GEO, AI SEO, and AEO: What's the Difference?

For decades, the acronym "SEO" has been the way that industry experts, marketers, and companies refer to the art and science of Search Engine Optimization. Now, as chatbots grow in popularity and importance, content marketers and thought leaders have conflicting views on the name for the emerging field of LLM visibility.

This article will explore which term is dominant in 2026. If you're writing an article about this topic, researching agencies, or trying to get started with tutorials on GEO, this article can help you navigate the content on the internet.

tl;dr GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, is my preferred term for the study and discipline of making a brand, business, or product show up in LLM results.

I want to show up on ChatGPT results. What is the name for this service or area?

There are the four leading contenders for the name of "visibility of a brand in LLM results" in 2026. These acronyms are:

• AI SEO (AI Search Engine Optimization): This term has multiple meanings, but it emphasizes that this is the next evolution of traditional SEO, moving from ranking links to ranking within AI responses.
• GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): This refers to the study of getting your product or service to show up in generative search results like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.
• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): This term predates the current AI boom. It was originally used for voice search (Alexa/Siri) and Featured Snippets. Since Gemini functions as an "Answer Engine," AEO has seen a massive resurgence.
• GAIO (Generative AI Optimization): A slightly more specific version of GEO that explicitly mentions "Generative AI."

Of course, most consumers don't care which words marketers use for this industry. But if you're an expert or thought leader in this space, you want to make sure you're using the language correctly and covering your keyword basis. I'm the founder/CEO of a company that depends on content marketing for organic acquisition, so I want to define this term for our internal strategy.

Which one is the right term?

Unfortunately, there is not consensus in 2026 about which acronym to use when referring to the area of marketing concerning getting your product or service to show up in generative search engines.

One way we can gauge the meanings of these terms is to do a search on Google, the internet's librarian. If you search for these terms on Google, here's what comes up:

• AI SEO – Google's answer engine defines this as "using AI to both boost your own site's performance in AI search." This is also the only term of the four that has sponsored ads targeting AI SEO marketers.
• GEO – The leading meaning for this acronym is a database for gene expression profiling managed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Results further down page one say it is how your content is "understood, cited, and directly used by generative AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity."
• AEO– Google says there are multiple meanings for this term, and the front page of results are mixed. AEO can refer to Authorized Economic Operator, American Eagle Outfitters, or Answer Engine Optimization.
• GAIO – Although the first result is a Forbes article about Generative Engine visibility, the AI answer says this could be a bird, an artist, or something else entirely.

Although AI SEO has the most existing thought leadership, the definition is itself ambiguous – does this area define how you use AI tools, or how you show up in AI search? These seem like two different areas of study.

Similarly, AEO refers both to showing up in voice results like Siri and in "Answer Engines", which doesn't cleanly map to LLM responses. This ambiguity muddies these terms as canonical references.

What's the difference between GEO and AEO?

Most entities and agencies use these terms interchangeably to refer to a website, product, or brand's visibility in generative engines like ChatGPT. However, historically AEO has referred more to "Answer Engines" likes Amazon Alexa which give you a single or small set of products, whereas GEO refers more broadly to any response from an LLM. GEO professionals tends to focus more on how to get direct website referrals from chatbots rather than mentions.

Evan Bailyn at First Page Sage, an SEO agency, said, "The distinction [is] that AEO is about being visible/discoverable on AI platforms and GEO is about being found for commercial searches (lead generation and brand building)."

Which terms have the most results on Google?

• AI SEO: 2.6 Billion results
• GEO: 352 Million results
• AEO: 14.4 Million results
• GAIO: 3 Million results

What do experts call this field?

No one agrees on what to call it.

This 2024 Forbes article by Noa Eshed claiming that GAIO is the proper term. Investors Zach Cohen and Seema Amble from Andresen Horowitz, the storied VC firm, calls this area GEO in their 2025 blog post "GEO Over SEO." Hubspot's webtool is called the "AEO Grader", whereas Amplitude named their equivalent tool "AI Visibility." In a 2025 blog post, the company Vercel called it "LLM SEO." So the experts are all over the place!

Downsides of the Phrase "AI SEO"

The most popular term is AI SEO. It's clear that this term has the most hits on Google, the most interest from advertisers, and the most historic content. However, this term has some flaws that make it a bad canonical term for the emerging area of generative chatbot marketing.

First, "AI SEO" is an ambiguous term that could refer either to:

• Using AI to improve your SEO performance
• Improving your "ranking" and visibility in LLM-generated results

This ambiguity makes it unclear what service or focus area someone has in mind when they refer to AI SEO.

"AI SEO" also mistakenly ties GEO to SEO, whereas these are two distinct sciences. Most people who study GEO and marketers who implement GEO best practices do so because they're interested in how modern content marketing differs from the SEO wisdom of the last 20 years.

Finally, "AI SEO" is more syllables and more letters. This is a minor reason, but it's important when establishing an industry term.

Why GEO is the best term for Generative Engine Optimization

I have so far been using the term GEO, meaning Generative Engine Optimization, to refer to this industry and area of study on my blog, Generative Visibility. I like GEO the best because it is less ambiguous, shorter, and easier to say than the others. Compared to some other alternatives like LLMO, it is more popular and has some existing consensus. This is more my preference than industry-standard lingo.

I predict that the disagreement about naming here is short lived and that, in 2026, we will see one dominant term emerge as the cousin to SEO. In the meantime, I will continue to write about my data-backed insights on GEO as it relates to marketing and content creation.