SEO vs AEO vs GEO: what is the difference?

SEO (search engine optimization) gets your pages ranked in Google's list of results. AEO (answer engine optimization) gets your content chosen as the direct answer in featured snippets, voice results and AI Overviews. GEO (generative engine optimization) gets your brand cited and recommended inside AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. All three share one foundation.

Three disciplines, one buyer journey

A buyer at a 120 person logistics company who needs better invoice automation might do all three of these in one week:

1. Type "invoice automation software for logistics" into Google and click a result. That is the SEO moment.
2. Ask Google "how long does invoice automation take to set up" and read the summary at the top of the page without clicking. That is the AEO moment.
3. Ask ChatGPT "which agencies can automate accounts payable for a mid-size company" and get a short list of names. That is the GEO moment.

Each step is a chance to be seen. A company that only works on SEO shows up in step one and disappears in steps two and three. That is why the three terms exist, even though most of the underlying work overlaps.

The quick comparison

What SEO covers

SEO is the base layer. If search engines cannot crawl, index and understand your site, nothing else works, because many AI answer systems pull from search indexes when they browse the web.

The core SEO work has not changed much:

• Technical health. Pages load fast, render without errors, use clean URLs and sit in an XML sitemap. Our technical SEO checklist covers the full list.
• Intent match. Each page targets a real query and answers what the searcher wants, whether that is a definition, a comparison or a vendor.
• Authority. Other sites link to you because you published something worth citing.
• Internal structure. Related pages link to each other so both people and crawlers can find depth.

For a B2B company, SEO usually means ranking for problem and solution queries your buyers type before they ever contact sales.

What AEO covers

AEO is about formatting knowledge so a machine can lift it as an answer. Search engines have shown direct answers for years through featured snippets and People Also Ask boxes. AI Overviews pushed this further by summarising several sources at the top of the page.

AEO work looks like this:

• Open each page with a direct answer of 40 to 60 words to the main question.
• Use question-style headings that match how people actually phrase queries.
• Write definitions that stand on their own without the surrounding paragraph.
• Use lists for steps and tables for comparisons, because both are easy to extract.
• Add structured data such as FAQPage, HowTo or Article where it genuinely fits.

If you want the deeper version, read our guide on what AEO is.

What GEO covers

GEO is the newest and least settled of the three. Generative tools build answers from two places. The first is what the model learned in training. The second is what it retrieves live from the web when it browses. Both reward the same thing, which is being described clearly and consistently in places the model trusts.

GEO work includes:

• Brand mentions on third-party sites. Industry publications, review platforms, directories, community discussions and comparison articles all shape how AI tools describe you.
• Entity clarity. Your company name, category, location, services and pricing model are stated the same way everywhere.
• Crawler access. AI search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot can reach your pages, assuming you want them to.
• Citable passages. Specific, factual sentences that a model can quote with confidence, rather than vague marketing claims.

The difference from SEO is that a GEO win often happens off your own site. A comparison article on a respected industry blog that names you can do more for your AI visibility than another page on your domain.

Where they overlap

Most of the work counts toward all three. A well-structured page that answers a real question, loads fast, carries clear headings and gets linked from other sites will help you rank, get quoted and get cited.

Overlap in practice:

• Clear writing. Short paragraphs, specific claims and plain language help readers, snippet extraction and AI summarisation alike.
• Crawlability. Blocked or broken pages fail all three.
• Authority. Links and mentions from respected sources feed rankings and AI trust.
• Freshness. Updated content with current facts tends to perform better across all three surfaces.

Where they pull in different directions

There are a few real tensions to manage.

• Click versus answer. AEO can satisfy a searcher without a click. That is still worth having for brand exposure, but measure it with impressions and assisted conversions, not just sessions.
• Your site versus the wider web. SEO investment goes mostly into your own domain. GEO investment often goes into earned mentions elsewhere, which looks more like PR than content production.
• Length versus density. Long pages can rank well for broad topics, while AI tools prefer passages that make one point cleanly. The fix is long pages built from short, self-contained sections.

What to do first

If you are starting from zero, do the work in this order.

1. Fix the foundations. Make sure your key pages are indexed, fast and free of technical errors. Nothing else matters if crawlers cannot read you.
2. Map buyer questions. List the 30 to 50 questions your buyers ask before they buy. Sales call notes and support tickets are the best source.
3. Build answer-first pages. For each priority question, write a page or section that opens with a direct answer, then goes deeper with steps, examples and a comparison table.
4. Add structured data. Mark up your organisation, articles and FAQs where accurate.
5. Check AI crawler access. Review your robots.txt and decide which AI bots you allow. Our guide to AI crawlers and robots.txt explains each one.
6. Earn mentions. Pitch guest articles, get listed in relevant directories and review sites, and contribute to comparison content in your category.
7. Measure all three. Track rankings for SEO, snippet and AI Overview presence for AEO, and AI referral traffic plus manual prompt checks for GEO.

A simple audit you can run this week

• Search your top five buyer questions in Google. Note who owns the featured snippet or appears in the AI Overview.
• Ask the same five questions in ChatGPT and Perplexity. Note which companies get named and which sources get cited.
• Compare the two lists. The sources that show up in both are your priority targets for mentions.
• Check your own pages for those questions. Does each one open with a direct answer a machine could quote, or with a paragraph of throat-clearing.

This takes about an hour and usually shows exactly where the gaps are.

How we approach it at Dravik

We treat SEO, AEO and GEO as one visibility program with three scoreboards. The technical and content work happens once and gets measured three ways. The off-site work, getting your company mentioned where AI tools look, runs alongside it. If you want a clear picture of where you stand on all three, book a business audit and we will map your gaps and the order to close them in.