What is GEO?
Optimizing so a generative model includes your business in the answer it writes. In practice it's almost the same as AEO, with a different origin.
GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, is the practice of optimizing content so a generative engine incorporates it into the answer it writes. The term was born in academia, in a paper that studied which changes to a text increased the probability that a model would use it when building its answer. In everyday industry use, GEO and AEO refer to the same work.
Why are there two acronyms for almost the same thing?
Because they come from two different conversations that arrived at the same place.
AEO comes from the SEO world. It appeared when search engines started answering directly on the results page — featured snippets, answer boxes — and the industry needed a name for optimizing toward the answer instead of toward the link.
GEO comes from the academic and technical side, from the study of generative models. Its original focus was more on the text itself: what happens to a passage so a model prefers it when writing.
They converged when search engines and assistants became the same thing. Today the difference is one of tribe, not method.
Which acronym should you use?
| Acronym | Who uses it most | Connotation |
|---|---|---|
| AEO | SEO agencies and teams, monitoring tools | Continuity with SEO: it's the evolution of the same work |
| GEO | Research, technical teams, academic writing | Emphasis on the generative model and on content as an input |
| AIO / LLMO / AI SEO | Loose use in marketing | Variants with no stable adoption; best avoided |
At Apoda we use GEO as the main term and AEO as a declared synonym. The reason is practical: GEO names what we're actually measuring — what a model generates, not just what a search engine answers — and it's the term taking over as assistants stop looking like a search engine. AEO is still understood without explanation by people coming from SEO, so we use it alongside GEO when it helps, never as if they were two different things.
In plain English, «AI visibility» says the same thing, and it's the term people tend to use before they know either acronym.
Does the work change depending on which one you use?
No. Whatever the name, the work is the same: measuring which answers the business appears in, seeing which sources each engine cites, checking that AI crawlers can read the site, and adjusting content and authority accordingly.
If someone offers you GEO and AEO as two separate services at two separate prices, it's worth asking exactly how they differ. See also what is AEO?.