SEO gets you ranked. AEO gets you answered. GEO gets you recommended.
Three disciplines, one buyer journey. Each one needs different work and a different measurement, and most agencies sell one while describing it as the others.
What each discipline does
SEO gets you ranked.
SEO is the work of becoming findable and rankable. It covers technical health, page structure, internal links, query targeting and local search, so your pages can be crawled, indexed and retrieved. Every other layer depends on it.
- Technical foundations and crawlability
- On-page structure and internal linking
- Keyword and query targeting
- Local search and Google Business Profile
AEO gets you answered.
AEO is the work of being the answer. Pages are structured so a machine can lift a clean, self-contained response, with the direct answer near the top, supporting detail underneath, and FAQ and article schema matching the visible text.
- Answer-first content structure
- FAQ sections and structured data
- Appearing in AI Overviews and featured snippets
- Quotable, checkable claims
GEO gets you recommended.
GEO is the work of being recommended. Generative engines synthesise an answer from many sources and cite the ones they trust, so this layer covers entity clarity, third-party citations, machine-readable summaries and the consistency of what the wider web says about you. Progress is measured against a fixed set of buyer prompts.
- Entity and citation building
- llms.txt and machine-readable summaries
- Being recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude
- Visibility measured against buyer prompts
How the three fit together
The layers stack. SEO makes your pages findable and retrievable, AEO makes them extractable as a clean answer, and GEO builds the off-site signals that decide whether a model names you when a buyer asks who to use.
Because they share foundations, they run as one programme with one measurement frame. The technical floor comes first, then the answer layer, then the citation and entity work that compounds over time.
What is AI search saying about you?
We run a free audit on the buyer questions in your market across the major AI assistants, and report where you appear, who appears instead, and what to fix first.
- 01
You send your site
Plus the questions you want to be found for, if you already know them.
- 02
We run the prompts
The buyer questions are tested across the AI assistants people actually use.
- 03
You get the findings
Where you appear, who appears instead, and what to fix first.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
SEO earns ranked positions in search results. AEO earns the answer itself, in AI Overviews, featured snippets and chat replies. GEO earns the recommendation, when a buyer asks an assistant who to use and your business is named.
Do I need all three?
They share foundations and are strongest run together. Ranking, being quoted and being recommended are separate problems with separate measurements, so most businesses start with the technical and answer layer, then add citation and entity work once the basics hold.