GEO vs SEO vs AEO: what matters for your business?

SEO, GEO and AEO are three names for mostly the same job: making your website easy to find, easy to understand and easy to quote. Agencies now sell all three as separate services, so it’s fair to ask if you’re paying for one job or three. The useful question is which gap in your pages to fix first.

Here’s an example. Say you run an electrical business in Parramatta and an agency sends you a quote with three lines: SEO, AEO and GEO. You ask what each line includes. The first says to rewrite your service pages. The second says to rewrite them so each one starts with a plain answer. The third says to add finished jobs to the same pages. That’s one piece of work with three labels on it.

This guide explains what each name means, shows which jobs they share and gives you a way to check each one. It also shows what one Sydney client recorded and gives you six questions to ask about any proposal. If you’d like a view on your own pages, our generative engine optimisation services start with that comparison.

GEO vs SEO and AEO: what is the practical difference?

Picture a customer meeting your business in three different ways. In the first, Google shows a list of links and they pick your page. In the second, Google pulls a short answer out of one page and shows it in a box. In the third, an AI tool such as ChatGPT writes an answer in its own words and names a few businesses.

SEO is the wide job of helping customers find your pages through search. AEO is the part about answering one specific question directly. GEO is the part about how AI-written answers describe your business or link to it as a source. A link shown that way is called a citation.

Definition: SEO is search engine optimisation, AEO is answer engine optimisation and GEO is generative engine optimisation. They are labels for overlapping kinds of work and not three official Google ranking systems. Google notes that AEO and GEO exist as terms and treats optimising for generative AI search (search that writes its own answers) as SEO.¹

Our what is GEO and what is AEO guides define each term on its own.

Think of one good page as a spring with three channels running out of it, one into search results, one into direct answers and one into AI answers. The water comes from the same place, which is why so much of the work overlaps. Each channel still needs its own gauge, so you check each result separately, as the picture shows.

The table puts the three side by side. Search Console is Google’s tool for seeing how your site appears in search. A click is a visit from a search result. An impression is each time a link to your site was shown. Read each row to see what one approach is for, then read the middle columns to see why the work overlaps. The fourth column shows where one approach checks something the others don’t.

Which jobs help SEO, GEO and AEO at the same time?

Most jobs help all three. One improved service page can make you easier to find, give a direct answer and give an AI tool a clear source to cite.

All of this depends on the tool you want to appear in being able to read your page. A program that reads web pages by itself is called a crawler. For Google’s AI features, a page must be stored for search, be allowed to show a quoted excerpt and be included in its Search generative AI features.¹ Being stored for search is called being indexed. Other platforms have their own access rules, which the next section lists.

Kavera note: Our published SEO plans put SEO and AI-search work in one monthly scope. They do not list GEO and AEO as separate line items.

Do Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Microsoft work the same way?

No. Each one publishes its own access rules, which cover what you can control and what it shows. Each platform’s controls are independent, so check the relevant provider’s instructions. An answer format on one platform may not exist on another.

Three terms in the table. AI Overviews are the AI summaries Google shows in search. AI Mode is Google’s chat-style AI search. The file called robots.txt sits on your website and tells automatic page readers what they may fetch.

Agencies still sell FAQ markup as an AEO tactic, so it deserves a mention. FAQ markup is code that labels questions and answers for search engines. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results, the expanded question lists under some listings, from 7 May 2026.⁶ Keep an FAQ on a page because customers ask the questions.

What should an Australian business fix first?

Fix the most basic problem first. Start at the top of the list below and stop at the first row that sounds like you.

In our experience an Australian local business usually meets the first three rows before the last. Three priorities cover most owners:

1. Fix the missing customer answer or the access problem.
2. Choose a separate measure for each outcome you want.
3. Compare agency deliverables and take out any work that is listed twice before you agree fees.

What did one Sydney client see in Google and in AI answers?

SHORE is a Sydney builder and a Kavera client. We recorded three different results for it.

In Google, SHORE’s appearances in searches that didn’t use its name rose from 1,204 to 9,492, about 7.9 times as many. In a Google AI Overview for “duplex bondi beach”, Google named SHORE’s SOL duplex and cited its project page. For ChatGPT we recorded this. In two checks about two months apart, our client SHORE went from absent to first in one Sydney builder shortlist.

The full captures are in our guides on what is GEO and ChatGPT SEO. The dates and the limits of each result are in the fine print further down.

Kavera note: We built SHORE’s website and run its SEO. Our work began on 21 July 2026. Website and profile changes ran together, so we can’t say which change caused which result. That’s why we keep the three results apart.

How do you check whether SEO, GEO and AEO are working?

Check each type with its own tool and keep enquiries as a separate number. Mixing them gives you a figure that sounds impressive and means little. One term in the table is a question list. That is a fixed set of questions your customers might ask an AI tool, asked the same way each time.

Google’s Generative AI report counts impressions, meaning how often links to your site were shown. It only appears once a site has enough of them.⁴ Microsoft says its citation counts show how often pages were cited and not how important they are or where they sat in an answer.⁹

Work out where your own enquiries come from before you plan a budget around anyone else’s conversion figures, meaning how often visitors complete an action such as a call or a form.

Our 50-question method from the Sydney trades study is one way to build a question list. The AI SEO guide describes the first month’s checks.

How do you avoid paying an agency twice for the same job?

Ask for the deliverables and the measures, then check whether any item is billed under two names. A page rewrite is a page rewrite whether the proposal calls it SEO, AEO or GEO.

Use these six questions on any proposal, including a quote like the Parramatta one above:

1. Which pages will change and what will each change contain?
2. Which customer questions will be tracked and who chooses them?
3. How will answers be saved, dated and compared?
4. Which report shows each result and what does it exclude?
5. Is any task listed under more than one acronym?
6. What is the price, the minimum term and how can you end the agreement?

Google says to judge third-party AEO and GEO advice against its own guidance.¹ Be wary of offers that sell special AI markup, which is extra code on the page. Also be wary of an llms.txt file (a proposed file meant to guide AI tools) or a visibility score with no stated question set. Google says no special AI markup is needed and that its Search does not use llms.txt.¹

No agency can guarantee a citation, a ranking or an enquiry. Ask to see dated answers, how many answers were tested and the checks that failed. A record that includes failures is easier to believe.

What is the fine print behind the numbers on this page?

The order of fixes in the priority table is our judgement from the work we do. It is not a tested rule.

The three SHORE results are separate observations, each with its own limit. A change in one does not predict a change in another.

What should you do next?

Pick one service page and the three questions your best customers ask before they buy. Then work through three steps:

1. Check that search tools can reach the page, using the table of platform rules above.
2. Rewrite the first two sentences so they answer the question plainly.
3. Save today’s AI answers to those three questions so you have something to compare against later.

Our generative engine optimisation services can take that review through with you.

Our SEO audit is free. Implementation is separate unless retained. Compare the SEO packages for monthly scope and terms. No SEO package guarantees rankings, leads or revenue.