Key Takeaways
The terminology split is real but the strategy is the same. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) describe essentially identical practices. AEO emerged from featured snippets and knowledge panels. GEO showed up when ChatGPT and AI Overviews changed how people search. Both aim to get your brand cited in AI-generated answers.
The industry hasn’t picked a winner yet. Profound argues AEO is clearer and more ownable. Percepture and others have built entire service lines around GEO. Some agencies like Jellyfish use “Generative Engine Marketing” as an umbrella term. The lack of consensus creates confusion for marketers trying to build strategies.
The tactics overlap almost completely. Whether you call it AEO or GEO, you’re doing the same work: structuring content for extraction, building entity authority, implementing schema markup, and earning citations from trusted sources.
Traditional SEO isn’t going anywhere. Gartner predicts a 25% drop in traditional search volume by 2026. But SEO, AEO, and GEO work together as a “triple-threat” approach. You need all three.
AI traffic converts significantly better. According to Percepture, traffic from AI search sources converts at 27% compared to 2.1% for traditional search. People who find you through AI answers already trust you before they visit your site.
The Naming Problem Nobody Asked For
Marketers love naming things. Sometimes too much.
Right now, our industry is having a heated debate about what to call the practice of optimizing content for AI search engines. Is it AEO? GEO? AIO? Something else entirely?
Andreessen Horowitz threw their weight behind GEO in their May 2025 thesis. But as the team at Profound points out, try Googling “GEO” right now. You’ll get results about geography, geology, and geo-targeting. Good luck owning that acronym.
The terminology confusion isn’t just semantic. It’s creating real problems for marketing teams trying to build strategies, allocate budgets, and explain what they’re doing to executives who already think SEO is complicated enough.
So let’s cut through the noise and figure out what actually matters here.
What AEO and GEO Actually Mean
Answer Engine Optimization emerged when Google started displaying featured snippets and knowledge panels. The goal was straightforward: structure your content so search engines could pull direct answers and display them above the traditional blue links. Think of those boxes that answer your question without requiring a click.
Generative Engine Optimization is the newer term. It extends the same basic concept into AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Claude. Instead of just winning a featured snippet, you’re trying to get your content synthesized and cited when these AI systems generate responses.
Here’s how Nowspeed breaks down the difference:
AEO focuses on winning direct answers in traditional search results, primarily Google featured snippets and knowledge panels. The tactics center on FAQ schema, concise answers, and keyword matching. The goal is still driving clicks through those featured positions.
GEO expands into AI-generated summaries across multiple platforms. It emphasizes entity optimization, credibility signals, and AI-friendly formatting. The catch? Citations in AI responses may not drive clicks at all. Your brand gets mentioned, but users might never visit your site.
The distinction sounds meaningful on paper. In practice, the line blurs almost immediately.
Why Some Experts Say They’re the Same Thing
Profound makes a compelling argument that AEO and GEO are functionally identical. Their position is blunt: “It is our professional opinion that GEO is a bad term.”
Their reasoning goes beyond the searchability problem. AEO is clearer because “Answer Engine Optimization” actually describes what you’re doing. “Generative Engine Optimization” is abstract and could confuse anyone outside the SEO bubble.
AEO also builds naturally on existing SEO knowledge. Many professionals are already doing AEO work without realizing it. Creating a new term makes people feel behind when they’re actually ahead.
The Profound team also argues AEO is more future-proof. “Answer engines” will remain relevant as long as people seek answers. “Generative engines” might sound dated once AI becomes the default search experience and we stop treating it as something novel.
Writer takes a similar view, calling for a “triple-threat optimization strategy” that treats SEO, AEO, and GEO as interconnected rather than separate disciplines. Their take: “The principles that make content perform well are largely the same across all platforms, with some strategic adjustments.”
Why Others Insist on the Distinction
Not everyone agrees these terms should collapse into one.
Percepture has built their entire service offering around GEO as a distinct practice. They define it as “the process of making your content easy for AI platforms to find, understand, and cite.” Their framing emphasizes that SEO gets you ranked while GEO gets you into the answer itself.
The distinction matters to them because the platforms are different. Optimizing for a Google featured snippet isn’t identical to optimizing for a ChatGPT response. The underlying systems, training data, and selection criteria vary across tools.
Jellyfish takes a middle path by introducing yet another term: Generative Engine Marketing (GEM). Their framework focuses “not only on appearing in results, but on shaping how Large Language Models perceive and describe your brand across all formats.”
This proliferation of terminology might actually be the problem. When every agency creates their own framework, clients end up more confused than when they started.
The Practical Reality for Marketing Teams
Here’s what the research actually tells us about making this work, regardless of what you call it.
Structure content for extraction. AI systems break content into chunks and pull the most relevant segments for synthesis. Every section needs to function like a standalone snippet. Use descriptive subheadings phrased as questions. Include lists, tables, and step-by-step guides. Add FAQ sections with proper schema markup.
Build entity authority. AI tools need to understand who you are before they’ll cite you. This means consistent naming across your website and third-party platforms, clear structured data for your brand and experts, and presence on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and other knowledge bases that AI systems reference.
Demonstrate E-E-A-T signals. Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness matter more than ever. Include expert quotes and data citations. Link to reputable sources. Feature clear author bios. AI models treat these signals as credibility markers when deciding what to cite.
Cover questions comprehensively. AI systems use query fan-out techniques, breaking complex searches into multiple related subqueries. Sites with topical authority and depth get pulled for different facets of the same question. If your content only addresses surface-level queries, you’ll miss the deeper synthesis opportunities.
Think beyond your website. Your site is one of many touchpoints influencing AI perception. Presence on social platforms, forums like Reddit, trusted review sites, and industry publications all shape how AI systems understand your brand. The conversation about you happens everywhere.
The Traffic and Conversion Question
The data on AI search traffic tells an interesting story.
Percepture reports that AI traffic converts at 27% compared to 2.1% for traditional search. That’s a massive gap. Their explanation: people who find you through AI already trust you because they’ve read about your expertise in the AI answer before visiting your site.
But there’s a catch. Pew Research found users are significantly less likely to click when AI overviews are present, just 8% compared to 15% in traditional listings. You might get mentioned more often while receiving fewer visits.
This creates what Jellyfish calls “the great decoupling.” Impressions rise while clicks flatten or drop. Visibility without traffic still carries value, but it requires rethinking how you measure success.
Branded search volume becomes a proxy for recognition. If AI mentions your brand repeatedly, users may search for it directly later. The citation creates awareness even when it doesn’t create an immediate click.
What This Means for Emarketed Clients
At Emarketed, we’ve watched this terminology debate unfold while focusing on what actually moves the needle for our clients.
The honest answer is that the name matters less than the execution. Whether your strategy document says AEO or GEO, the work looks remarkably similar. You’re building content that answers questions directly. You’re establishing your brand as an authority worth citing. You’re making sure AI systems can understand and extract your expertise.
The more important question is whether you’re doing this work at all. Gartner’s prediction of a 25% drop in traditional search volume by 2026 isn’t a distant threat. AI Overviews already appear in nearly half of all Google searches. ChatGPT has over 180 million monthly users. The shift is happening now.
Waiting for the industry to settle on terminology means falling behind competitors who are already optimizing for these platforms. The brands getting cited today will keep getting cited tomorrow. AI systems build trust with sources over time, and early movers have a compounding advantage.
The Bottom Line
Call it AEO. Call it GEO. Call it whatever helps your team understand the objective.
The practice itself is clear: make your content easy for AI systems to find, understand, cite, and synthesize. Structure it for extraction. Build authority through consistency and expertise. Demonstrate trustworthiness through sourcing and credentials.
The terminology debate will probably continue. Marketers do love their acronyms. But the underlying strategy has already stabilized around principles that work across traditional search, featured snippets, and AI-generated responses.
Focus on providing the best answers to the questions your audience asks. Everything else, the algorithms, the interfaces, the naming conventions, is just details.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I use AEO or GEO when talking to clients or executives?
Use whichever term resonates with your audience. AEO tends to be more intuitive because “Answer Engine” clearly describes the function. GEO can sound more cutting-edge but may require more explanation. Some teams use both interchangeably or adopt umbrella terms like “AI Search Optimization” to avoid the debate entirely.
Do I need separate strategies for AEO and GEO?
No. The tactics overlap almost completely. Structured content, entity optimization, schema markup, and credibility signals work across both traditional featured snippets and AI-generated responses. You’re building one content strategy that performs well in multiple environments.
How long does it take to see results from AEO/GEO optimization?
Most sources cite three to six months for initial results, similar to traditional SEO timelines. The difference is that AI search results compound over time. Platforms learn to trust certain sources, so early investments in authority building pay off increasingly as AI systems reference your content in more queries.
Can I track whether my brand appears in AI-generated answers?
Tracking is still evolving. Tools like Profound’s Share of Model platform and custom monitoring solutions can track brand mentions across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. Traditional rank tracking doesn’t capture AI citations, so you’ll need specialized approaches to measure visibility in generative responses.
Does this replace traditional SEO?
No. SEO, AEO, and GEO work together as complementary strategies. SEO builds the authority and rankings that make your content discoverable. AEO and GEO ensure that authority translates into citations when AI systems generate answers. Neglecting any one of these creates gaps in your overall search visibility.
What content formats work best for AI citations?
AI systems favor structured, scannable content: comparison tables, step-by-step guides, definition sections with clear formatting, FAQ sections with direct answers, and original research with supporting data. Individual paragraphs should be capable of standing alone as complete answers to specific questions.
Is AI search traffic actually valuable if users don’t click through?
Yes, but differently than traditional traffic. AI citations build brand awareness and trust even without clicks. Users who see your brand mentioned as an authority may search for you directly later or remember you when making purchasing decisions. The conversion path is longer but the trust signal is stronger.
References
Nowspeed. “AEO vs GEO: Are Answer Engine Optimization and Generative Engine Optimization the Same?” https://nowspeed.com/blog/aeo-vs-geo-are-answer-engine-optimization-and-generative-engine-optimization-the-same/
Profound. “AEO vs. GEO: Why they’re the same thing (and why we prefer AEO).” https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/aeo-vs-geo
Writer. “GEO & AEO SEO: Generative & Answer Engine Optimization.” https://writer.com/blog/geo-aeo-optimization/
Jellyfish. “What Are AEO and GEO? How AI Is Redefining Search.” https://www.jellyfish.com/en-gb/training/blog/what-are-aeo-and-geo
Percepture. “What is Generative Engine Optimization? GEO vs SEO.” https://percepture.com/geo-insights/what-is-generative-engine-optimization-geo-vs-seo/
Digital Marketing Institute. “Search Everywhere Optimization: What Is SEO, GEO, and AEO?” https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/what-is-seo-geo-and-aeo/
