Three acronyms, one goal: being found. Here is what each really means, and where to spend your effort.
By Bernard Van Isacker · O-zone CommV
For twenty years, being found online meant one thing: ranking in Google’s blue links. That is classic SEO, and it still matters. But two newer terms, GEO and AEO, describe where a growing share of attention now goes. Here is what each means and where to focus.
Search engine optimisation is about earning a position on the results page for the queries your buyers type. It rewards relevant, well-structured, technically healthy pages that genuinely answer the query. This is still the foundation, because most journeys still pass through a results page.
AEO is about winning the single answer a search engine surfaces above the links: featured snippets, ‘people also ask’, and voice answers. It rewards content that states a clear, concise answer to a specific question, usually right after a question-style heading.
GEO is the newest layer. It is about being quoted inside the answers that AI assistants generate, including ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. Often there is no click at all; the assistant simply recommends you. GEO rewards clear structure, credible authorship, verifiable facts and machine-readable markup.
The good news: these are not three separate jobs. Clean structure, useful content and technical health help all three. The difference is emphasis. If your buyers still search and click, weight SEO. If they ask questions, add AEO. If they increasingly ask an assistant, invest in GEO.
Not sure where your visibility is leaking? Run our free SEO & AI-Search audit and GEO checker, or see how we approach all three in our SEO & AI-Search service.
Book a free consultation and we’ll help you apply ‘SEO vs GEO vs AEO’ to your business.