SEO, AEO and GEO — how the three differ
Three acronyms, often sold as one package. They describe overlapping but genuinely different jobs. This page sets out what each one refers to, where the boundaries aren’t settled, and why we score them apart rather than rolling them into a single number.
The three, briefly
The same three angles we score, with the names the industry uses for them.
- SEOsearch engine optimisation. Being found in the list of blue links.Where the customer sees it: The blue links, and the map results
- AEOanswer engine optimisation. Being the source used when a system answers the question directly instead of returning a list.Where the customer sees it: Answer boxes and summaries above the links
- GEOgenerative engine optimisation. Being named inside an answer written by a generative assistant such as ChatGPT or Gemini.Where the customer sees it: ChatGPT, Gemini and similar
Where the boundaries aren’t settled
The boundary between the second and third isn’t settled, and different firms draw it differently. We use them as shorthand for the three angles we score, and nothing more.
We’re not going to pretend the industry has agreed. What we do is define them for our own use and score each one separately. The value isn’t in the taxonomy — it’s in refusing to collapse three different measurements into one number that hides which of them moved.
Why they can’t be collapsed into one score
Because they disagree, and we’ve measured it.
Sites that score well on conventional SEO haven’t always been the ones assistants name, and some fairly ordinary sites have led on both counts. If we reported a single blended figure, a business could be told it had improved while the thing it actually needed had got worse.
So: three angles, scored separately, reported separately, against the same criteria each quarter.
What’s genuinely shared between them
Most of the underlying work, which is why this isn’t three projects.
- A site a machine can get through
- Pages that state their answer plainly rather than burying it
- A named, qualified person attached to whatever is claimed
- Corroboration somewhere other than your own website
- Business details that are consistent everywhere they appear
Roughly speaking, the foundation is shared and the last stretch differs. That’s also why the first quarter of work rarely shows up as a number — it’s nearly all foundation.
What differs at the last stretch
Three different jobs, once the foundation is in place.
- For search: the conventional signals, plus a site structure that makes sense to a crawler.
- For the map results: the business profile — categories, services, attributes, service areas — and the consistency of your details. For AHPRA-regulated practices, without review generation.
- For AI answers: verifiable authority. Who’s speaking, what qualifies them, and what confirms it elsewhere.
A note on how this gets sold
We’re describing methods here, not making a claim about any particular firm.
The pattern worth watching for is an acronym on a price list with no measurement behind it. If a firm can’t show you the questions it will ask, the schedule it will ask them on and how it will score the answers, then whichever of these three it has named, it isn’t measuring it.
Common questions
- Do we need all three?
- Most of the work is shared, so it’s rarely a choice between them. What differs is where the remaining effort goes, and that comes out of the review.
- Is SEO obsolete?
- No. The map results and the blue links still carry most of the volume for most of the businesses we measure. AI answers are growing, not replacing.
- Which matters most for us?
- It depends on your treatments and how your customers search. A business whose customers travel to a specific practitioner has a different answer from one that depends on people searching nearby.
- Why don’t you just use one term for all of it?
- Because they’re measured separately and they move separately. One term would make the report easier to write and less honest.