-run: 73.4% and 56.3%). (Depra AI Hinglish vs English study, fieldwork 14 Aug 2026 and 13 Oct 2026)
What changed between English and Hinglish
Depra AI’s study of 480 India-geolocated answers, collected on 14 August 2026, asked this question and nine other buying questions in English and in Hinglish, 8 times each, on ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Answers change a little even when you ask the same question twice. So the study measured how much more the brand list changed when only the language changed.
The measure is overlap: the share of brands two answers have in common. In August 2026, on Perplexity, that overlap was 23.4 percentage points lower between an English and a Hinglish answer than between two runs of the same question in one language. The gap was 7.8 points on Gemini and 2.2 points on ChatGPT. In the October 2026 re-run (479 answers, same design), the gap was 28.2 points on Perplexity, 2.0 on Gemini and 0.8 on ChatGPT. Perplexity named a noticeably different set of brands in both waves.
For the three surfaces, that means a rank tracker sees only Google’s list of links, and an English-only AI check sees part of what Indian buyers are shown. If you sell in India, check your brand in both languages.
How do you measure AEO and GEO?
You measure AEO and GEO by asking AI engines the questions your buyers ask, many times, and counting what the answers say. These tracked questions are called prompts. Use prompts that do not name your brand: a question that already contains your name cannot show whether the engine would pick you. Track five numbers.
- Visibility: the share of answers that name your brand.
- Position: where you appear when the answer lists several options, with 1 meaning named first.
- Sentiment: whether the answer describes you positively, neutrally or negatively, with the sentence it used.
- Cited websites: the pages the answer links as its sources, and which of them name competitors but never you.
- Share of voice: your mentions as a share of all mentions of the brands you track. Each term is defined in the AI search glossary.
How Depra AI tracks AEO and GEO
Depra AI’s visibility tracking asks your prompts to ChatGPT with web search, Gemini and Google AI Overviews every day, and to Perplexity every week on Starter, Growth and Scale and every day on Enterprise, from inside the country you choose. It stores every full answer and records whether you were named, in what order, in what tone, and which pages were cited. It suggests buying questions for you, none naming your brand, with Hinglish versions when India is one of your markets.
For the SEO side, Google Search Console shows impressions, clicks and average position. For a step-by-step method, with or without a tool, read how to measure AI visibility. How much AI visibility tools cost compares published prices.
Which should you work on first: SEO, AEO or GEO?
Start with SEO basics, then add AEO and GEO work on top, because an engine that cannot reach your pages is unlikely to cite them. A practical order for most brands:
- Check crawler access. Make sure Googlebot and AI search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot can fetch your pages. Your robots.txt file, the plain text file that tells bots what they may crawl, controls this. The AI crawlers guide lists which bot does what.
- Measure the answers today. Pick 20 or more buying questions and record which brands AI engines name, in every language your buyers use.
- Answer the question on your own pages. Put the direct answer in the first two sentences, with facts an engine can quote: prices, sizes, ingredients, comparisons. A content AEO audit checks each page for this.
- Get onto the sites answers cite. Open the pages cited next to your competitors, such as lists, reviews and forum threads, and work on being included there.
- Rerun and compare. Answers change between runs. Judge progress across weeks of repeated checks. Depra AI’s own case study shows this loop on one brand, with every number and its source.
What about LLM SEO and AI SEO?
LLM SEO, AI SEO, AI search optimization and ChatGPT SEO are more names for the same work as GEO and AEO. An LLM (large language model) is the type of AI model behind ChatGPT and Gemini, which is where the term LLM SEO comes from.
Whichever name a team uses, the job stays the same: get named in AI answers, get your pages cited, and track both over time. LLM SEO explained covers that term in depth.