--- title: "SEO vs AEO vs GEO: The Definitions Most Agencies Are Getting Confused" description: "SEO, AEO, and GEO are not the same thing — and the industry is split on what they mean. A rigorous breakdown of definitions, mechanics, and what drives AI search." image: https://www.mo.agency/hubfs/MO%20-%20Blogs%202026%20-%20SEO%20vs%20AEO%20vs%20GEO_%20Sorting%20the%20Definitions%20That%20Most%20Agencies%20Are%20Getting%20Confused.png canonical: https://www.mo.agency/blog/seo-aeo-geo-explained url: https://ai.mo.agency/blog/seo-aeo-geo-explained.md last_converted: 2026-05-11T16:10:33.851Z --- [AEO](https://www.mo.agency/blog/topic/aeo) # SEO vs AEO vs GEO: The Definitions Most Agencies Are Getting Confused May 11, 2026 · ![Luke Marthinusen](https://www.mo.agency/hs-fs/hubfs/MO%20-%20New%20Profile%20Picture%20Designs%20-%20Luke%20-%2020240528.png?width=36&height=36&name=MO%20-%20New%20Profile%20Picture%20Designs%20-%20Luke%20-%2020240528.png) Luke Marthinusen ![AEO vs GEO vs SEO](https://www.mo.agency/hs-fs/hubfs/MO%20-%20Blogs%202026%20-%20SEO%20vs%20AEO%20vs%20GEO_%20Sorting%20the%20Definitions%20That%20Most%20Agencies%20Are%20Getting%20Confused.png?width=1200&height=600&name=MO%20-%20Blogs%202026%20-%20SEO%20vs%20AEO%20vs%20GEO_%20Sorting%20the%20Definitions%20That%20Most%20Agencies%20Are%20Getting%20Confused.png) Share *Updated May 2026 · By Luke Marthinusen, CEO, MO Agency* The acronyms around AI search are multiplying faster than anyone can keep up with. SEO, AEO, GEO, AIO, LLMO, CAIO - all referring to overlapping but not identical disciplines, often used interchangeably, and rarely defined with much rigour. This article sets out the most defensible definitions of SEO, [AEO](https://www.mo.agency/aeo-geo-agency-south-africa), and GEO, acknowledges where the industry is genuinely split, and explains what marketing teams should actually do about it. ## SEO vs AEO vs GEO at a glance | | SEO | AEO | GEO | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Surface | Ten blue links | Featured snippets, knowledge panels, PAA, voice, AI Overviews | ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Bing Copilot | | Goal | Rank a page | Be the answer | Be cited inside the answer | | Mechanism | Crawl plus rank | Extract | Synthesise plus cite | | Key signals | Backlinks, technical health, content relevance | Schema, structured answers, clarity | Third-party citations, brand mentions, authority, statistics | | Click outcome | Click expected | Often zero-click | Usually zero-click; brand visibility only | ## What is SEO? **Search Engine Optimisation** (the OG of getting found) is the practice of ranking web pages within the traditional ranked results of search engines like Google and Bing. It rests on three pillars: technical health (crawlability, indexing, Core Web Vitals), on-page relevance (keyword targeting, intent matching, internal linking), and off-page authority (backlinks, brand mentions, and E-E-A-T signals). SEO has not gone away. It still captures the largest share of high-intent commercial search behaviour, and it remains the foundation that every other discipline depends on. What has changed is the share of the SERP that the blue links actually occupy. ## What is AEO? **Answer Engine Optimisation** is the practice of structuring content so that it is selected as the direct answer by an answer engine. The term predates the current AI wave - it was coined around 2017 to 2019 to describe optimisation for voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant, and for Google's zero-click features: featured snippets, knowledge panels, and People Also Ask boxes. Many practitioners now use AEO as the broad umbrella for all "optimisation for answers", including AI Overviews and responses from ChatGPT and Perplexity. [Profound](https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/aeo-vs-geo), without a doubt, the most famous AI-native marketing platform (they've raised over $155 million in total funding as of February 2026), takes this position explicitly and argues that AEO is the more enduring and defensible term. On-page AEO tactics that still earn featured snippets and AI Overview citations: - Question-led H2s and H3s that mirror real query language - A direct 40 to 60-word answer immediately under each question heading - Structured data - [FAQPage, HowTo, Article schema](https://www.mo.agency/blog/schema-markup-for-aeo) - Definition-style opening paragraphs ("X is...") - Original data and definitive statements rather than hedged opinions ## What is GEO? This is where definitions diverge most sharply. **Generative Engine Optimisation** is a newer term. It was formally introduced in a 2023 research paper of the same name ([Aggarwal et al.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735), presented at KDD 2024), which defined generative engines specifically as systems that synthesise answers from multiple sources using LLMs - ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Bing Copilot - and which embed citations within the generated response. The term gained mainstream industry traction in May 2025 when Andreessen Horowitz adopted it in their AI search thesis. Since then, GEO has become the dominant industry shorthand, even though competing acronyms (AIO, LLMO) remain in circulation. The academic framing draws a clean line: GEO is distinct from AEO because the mechanism is different. AEO is about being the extracted answer. GEO is about being one of several cited sources inside a synthesised response. ## Are AEO and GEO actually different? The industry is genuinely split. Profound argues they are the same strategy under two names, and that practitioners should stick with AEO because it is clearer, more distinct, and more future-proof. The academic literature, by contrast, maintains a clean mechanical distinction. The honest position is somewhere in the middle. The underlying content work overlaps almost completely. The surfaces, signals, and measurement frameworks do not. A featured snippet is a single-source extraction. An AI Overview is a multi-source synthesis with citations. A ChatGPT response is a multi-source synthesis with a different retrieval pipeline and different ranking factors. They behave differently enough that lumping them together makes measurement and budget allocation harder, not easier. The practical answer: Run one content strategy, but measure two surfaces separately. ## What actually drives AI search visibility This is the part most AEO/GEO practitioners skip. There are five mechanics that move the needle regardless of whether you call the practice AEO or GEO: 1. **Chunk-level retrieval.** AI search engines do not index whole pages. They break content into passages and retrieve the most relevant chunks for synthesis. Every section of a page needs to stand alone as a coherent answer. 2. **Answer synthesis.** Generative engines blend chunks from multiple sources into a single response. Content needs to be logically structured and easy to extract, so it fits cleanly alongside other sources. 3. **Citation-worthiness.** Being included in a response is not the same as being cited. To earn an attributed citation - the only kind that drives brand visibility - content must be factually accurate, up to date, well structured, and demonstrably authoritative. 4. **Topical breadth and depth.** Google AI Mode uses query fan-out - breaking a complex query into multiple parallel subqueries. Sites with deep, broad topical coverage benefit because multiple subqueries pull from different pages on the same domain. 5. **Multimodal support.** AI search increasingly retrieves images, charts, tables, and video alongside text. Multimodal content earns more impressions and improves citation rates. These are the actual ranking factors of AI search. They apply whether you call the discipline AEO, GEO, or something else entirely. ## What this means for marketing teams The right strategy is not to pick a term and argue about it. It is to assign three jobs: 1. **SEO** owns commercial-intent traffic where users still click. This is where revenue is captured today and remains the largest single source of qualified pipeline for most B2B brands. 2. **AEO** owns the on-page work that ensures content is extractable, structured, and definitive. This wins featured snippets, knowledge panels, and AI Overview citations. 3. **GEO** owns the off-platform authority work that makes generative engines trust and cite your brand. Third-party mentions, directory presence, PR coverage, review platforms, and [authoritative editorial citations](https://www.mo.agency/blog/building-citations-ai-models-trust) all feed the entity graph that LLMs use to decide who to cite. These three workstreams share a lot of tactical DNA. They also have different signals, different measurement systems, and different surfaces. Treating them as one undifferentiated "AI search" workstream tends to mean brands under-invest in the off-platform authority side of GEO and over-rotate on on-page tactics that have diminishing returns. What we see across our client base at MO Agency - including in markets like South Africa that sit outside the US/UK content arms race - is that off-platform authority is the discipline most brands are getting wrong. On-page hygiene is usually reasonable. Third-party presence on the directories, review platforms, and editorial sources that generative engines actually retrieve from is almost non-existent. That is where the largest GEO visibility gains are currently sitting. The acronyms will keep evolving. The mechanics will not. If you want a measurement-led view of how your brand is currently performing across all three surfaces - SERP rankings, AI Overview citations, and generative-engine mentions - [book an AI Visibility Audit](https://www.mo.agency/aeo-geo-agency-south-africa) with our team. [Scroll to top](#top-banner)