Three acronyms are doing the rounds in every agency pitch: SEO, AEO and GEO. They are related, they overlap, and they are not the same thing. This guide explains each one in plain language, shows where the work is shared and where it is not, and sets out what an Australian business should actually do about it in 2026.
The short version
- SEO (search engine optimisation) gets your pages to rank in the ordinary search results, the list of links on Google and Bing.
- AEO (answer engine optimisation) gets your page chosen as the answer when a search engine or assistant answers the question itself: Google AI Overviews, featured snippets, voice assistants.
- GEO (generative engine optimisation) gets your business named and cited inside the longer answers written by generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude.
SEO is about being found. AEO is about being the answer. GEO is about being recommended. Buyers now move through all three, often without noticing which one they are using.
SEO: the foundation nothing else works without
Search engine optimisation has not gone away. Google still shows ten links for most queries, and those links still bring the bulk of organic traffic to most Australian business websites. The job is unchanged: make pages that match what people search for, make them technically sound so they can be crawled and indexed, and earn links and mentions that show the site is trustworthy.
What has changed is where that traffic sits in the buyer's journey. More people arrive at Google already holding a shortlist that an AI assistant gave them. SEO still captures the search; it no longer always shapes the decision.
AEO: being the answer, not a link
Answer engine optimisation grew out of featured snippets and voice search. The engine reads the question, picks one source, and reads the answer out or shows it at the top of the page. Google AI Overviews are the biggest example today. AI Mode, Google's conversational search, works the same way with more steps.
AEO rewards pages that answer a specific question directly, near a clear heading, in a passage that makes sense on its own. It punishes the habit of burying the answer three paragraphs into a story. Structured data (FAQ, how-to, article and organisation schema) helps the engine understand what the passage is and who wrote it.
Because AI Overviews draw mostly from pages that already rank for the question and its related sub-questions, AEO sits on top of SEO. You cannot be the answer for a question you do not rank for. Our Google AI Overviews optimisation page covers how Google chooses sources in more detail.
GEO: being recommended by a generative engine
Generative engine optimisation is the newest of the three and the least understood. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity "which conveyancing firm in Sydney should I use" or "best mortgage broker for self-employed borrowers", the engine runs its own web searches, reads a set of sources, and writes an answer that names two or three options with reasons.
Three things decide whether you are one of those names.
- Whether the engine can find you at all. ChatGPT's search leans on Bing's index and OpenAI's own crawler. Perplexity and Gemini have their own paths. A site that blocks the crawlers, or is thin in Bing, is out before the conversation starts.
- What other sites say about you. Generative engines weigh third-party sources heavily for recommendations: directories, comparison articles, industry publications, review platforms, forums. Your own website alone rarely wins the argument.
- Whether your facts are consistent. The engine has to be confident that the "One Egg" in a directory, a review and a news story are the same business. Consistent names, services and details across the web, plus organisation schema, make you safer to cite.
Our ChatGPT optimisation page goes through the mechanics for that engine specifically.
Where the three overlap, and where they do not
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in the list of links | Be the single answer shown | Be named and cited in a generated answer |
| Where it shows | Google and Bing results | AI Overviews, snippets, voice | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude |
| Main levers | Relevance, technical health, links | Direct answers, structure, schema | Third-party mentions, consistency, crawler access |
| How you measure it | Rankings, clicks, conversions | Citation in Overviews, snippet share | Citation share on buyer prompts, AI referrals in GA4 |
| Depends on | Itself | SEO | SEO plus off-site reputation |
The shared ground is large. Crawlable pages, clear structure, authoritative content and a consistent brand help all three. The differences are in emphasis: SEO is mostly on-page and links, AEO is mostly page structure, GEO is mostly off-site reputation. An agency that only does one of these is leaving the others to chance.
What this means for an Australian business
Most of the businesses we work with sell expertise in competitive markets: law firms, financial advisers, mortgage brokers, professional services. For them the practical order is:
- Measure first. Run the questions your buyers actually ask through the main AI engines and see who is named. Most businesses have never looked. We do this as a free AI visibility check.
- Keep the SEO foundation strong. It is the entry ticket to AI Overviews and still the biggest traffic source.
- Restructure the pages that should be cited. One question per section, answer first, schema in place, visible update dates.
- Build the off-site evidence. Mentions in the places the engines read for your market. This is the slowest part and the one that moves recommendations most.
- Track citations, not just rankings. Monthly citation share on your buyer prompts, and AI referrals in GA4, next to the usual SEO numbers.
That is the programme behind our AI search optimisation service. It began with an Australian finance company that launched a new product with no organic presence and, within seven months, was recommended as a top option across five AI platforms. The first step there was the same as the first step here: measuring.
A note on the names
You will see "AI SEO", "LLM SEO", "AI visibility" and "generative SEO" used for the same work. Australian agencies mostly say GEO. American B2B agencies mostly say AEO. UK enterprise agencies say AI visibility. The label matters less than whether the agency can show you citation data for your own prompts. If they cannot, ask why.
