The short answer
Mostly, yes. GEO, AEO, LLMO and AI SEO all describe making a business easy for AI systems to understand, quote and name.
GEO and LLMO focus on AI assistants, AEO grew out of search snippets and voice answers, and AI SEO is used loosely. None is an official standard, so judge a supplier by the work they describe, not the acronym.
The four terms side by side
| Term | Usually means | Typical focus |
|---|---|---|
| GEO | Generative engine optimisation: helping a business be described and named in answers written by AI assistants and AI search. | Clear answers on your pages, consistent facts, mentions elsewhere, and measuring how often assistants name you. |
| AEO | Answer engine optimisation: getting your content chosen as the direct answer, first in search snippets and voice, now often AI answers too. | Question-and-answer content, FAQs, structured data, concise answers near the top of the page. |
| LLMO | Large language model optimisation: making a brand understood correctly by language models. | Entity clarity, consistent descriptions, being present in the sources models learn from and look up. |
| AI SEO | A loose umbrella term. Sometimes means optimising for AI search, sometimes means using AI tools to do SEO. | Varies by supplier. Ask which of the two they mean. |
These are common uses, not fixed definitions. You will find agencies using GEO to mean exactly what another calls AEO. For a fuller definition of the term we use, read what is generative engine optimisation, and for more terms see the GEO glossary.
Where they overlap
Whatever the name, the practical work is close to identical.
- Answer real questions plainly on your own pages.
- Keep the facts about the business the same everywhere.
- Make pages easy for crawlers and machines to read, with sensible headings and schema markup where it is accurate.
- Earn mentions on other sites.
- Then check, over time, whether you are named.
Where they differ
The differences are mostly in emphasis.
- AEO people tend to talk about formatting: question headings, short answer paragraphs, FAQ markup.
- LLMO people tend to talk about how a model understands a brand as a thing, an "entity", and whether its description is consistent across sources.
- GEO, the term we use, usually covers both and adds measurement: how often assistants name the business for the questions customers ask.
Questions to ask any supplier
- Which assistants or AI search features will you check, and how often?
- How will you measure the change, given that answers vary from one ask to the next?
- What will you change on our site, and what outside it?
- What will you not promise? (A good answer: rankings, or a guaranteed place in AI answers.)
If the answers are vague, or they promise a top spot in ChatGPT, keep looking. Our guide to reporting AI visibility honestly shows what a sensible report looks like.
Honest limits
GEO Agency's tools run on Google Gemini, so their scores and simulations are estimates of how an assistant might answer, not a record of every assistant. Nobody controls what AI assistants say. We do not promise rankings or a place in AI answers, whatever the work is called.
Common questions
Is there an official definition of GEO?
Not in the sense of a standards body. The phrase "generative engine optimisation" was used in academic research and then taken up by the industry. Each supplier uses it slightly differently, so ask what they will actually do.
Is AEO just another word for featured snippets?
It started close to that: getting a page chosen as the direct answer in search and voice results. Today many people use it to include AI assistants too, so it overlaps heavily with GEO.
Which term should I use with clients?
Whichever your clients already understand. Many find "AI visibility" or "being named in AI answers" clearer than any acronym. The work matters more than the label.
Do I need a separate GEO supplier from my SEO agency?
Not necessarily. Much of the work overlaps with good SEO. What is new is measuring whether assistants name you, and paying attention to facts and mentions beyond your own site. Ask your current agency if they do that.