SEO vs. AEO vs. GEO: Making Sense of the Alphabet Soup

AI is here. Everybody is talking about it. A lot of people are frightened about it.

So much of what is being said about artificial intelligence right now is totally confusing, completely overwhelming, and, very often, not even true.

The implications of AI for businesses across every industry are simply unknown: we still have no idea exactly what AI is going to do. Seriously, not even the people who make these AI engines have any idea what’s going to happen.

I’ve been working in digital marketing for 18 years: I have seen a lot of things come and go in this space over the years, and my experience has usually been that of timid optimism or even outright annoyance at fads that come and go.

I’m not trying to be rude or super cynical here, but usually, the bigger the fuss people make about a new technology being “a total game-changer,” the less impressive it actually turns out to be. (Progressive web apps, anyone? Web3? Blockchain?)

Sometimes, people just like to get excited about shiny new objects, and that’s fine.

To be clear, I am not saying that AI is just a shiny new object. But I am saying that a lot of the hype about it is just that: hype.

In a few years, most of the predictions—I predict (heh)—will turn out not to be true after all. But there are definitely some things we can be doing now to put our best foot forward as we learn this strange new world together.

Here’s a great example of the problem we have: Have you seen all the jargon on places like LinkedIn where people are spilling acronyms all over the place like a drunkard walking back to his table with a full glass sloshing beer all over the floor?

I’m sure you have. There is no end to the annoying three-letter abbreviations for every variation of what seems to be the same thing:

• AEO
• AIO
• GEO
• LLMO
• …and a lot more.

That’s to say nothing of the old standbys, like SEO, SEM, SMO, and more.

What does it all mean?

That’s what this publication will help answer.

Want a plain-English guide to make sense of the AI chaos? I’ll walk you through the noise.

So, I’ll start it off here, today, very simply, with a basic explanation of a few terms that are almost entirely unhelpful and are cluttering up the internet right now.

At the crux of the issue is how terms like these are hard to define in a precise manner because with each of them, if you want to have a real conversation about them, at some point, you’d have to say: “It depends on what you mean by that” because there’s no laser-focused definition for what they mean and do (or don’t) include.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

A lot of people already know about this: SEO is the method by which people “optimize” a website for search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

I have a LOT to say about what people are predicting for what’s going to happen to SEO in the future (hint: most of it is wrong), but I’ll leave that for another time. Long story short: SEO is what people (like me) do to make sure users find your website on the internet.

It consists of making sure your website has the proper on-page structure (page titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal linking, sitemaps, alt text for images, transcripts for video, keyword-rich content, etc).

SEO is good, old-fashioned, classic digital marketing. A lot of people are saying it’s “going away” because of AI. This is nonsense; it isn’t. But again, more on that later.

AEO: Answer Engine Optimization

This is kind of an annoying term, because it really confuses the issue for people: “answer optimization” is already a thing that SEOs have been focusing on for years.

Optimizing website content for “answers” has been a standard practice since at least 2018. It includes schema markup, structured data, optimizing for zero-click SERPs (search engine results pages), featured snippets, and more.

So, here, at the outset, we already have a problem: “Answer Engine Optimization” is a term purported to mean: “optimizing your website / social media / life / universe in such a way that ‘answer engines’ like ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini find you and recommend your stuff to your clients.”

…but what about Google? Google still exists: it’s still the most visited website on Earth.

And guess what else? Gemini may be classified an “Answer Engine,” but it’s run and owned by Google and may just be a sort of AI chatbot interface that relies on Google’s existing index. So, if you’re trying to optimize content for Gemini and/or Google, are you “doing SEO” or “doing AEO” or both?

That’s my whole point: it depends.

And, zooming out for a second, this whole idea of “answer engines” isn’t even that new. You could argue (and I might) that Siri and Alexa were technically our first answer engines: interfaces designed to respond to voice queries in a conversational way, long, long before ChatGPT arrived. We just didn’t call them that.

(And that’s to say nothing of “Ask Jeeves,” which was conceived as a true “question and answer” service with an anthropomorphic agent ALL the way back in 1997).

Also, now it’s going to get REALLY confusing, because Google’s SERP already uses “AIO” as well: “Artificial Intelligence Overviews” — not to be confused with “AEO,” or “Answer Engine Optimization.”

See what I mean? Isn’t that nuts? So now what’s the difference between SEO, AEO, and AIO? This is getting really muddy, and the lines are blurring. AIO isn’t even the same kind of thing: it’s a feature in the core Google search product, which would mean it relies on AEO if you want to optimize for it, right? This is nuts!

GEO: Generative Engine Optimization

This term is even less helpful: What on earth is a “Generative Engine,” and how does that differ from an “Answer Engine?” At this point in time, this is not clear. Because ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini are all technically “generative engines” AND “answer engines.”

Is there any difference? Once again, maybe, kinda sorta, but it depends on what you mean by that.

Are there (or will there be) techniques that optimize a website for a generative engine that don’t also do the same for an answer engine, or vice versa? Not likely.

So why have two separate terms for what is essentially the same thing? I don’t know, but it feels pointless to me. It’s like the difference between saying “cooling and heating” versus “HVAC.” Could you quibble over minute details about how they’re slightly different terms? Sure, but they’re the same thing, and you know it. Anyone arguing otherwise is being pedantic.

But wait; there’s more!

To throw yet another wrench in the mix, earlier this week, I saw another acronym for the first time ever that adds a smoke screen on top of this riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma: “GSO,” which purportedly stands for “Generative Search Optimization.”

HUH? WHAT IS GOING ON?

MAKE IT STOP!

It almost feels like digital agencies are going to have to start displaying their favored acronyms like preferred pronouns in their email signatures.

Okay, moving right along…

LLMO: Large Language Model Optimization

This term is really starting to push the boundaries of silliness. It’s the digital marketing version of John Cleese doing his “silly walk” on a Monty Python sketch.

With LLMO, we are now entering the realm of the absurd.

As with GEO and AEO, and yes, even GSO, if you insist on using such a term, we’re now splitting hairs to a level of minutiae that it isn’t even worth your time reading about it (to say nothing of the time it takes me to write about it).

Seriously: if you’re using the term “LLMO” right now, there’s nothing I can tell you other than to say: “Stop it. Get some help.”

Are you getting as tired of all these acronyms as I am?

Guys: it’s pretty simple, really—these things are all pretty much the same thing. Unless you’re a principal investigator in a computer lab or a PhD postdoc doing research on deep learning and neural networks, at the end of the day, none of these differences will matter to you.

If you’re a business owner or just a normal person doing normal things, you don’t need to focus on almost any of this. Why?

Because they all ultimately do the same thing.

All of these are just techniques designed to accomplish the same basic tasks: to match searchers with answers. That’s it.

For Pete’s sake, Google’s mission statement was drafted three decades ago, in 1998:

“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

That’s it. It hasn’t changed.

Note how it doesn’t say anything about the internet, search engines, bots, spiders, websites, or anything else technical like that? Those are all just tools to accomplish the stated goal: the means to achieve the ends.

Sometimes, those tools may change a little bit, or a lot. But my overarching point here is this: good SEO is good AEO is good GEO is good LLMO.

It’s all just marketing.

At its barest essence, there are people in the world who are looking for stuff. If you offer the stuff they’re looking for, you want them to be able to find you. That’s it.

Whether they’re entering text into a “search engine” box on a computer, typing a query into a chatbot window on a mobile device, asking a question out loud to an assistant like Siri or Alexa, or just thinking it quietly in their own Neuralink-chip-enabled brain, they’re just looking for solutions to problems; answers to questions; results for queries.

Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.

A lot of these terms and acronyms are just obfuscation designed to scare you, confuse you, and make you feel left behind unless you spend a lot of money on esoteric services you probably don’t need or are the same as what you’re already paying for.

That’s what I am here for. Like the Beatles said, I want to hold your hand.

Let’s go through this together, step by step. We’re ALL learning at the same time. Maybe I can help get you there a bit faster, without stepping on a land mine or tripping over a pothole.

That’s my goal, anyway. If you find that helpful, subscribe for more updates on a regular basis. I will always do my best to explain this stuff in plain English. The only people who are benefiting from the confusing flurry of buzzwords are LinkedIn influencers and companies wanting to hawk expensive “new” SaaS offerings you probably don’t need (or already have access to without even knowing).

Here’s one final note: keep in mind that whatever this AI-enabled world ends up looking like, the people who are best qualified to help you navigate the choppy and confusing waters are the ones who have been tracking this kind of stuff already for years.

I know I’m biased when I say this, but one thing I’m certain of is that the experts in the new AI alphabet soup will be those of us who have already spent decades doing the quiet, tedious work of analyzing what makes a good recipe in the first place.

TL;DR: Don’t let all the new acronyms fool you—SEO, AEO, GEO, LLMO, and GSO are just different ways of saying “help people find answers.” And that’s just marketing.