SEO vs AEO vs GEO: what changes when AI answers the question

Search used to mean ten blue links. Today a growing share of questions is answered directly, by Google’s AI Overviews, by ChatGPT, by Perplexity. Your content still matters, but how it gets used has changed.

SEO: ranking the page

Classic SEO gets your page into the results. Technical health, relevance and authority (links) remain the foundation. Without it, nothing else works.

AEO: becoming the answer

Answer Engine Optimization is about being the snippet that gets read out or displayed. It rewards:

• A direct answer in the first 40 to 60 words under a question-shaped heading
• Clean structure: lists, tables, short paragraphs
• FAQPage and HowTo structured data where it genuinely fits

GEO: being cited by AI

Generative Engine Optimization targets the sources an AI model trusts when it writes an answer. In practice:

• Make your entity unambiguous: same name, description and profiles everywhere, linked with sameAs
• Publish original data and clear definitions that are easy to quote
• Let AI crawlers in (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) and offer an llms.txt summary
• Earn mentions on sites that models already treat as reliable

Where to start

Fix the technical basics, rewrite your key pages answer-first, then add schema and entity signals. The three disciplines stack. They don’t compete.

Need help applying this to your site? See my SEO services in Morocco or get in touch.