Guides · Updated October 31, 2026

What is AEO and GEO? Answer engine optimization, explained for founders

The short answer: answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) are two names for the same goal: getting your product named in the answers of ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity and the like. Google says in writing that it's “still SEO”. It mostly is, with four real differences: answers draw on other people's pages more than yours, they check your site before naming you, they change from one ask to the next, and success is being named, not ranked.

AEO, GEO and the other names

They name one practice; pick whichever your team says. US searches for the two are about even: about 7,800 a month for GEO and 7,000 for AEO (Ahrefs, October 2026).

Where “GEO boosts visibility 40%” comes from

The term GEO comes from a 2023 paper by researchers at Princeton and elsewhere (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024). Its “up to 40%” is quoted everywhere as if it described ChatGPT. It doesn't:

• The AI was simulated: GPT-3.5 writing an answer from Google's top 5 results for each query.
• The 40% is a share of words: how much of the answer's text came from a page, relative to before. Not clicks, not rankings, not whether a product was recommended.
• The gains were a reshuffle: pages ranked low gained, the top page lost. Keyword stuffing did worse than nothing.

A 2025 benchmark tested eight of the paper's rewrites (adding statistics, quotes, citations, an authoritative tone…) on newer models, including product recommendations. Most did nothing or hurt: adding statistics lowered a page's rank in 19 of 24 settings. Moving a page up the search results beat every rewrite (C-SEO Bench, NeurIPS 2025). A 2026 review of 45 studies puts the 40% in its lowest tier of confidence (Martinez, via PPC Land).

Is it different from SEO?

• Google: its guide to AI search, which names AEO and GEO, says optimizing for it is “still SEO”, and that you don't need AI text files, special markup or writing for AI (Google Search Central, updated July 2026). Danny Sullivan put it as “good SEO is good GEO”.
• Microsoft Bing: “traditional SEO fundamentals still matter”, plus formatting advice: answers that stand on their own, lists and tables, nothing important hidden in tabs (Microsoft, October 2025).
• OpenAI: only that ChatGPT search can show your pages if its crawler, OAI-SearchBot, may read them (OpenAI's crawlers). Nothing on how it chooses.
• Forrester: “significantly, but not fundamentally, different from SEO”, and startups exaggerate the difference to sell tools (Forrester, November 2025). We sell a tool too: weigh us the same way.

Google's guide is about Google's AI. ChatGPT is a separate system whose sources overlap little with Google's results, so “still SEO” is fully true for Google and partly true for ChatGPT.

What really is different

1. Other people's pages decide more. For software questions, 87% of the citations behind the tools ChatGPT named were someone else's page (DerivateX, 40 categories), and being named across the web correlates with being named in answers far more than backlinks do (Ahrefs, 75,000 brands). A mention without a link counts.
2. It checks your site before naming you. ChatGPT builds a shortlist from broad searches, then searches the shortlisted products' own sites (Minuttia, 18,084 software questions). Pages that say plainly what it is, for whom and at what price are what it finds there.
3. A Google ranking doesn't carry over. About 7–12% of the pages ChatGPT cites rank in Google's top 10 for the question (Ahrefs, 15,000 prompts); it runs its own searches (how it picks its sources). Google's own AI answers follow its ranking more closely (ChatGPT vs Google AI Mode).
4. Answers change, and the result is a mention. The same question gives different products on different days, and a page can be cited while someone else is recommended. You measure how often you're named across many answers, not a position (how to measure it).

What a small team should do

No study ranks these; it's the order the evidence and the engines' own guidance point to, for a team of one to three.

1. Let them in (an hour). robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot; your site is in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools; nothing important sits behind a login, a noindex or a script (the checklist).
2. Say it plainly on your own pages (a day or two). What it is and who it's for in the homepage's first lines; pricing in numbers; integrations; the use cases you're best at.
3. A few honest comparison pages (a week). Alternatives to the products you're compared with, and head-to-heads, saying where the other one is better. They help most where AI knows little about your niche.
4. Get onto the pages answers read (ongoing). Look at which lists and reviews ChatGPT cites for your buying questions and earn a place: a profile on G2 or Capterra, an honest pitch to a list's author, an app-store listing for an app.
5. Measure (15 minutes a week). 10–25 questions your buyers ask, asked many times on each assistant your buyers use (ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode), counting how often you're named and who's named instead, each assistant on its own; and ask new customers how they heard about you (how to track it).

Expect weeks to months, not days. Evidence from small teams is thin: the numbers you'll see quoted (Vercel's 10% of signups from ChatGPT, Tally's AI search as its biggest channel) come from well-known products, and agency case studies are self-reported.

What to skip

• No evidence: llms.txt (no effect across about 300,000 sites, and Google says you don't need it), schema markup for AI, rewriting pages to “add statistics and quotes”.
• Short-lived and risky: self-ranking “best X” lists at scale, fake Reddit threads, buying “inauthentic mentions”, which Google says aren't as helpful as they seem.
• An attack, or illegal: hidden instructions to AI in your pages (Microsoft treats them as “AI recommendation poisoning”) and fake reviews (the FTC can fine up to $53,088 for each).

More on each, with the studies: why ChatGPT doesn't recommend your product.

What worked for us

PodSeeker, a podcast database for PR teams that we make, in the two weeks to October 30, 2026: ChatGPT named it in most answers to 18 of its 25 buying questions, and cited its site in 90 of 102 answers. The pages it cited most are plain SEO pages: the homepage, pricing, and two “best X” guides on its own blog. No AEO tricks: the pages doing the work were written for search. Our dated log of what we change and what happens is in how to rank in ChatGPT.

We started asking the same questions on Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode on October 31. On the first day, one answer per question and too early to call, AI Overviews named PodSeeker on 15 of the 25, and 13 of those were searches where one of its pages was already in Google's top 10. AI Mode named it on 7. For Google's answers, “still SEO” looks right so far; we'll update this as the answers come in.

Questions

Is AEO the same as GEO?

Yes, in practice. AEO is the older term, from featured snippets and voice search; GEO comes from a 2023 paper on AI-written answers. Both now mean getting into AI answers.

Is SEO dead?

No. AI answers are built on search: Google's on its own index, ChatGPT on its own searches through other search engines. Pages that rank and say plainly what they offer are what both read.

Do I need an AEO agency or tool?

Not to start: the steps above are SEO work a founder can do. A tracking tool earns its place when you want to know, every week, which buying questions name you and who's named instead, without asking by hand.

How long does AEO take to work?

Weeks to months. Changes reach answers only once ChatGPT's searches find the new pages, and answers vary so much that a change needs several weeks of answers to be believed.

Related: How ChatGPT picks and cites its sources · How to rank in ChatGPT · Best AI visibility tools