SEO, GEO, AEO, AI SEO: how do they fit together?

The space is new and still settling on names, so you will hear SEO, GEO, AEO, LLMO, and AI SEO used side by side. They are not competing methods so much as layers of one goal: being found and cited across both traditional search and AI answers.

What each term covers

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): getting your pages found and ranked in traditional search engines like Google.
• GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): getting your content cited by generative engines like ChatGPT and AI Overviews.
• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): structuring content to be the direct answer a system returns.
• LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization): optimizing for the language models underneath those engines.
• AI SEO: a loose umbrella term people use for all of the above.

How they stack

SEO is the foundation: an engine cannot cite a page it cannot crawl or index, so classic search hygiene still matters. GEO, AEO, and LLMO add the signals AI answer engines rely on to choose and attribute a source: direct answers, credible content, and machine-readable structure. They build on SEO rather than replacing it, and most of the work strengthens both at once.

One score instead of five acronyms

Rather than track five overlapping disciplines, GEO IQ measures the outcome they share as a single AI Search Visibility Score, then tells you which fixes move it. The label matters less than whether your content gets found, understood, trusted, mentioned, and cited.

Sources and further reading

• Google: SEO Starter Guide
• Perplexity: Perplexity crawlers and how answers cite sources
• Chen et al. (2025): Generative Engine Optimization, How to Dominate AI Search

Last updated August 12, 2026