AEO vs GEO and the other names for optimizing for AI answers

The AEO vs GEO question has a short answer: answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO), like AI SEO and LLMO, name the same work on AI answers. That work aims to get a brand mentioned and cited when ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and other engines answer a question. The names differ in origin and in the engines they stress, and Google’s guidance for site owners files AEO and GEO under SEO.

Answer engine optimization (AEO)

Searches like “what is AEO answer engine optimization” and “what is answer engine optimization” have two answers, one about Google’s answer boxes and a newer one about AI assistants. Kalicube, the company founded by Jason Barnard, describes AEO as shaping content so that a search engine lifts it out as the single direct answer to a question. The places it names include featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes and voice results.

Kalicube credits the term to Barnard, and its conference archive lists his talk titled “Answer Engine Optimisation” at SEOcamp’Us Paris on 23 March 2018. Kalicube’s definition page now places AEO before a later term of its own, AI Assistive Engine Optimization.

HubSpot later gave the name to its AI visibility product. The HubSpot AEO announcement, updated on 14 April 2026, defines AEO as raising how often a business appears in AI-generated answers from assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. The same page presents AEO as a new discipline, distinct from SEO.

GEO, AI SEO and LLMO

GEO comes from a research paper, while AI SEO and LLMO are labels used by tool vendors for the same goal. Generative engine optimization (GEO) is a framework that helps content creators raise their visibility in the answers of generative engines. Generative engines are search systems that use generative models to gather and summarize information.

Pranjal Aggarwal and five co-authors introduced GEO in a paper first posted to arXiv on 16 November 2023 and accepted to the KDD 2024 conference. In their tests, GEO methods raised visibility in generative engine responses by up to 40%.

Semrush, an online visibility software company, launched its AI Toolkit under a second name, AI SEO Toolkit, on 4 March 2025, to track how ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity talk about brands.

LLMO, short for large language model optimization, is defined in Conductor’s glossary as work on content and websites that raises their visibility and citations in the answers of large language models. As of 29 October 2026, the glossary treats LLMO as another word for GEO, with the weight on the language models themselves.

The overlap with SEO

SEO vs GEO vs AEO share one base, because the AI answers in Google Search and ChatGPT search draw on web pages that each company’s systems can crawl and retrieve. Google’s guide to generative AI features in Search, last updated on 10 July 2026, names AEO and GEO as terms for work aimed at visibility in AI search.

The guide says that, from Google Search’s perspective, “optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.” So the first test of which SEO work still counts in AI search is whether a page can be crawled and indexed.

The same guide says Google’s AI features are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems. A page has to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to appear in them, and sites need no llms.txt file or special markup. Those conditions come first in how Google AI Overviews choose pages.

OpenAI sets a comparable condition for ChatGPT search. OpenAI’s crawler documentation says, as of 29 October 2026, that sites which opt out of OAI-SearchBot, its search crawler, are left out of ChatGPT search answers. Such sites can still appear as navigational links. That crawler is one part of where ChatGPT search gets its information.

Where the labels differ in practice

GEO, AEO, AI SEO and LLMO services differ in three practical ways: the AI engines they cover, whether they check crawler access, and whether they count mentions or citations. Kalicube’s AEO definition centers on search engine answer features such as featured snippets, while HubSpot and Semrush apply their labels to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

Engine coverage changes what a service sees. ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity share only 2 of their top 10 cited sources when answering the same questions about the same brand, according to Agenzy’s 2026 source study (n=109 business projects).

Crawler access is a condition that both Google and OpenAI set, so a service that only tracks answers can miss why a page never shows up.

A mention is an AI answer that names the brand, and a citation is an answer that links one of the brand’s pages as a source. Semrush describes its toolkit as counting brand appearances in AI-generated search results. HubSpot AEO adds an analysis of the sources AI draws from, and Conductor’s LLMO definition covers both visibility and citations.

An answer can name a brand without linking its site, so checking whether an AI assistant has cited your site is a separate step from counting mentions.

How to read agency labels

Buyers who search for “best answer engine optimization AEO agencies 2026 case studies services” should judge each agency on its engines, checks and metrics, whatever its label. The label alone says little, since HubSpot, Semrush and Conductor use different names for overlapping work. An agency that sells GEO is using the research term, and what generative engine optimization is sets out that definition in full.

The useful questions are which engines the agency tracks by name, which crawler and indexing checks it runs, and whether its reports count mentions, citations or both. Monthly reports can only be compared when the method stays fixed, and how AI visibility is measured sets out what that method covers.

Google’s guide for site owners tells anyone considering third-party AEO or GEO services to review its advice on evaluating outside SEO help. Shortlists of agencies in this field appear in the generative engine optimization agency rankings.

What it means

Marketing leads who compare GEO, AEO, AI SEO or LLMO offers should judge the work under the label, in this order.

1. Write down the AI engines your buyers use, then ask each agency or tool which of them it tracks by name.
2. Check that your main pages are indexed in Google and that your robots.txt file allows OAI-SearchBot, the crawler OpenAI uses for ChatGPT search.
3. Ask whether the reports count mentions, citations or both, and get one baseline measurement before the work begins.
4. Repeat the same measurement each month with the same questions, and read the results engine by engine.

FAQ

Which term should a company use on its own website?

A company should use the term its buyers use and keep one name throughout. Google’s guide for site owners says its AI systems understand synonyms and the general meaning of a search. A page therefore does not need every variant of a term to match a query. HubSpot, Semrush and Conductor each use a different name, so buyers are likely to meet all four.

Does blocking GPTBot keep a site out of ChatGPT search?

No. OpenAI’s crawler documentation says GPTBot collects content that may be used to train its generative AI foundation models, while OAI-SearchBot serves search. Each robots.txt setting works on its own, so a site can allow OAI-SearchBot to appear in ChatGPT search answers and disallow GPTBot to keep its content out of model training.

Can Google Search Console show performance in AI features?

Yes. Google’s guide for site owners points to the Generative AI performance report in Search Console for measuring how content performs in generative AI features on Google Search and Discover. The same guide warns about third-party tools that promise ranking success or claim internal Google metrics, and says no outside tool has access to Google’s ranking or AI systems.