People ask what does AEO stand for and what does GEO stand for, and the answer is short: AEO is Answer Engine Optimization and GEO is Generative Engine Optimization. They get mixed up constantly, including by the people selling both, so this page settles what each one means and defines the rest of the vocabulary in plain English.
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The two terms people mix up
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization, the work of getting AI engines to name and cite your brand. AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization, the work of writing a page so an engine can extract a clean answer from it and credit you for that answer. The terms below are the rest of that vocabulary.
An AI citation is the moment an AI answer explicitly names your website as a source for a claim it makes, usually with a link back to your page. It is the strongest form of AI visibility, because the engine is telling the reader that your brand is where the answer came from.
Read the guide: How to Get Cited by ChatGPT: 2026 PlaybookAn AI Overview is Google’s AI-generated answer shown above the traditional blue links, stitched together from web sources it names and cites. It appears for a growing share of searches and often settles the buyer’s question before they scroll, so being one of the sources it pulls from is now a core visibility goal.
Read the guide: How to Rank in Google AI OverviewsAn answer capsule is a self-contained 40 to 60 word answer placed at the top of a page or section, written to stand alone with no surrounding context needed. It is the exact snippet AI engines prefer to extract and quote, so leading with one is the simplest way to earn citations.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of writing a page so an answer engine can extract a clean, correct answer and attribute it to you. It is the source layer beneath GEO: clear questions, self-contained answers, and structured data that let the engine quote you with almost no effort.
Read the guide: AEO vs SEO vs GEO: The Real DifferencesA brand mention is when an AI answer refers to your company by name in its text without necessarily linking your site as the source. It is a weaker signal than a citation, but it still puts you on the buyer’s shortlist and often precedes a full citation as the engine’s trust in you grows.
Read the guide: How to Check if ChatGPT Recommends Your BrandEntity authority is the strength and consistency of your brand as a verifiable thing that AI can trust and attribute answers to. It is built from structured data, matching sameAs profiles like LinkedIn and Crunchbase, and third-party sources that agree on who you are. The more sources agree, the more confidently an engine cites you.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of structuring and earning content so AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Overviews name and cite your brand inside the answers they write. It works on the whole entity: your pages, your schema, and the third-party sources AI trusts.
Read the guide: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Guidellms.txt is a plain-text file placed at the root of your site that hands AI crawlers a curated map and short summary of your most important pages. Google says in its own guidance that creating one will neither help nor harm your rankings in Google Search, and none of OpenAI, Anthropic or Perplexity says its crawlers read it, so treat it as optional housekeeping.
Read the guide: What Is llms.txt? Complete Setup GuideShare of voice in AI is how often your brand appears in AI answers for a defined set of buyer questions, measured against your competitors. If AI names four brands for a question and you are one of them, your share is 25 percent. It is the clearest way to track AI visibility over time.
Read the guide: How to Track Competitors in AI Search ResultsStructured data, also called schema, is machine-readable JSON-LD markup such as Organization, FAQPage, and Article that labels the facts on your page for engines. It lets an AI parse who you are, what you sell, and what you claim with near-zero effort, which makes your content far easier to extract and cite.
Read the guide: Schema Markup for AI Search: Types That MatterSEO wins ranked links on Google. AEO gets a clean answer extracted from your page. GEO gets your brand named and cited inside the AI answer itself. AEO is the source layer that feeds GEO, and both sit on top of the entity work that makes AI trust you.
| What is compared | SEO | AEO | GEO |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it optimizes for | Ranking blue links on a results page | A clean answer an engine can extract from your page | Being named and cited inside the AI answer |
| The unit that wins | A ranked page | An extractable answer | A cited brand |
| Primary surface | Google search results | Featured snippets and answer boxes | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Overviews |
| Core signal | Backlinks and keywords | Question-answer structure and schema | Entity authority and cross-source agreement |
| Success metric | Keyword position and clicks | Answer captured for the query | Share of voice in AI answers |
| How they relate | The original discipline | The source layer that feeds GEO | The outcome AEO and entity work produce |
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