SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) aims to rank your website in Google's normal results. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) aims to win the featured snippet, People Also Ask box, or voice search answer. GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) aims to get your business cited by name inside an AI-generated answer from tools like ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews. They share the same technical foundation but target three different places a customer might actually encounter your business.
SEO, AEO, and GEO get used almost interchangeably by people who haven't thought carefully about what each one actually targets. They're related, they share the same technical foundation, but they aim at three genuinely different places a customer might encounter your business.
SEO: getting ranked in the normal results
Search Engine Optimisation is the original goal - appearing as a ranked, clickable link when someone searches a relevant term. It depends on technical health, content quality, keyword relevance, and off-page authority, and it remains the foundation the other two build on.
AEO: winning the direct answer
Answer Engine Optimisation targets the featured snippet, the "People Also Ask" box, and voice search answers - the formats where Google extracts a direct answer and displays it above or alongside the normal results. It depends on content structured to answer a specific question clearly and concisely, often backed by FAQPage or HowTo schema.
GEO: getting cited by name inside an AI answer
Generative Engine Optimisation targets something different again - being the business an AI tool like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's own AI Overviews names directly in a generated response. Google's documentation on AI features in Search confirms these tools synthesise an answer from across the web rather than simply linking to a ranked result - which means the deciding factor is whether your business's content is clear, consistent, and credible enough to be confidently cited.
Why they share one foundation
All three depend on the same underlying qualities: a technically sound website, genuinely useful content, and credible signals of expertise and trustworthiness. A site with thin content and poor technical health is a weak candidate for all three at once, while fixing those fundamentals tends to lift all three together rather than requiring three separate strategies.
Where they genuinely diverge
The divergence shows up in format and structure, not in underlying quality. AEO rewards question-based headings and extractable, concise answers. GEO rewards consistency across every mention of your business and content that reads as genuinely authoritative rather than generic marketing copy.
Want all three working together for your Christchurch business, rather than chasing one at the expense of the others? Explore our GEO service, or start with a free SEO review to see where your foundation currently stands.
