Plain definitions
- SEO: making your pages easy to find and worth showing, so a search engine puts a link to them high on a results page. The prize is a click.
- AEO: making your business easy to read, verify and describe, so an assistant names you inside the answer it writes. The prize is being the recommendation.
- GEO: the same job as AEO, named after generative engines. Different vendors prefer different letters. If someone uses GEO and AEO to mean different things, ask them to describe the measurement rather than the acronym.
There is no governing body handing out these definitions, so treat the labels as loose and the measurement as the real distinction.
What is the same
Most of the underlying work does double duty, which is the good news.
- A page per real thing you sell, rather than one page listing everything.
- Plain language and headings that match how people actually ask.
- Fast mobile pages a crawler can read without running scripts.
- Correct, consistent listings and a claimed business profile.
- Real, recent reviews.
- Structured data stating your facts unambiguously.
Do that list properly and you improve in ordinary search as well. Nobody has to choose between the two.
What is genuinely different
- The sources. Semrush found the pages ChatGPT cites rank at position 21 or worse in Google almost 90% of the time. Being on page one is not the qualifying test it is in SEO.
- The shape of the win. In search there are ten results and a scroll. In an answer, in our checks, two to four businesses get named and everyone else is absent.
- The click. Bain found 60% of searches now end without a click to any website, so an answer that mentions you may never send a visit at all. The value shows up as the phone ringing, not as a session in your analytics.
- The measurement. Search has a rank you can look up. An assistant has no published position, so the only honest measure is a fixed set of questions, run the same way, counted over time.
- The traffic profile. Ahrefs measured AI search visitors at 0.5% of traffic and 12.1% of signups on its own site, converting 23 times better than organic search visitors. Small numbers, high intent.
How you measure each one
- SEO: impressions, clicks and average position in Google Search Console, plus rankings for the terms you care about.
- AEO and GEO: a fixed list of buyer questions, run logged out on the same day each month across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode, with dated screenshots. Count how many name you, and on how many engines.
- Both: calls, forms and booked jobs. Referral data will under report AI, because much of the value arrives as somebody typing your name into a browser after an assistant said it.
If a vendor offers you an AI visibility score without showing you the questions behind it, ask for the questions. A number with no question set behind it cannot be checked, which means it cannot be wrong, which means it is not a measurement.
Where the money should go
For most local businesses the honest answer is that this is one budget, not two. The shared fixes, which are most of the work, serve both. What differs is where the extra effort goes at the margin: SEO pushes toward more content and more links, while AEO pushes toward correctness, consistency across listings, and evidence a machine can verify.
If you are choosing where to start, start with correctness. Claimed listings, matching details, structured data and real reviews are cheap, they are within your control, and they are the base both jobs stand on. The step by step version is how to get your business recommended by ChatGPT.