Do you need to consider AEO or GEO for your website?
If you thought website SEO was a minefield, brace yourself - AEO & GEO are next.
With the rise of AI comes AEO and GEO which will allegedly place your website as a top result in 2nd generation 'AI search' from ChatGPT/OpenAI, Perplexity, Deepseek etc.
SEO, AEO, GEO: What is claimed to be the difference?
| Term | Definition | How it's claimed to work |
|---|---|---|
| SEO (Search Engine Optimization) |
Optimizing web content to rank higher on search engines like
Google
|
Uses keywords, backlinks, metadata, and structured content to
improve visibility
|
| AEO (AI/Ask Engine Optimization) |
Optimizing content so AI-powered chatbots & search engines
retrieve and cite it
|
AI prefers structured, conversational answers, FAQs, schema
markup, and direct responses help
|
| GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) |
Making content AI-ready so it is properly interpreted,
summarized, and generated by AI tools
|
AI models pull from various sources, synthesize data, and generate answers |
Some of claims of AEO proponents, eg. website structured data, is old news. Structured data has long been a good for SEO, Google the themselves have long made that clear, even providing free tools to help.
Specific AEO claims that seem designed to mislead
Below are some of the AEO claims we have heard recently that seem designed to confuse and worry website owners.
-
1
"SEO is dead, AEO is the new thing and you must not miss the boat!"
🔍 - Mostly false.
1st generation search, like Google, Bing, Brave, Ecosia, Yep is still well over 95% of all search. However, there is certainly a growing trend towards 2nd generation search like ChatGPT and Perplexity. So it's well worth being aware of it.
-
2
"2nd Generation AI search engines prioritize answers over keywords"
🤖 - Misleading.
There has long been an SEO trend to prioritize answers over keywords which is driven by the human trend to type questions into search engines ("What is the best French white wine?") rather than word queries ("French wines white"). Devices and software like Alexa, Siri, Amazon Echo and "Google Home" have accelerated this trend.
What is not generally understood is that 2nd generation AI search actually collects results from 1st generation search. For example, if you are not in Bing or Brave's search index, you risk not being found by Perplexity either.
-
3
"Optimize content for voice search queries."
🎤 - Meaningless.
In 99% of the cases, voice queries and typed queries are handled in the same manner. The whole point of 2nd and 3rd generation AI search is to understand the conversational manner of the users query, apply it to it's search data and respond in a conversational manner. Optimizing content for voice search queries is likely a waste of time.
Incidentally, Alexa does not even have it's own search engine and instead relies on a mixture of techniques to answer your questions, including it's own knowledge graph.
-
4
"Forget keyword stuffing, provide quality answers"
📝 - Old news.
You should have stopped "keyword stuffing" long ago. 1st generation engines like Google found ways around key-word stuffing and may even penalize your website for it.
Meanwhile, it has long been highly recommended that you have quality content.
-
5
"Structured data is vital"
📊 - Mostly correct.
Structured data has long been a key SEO technique, Google's structured data tester has been around for years.
However, structure is even more important with 2nd generation and 3rd generation AI search engines. Perplexity and OpenAI will often try and read your website on-the-fly when a visitor poses a question. If your website has structured data and well structured HTML, then it's more likely to provide the correct answer and less likely to hallucinate. For 3rd generation AI search this is also important, though slightly less critical.
-
6
"You must include an FAQ section in your website"
❓ - Not essential, but can be very useful.
A flaw in 2nd Generation AI search like Perplexity, is that it can never fully understand your website, so having a FAQ section often helps by grouping questions on one page such that Perplexity is more likely to get the data it needs to answer a visitors question.
Important: if you have an FAQ, make sure it's well curated and up to date. The flaw in 2nd generation search is fixed in 3rd generation search, so FAQ's while still valuable, loose some of their utility.
Questionable claims from AEO proponents
A real shift is coming.
In summary, the current AEO claims are mostly hype or techniques you should already be using. However, there is a shift happening now, and hopefully we will see GEO evolve to address these changes:
AI search means you must focus on website content and probably a little less on website design.
The truth is that AI search does not care if, for example, you have a beautiful aspirational banner on your home page as the AI search probably won't even display it to the visitor. AI search wants to provide conversational type answers, and it relies on content-rich and coherent websites. This is predicted to be the real key to AI Search optimisation.
A key feature of AI is its ability to take raw data and apply questions to it. It does not matter much if the question is not explicitly answered with a matching sentence in your website. Keep providing answers wisely on your website; AEO/GEO doesn’t particularly require to change this.