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What is AEO and how does it differ from SEO and GEO

11 September 20261 min

What is AEO and how does it differ from SEO and GEO

AEO is about optimizing for answer engines: being cited, not just linked. GEO is its generative subset; SEO is the underlying technical layer.

AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. It is the work of preparing a page so that an answering system—a search engine with generated responses or a conversational assistant—uses it and cites it as a source. SEO pursues a position in a list of links. GEO is limited to generative engines. AEO encompasses both.

The short definition, and the nuance

We define AEO as the discipline of preparing content to be used as an answer, not to be found as a link. That is the whole difference, and it is a difference of object: it changes what you consider to be a result.

In SEO, the result is a position. In AEO, the result is a citation: your name within a response that someone reads without ever reaching your website. These are two distinct economies. One is measured in clicks, the other in mentions.

GEO—Generative Engine Optimization—is a subset. It only looks at engines that generate text. AEO also covers what provides answers without generating anything: a Google featured snippet, a knowledge panel, a voice assistant that reads one of your paragraphs aloud. Answer engine is the category; generative engine is a species within it.

Common industry practice: Treating AEO, GEO, and SEO as three distinct services billed separately. The industry does this because three acronyms sell better than one, not because the workload triples.

Our criteria: Treating AEO as a shift in objective within the same work: the same page, written to answer entirely rather than promising that it answers further down.

Why the term does not yet have a canonical definition in Spanish

It is worth being honest about the state of the matter here. The three acronyms were not born in the same way.

GEO has a birth certificate. It is an academic article: GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, by Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan, and Deshpande, published on arXiv on November 16, 2023, and accepted at KDD 2024. There are authors, a methodology, and a testing bench, GEO-bench.

AEO has none of that. There is no foundational article, no identifiable author, no consensus-accepted definition. It is a trade term that gained popularity on industry blogs and which every firm defines in its own way. When five Spanish pages ranking for this query provide five different definitions—which they do—the reader has no way of knowing which one is correct.

We establish our own and put it in writing: AEO is the category, GEO is the generative subset, and SEO is the technical and authority layer upon which both rely. If anyone uses another, they should be able to argue for it.

GEO has authors, a date, and a testing bench; AEO has, for the moment, a trade agreement that every studio signs on its own. We prefer a debatable definition in writing, not a comfortable definition that no one takes responsibility for.

The three acronyms, in a table

SEOAEOGEO
What you optimizeLink positionAnswer utilityProbability of being cited by a model
Where it appearsResult listFeatured snippet, panel, assistant, generated answerAI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini
Success metricClickCitation or mentionCitation within generated text
Term originNineties, industry practiceIndustry practice, no canonical sourceAcademic article, arXiv 2023
Measured withSearch Console, analyticsPartially measurableVery little measurable today

The last row is the uncomfortable one, and it is the one almost no one writes about.

What Google literally says about all this

It is better to read the source than someone who interprets it.

In the same guide, Google explicitly advises against several practices that are sold as AEO services: creating an llms.txt file, chopping content into small fragments for the machine to digest, rewriting texts specifically for AI, or pursuing inauthentic mentions. Their position is that the real requirement is being indexed and eligible to display a snippet.

Here appears the contradiction that needs naming. Google maintains that there is no special optimization. The Princeton and IIT Delhi article measures visibility improvements of up to 40% by changing the wording. Both things can be true at once: Google talks about eligibility requirements, the article talks about which text the model chooses from among those already eligible. Getting into the list is not the same as being the one cited.

What actually changes in real work

AEO does not add a layer of smoke over SEO. It changes three specific decisions.

One: the first screen answers. The complete answer goes to the top, in 40-60 words, and stands on its own even if you tear it out of the article. It is the block that an engine can cite as-is.

Two: crawl control becomes a business decision. robots.txt for Googlebot is no longer enough. The agents are separated and do different things.

  • Googlebot — indexing and eligibility for AI Overviews and AI Mode
  • Google-Extended — training future Gemini models only; Google states it "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal"
  • GPTBot — crawling for OpenAI foundational models
  • OAI-SearchBot — the one that makes your website appear in ChatGPT search results
  • ChatGPT-User — requests triggered by a specific user action

Blocking GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot together is a common mistake: the first affects training, the second affects whether you are cited. It is decided separately, not in a block.

Three: measurement is admitted as incomplete. Search Console reports the performance of AI features within the "Web" search type, without breaking down AI Overviews. Whoever sells you a dashboard with "traffic from AI Overviews" is estimating, not measuring.

The Spanish angle that no one writes about

If your website is in Spain, there is a prior decision before any tactic: whether or not you authorize text and data mining of your content.

Royal Decree-Law 24/2021, of November 2 (BOE-A-2021-17910), incorporated the text and data mining exception of Directive (EU) 2019/790 into the Spanish legal system. Its article 67.3 allows for a reservation of rights: the exception does not apply "when the rights holders have expressly reserved the use of the works for machine-readable means or other appropriate means."

Translated into decisions: your robots.txt and your legal terms are not paperwork; they are the technical way to exercise—or waive—that reservation. A studio that sets up AEO for you without opening that conversation is leaving the decision unmade.

Data verified on August 27, 2026, against Google Search Central documentation, OpenAI agent documentation, and the BOE. Crawler names and platform policies change without notice: check them again before making a blocking decision.

How we measure it

We publish our own figures when they exist, and leave the space blank when they don't.

ItemFigureNote
ChatGPT——
Perplexity——
Google AI Overviews——

— = data being measured; we will publish it once we have our own sample.

And the data that really decides if this is worth your time: still being measured.

Until that number exists, we treat AEO as editorial hygiene, not as a channel.

AEO is not a new service. It is the old obligation to truly answer, now with a machine reading over the reader's shoulder.

That is why AEO is included here as a review of pages and crawling, not as a new line in the budget: as long as the number of calls attributed to a citation remains a blank space, we will not sell it to you as a channel.

Send us the URL of your page that answers the most questions. In less than 24 business hours, we will tell you which paragraph is citable as-is, which crawler you have blocked without knowing it, and whether your robots.txt reserves or gives away data mining. No cost and no attached budget.

Frequently asked questions

Are AEO and GEO the same?

No: GEO is the subset of AEO that deals only with engines that generate text. If someone sells them to you as two services with two invoices, ask them to explain which deliverable changes between one and the other.

Do I need an llms.txt file?

Google explicitly advises against creating it in their optimization guide for generative features, updated July 10, 2026. If your studio charges you for it as a line item, make them justify which engine reads it.

Can I measure how much traffic comes to me from AI Overviews?

Not precisely today: Search Console includes those impressions within the "Web" search type, without its own breakdown. We prefer to tell you it cannot be measured rather than showing you an estimated number that looks like data.

Does blocking GPTBot remove me from ChatGPT?

Not directly: GPTBot affects training and OAI-SearchBot affects appearance in ChatGPT search, according to OpenAI documentation. They are two separate decisions and should be made separately.

Do I need to redo the website to do AEO?

Almost never: we rewrite the structure of pages that already answer questions and review crawl control. If you are proposed a complete redesign as a requirement, it is a sale, not a diagnosis.

Keep reading

Transparency note. Some of our own data in this guide is still being measured on real projects, with a single method. We will publish it with its sample size and date range once the sample is large enough; until then, every figure you see carries its source and date of consultation.

Sources

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