GEO
Generative Engine Optimization. Making a company appear, be described correctly and be recommended inside answers generated by AI systems. The broadest of the four terms.
GEO and AEO, explained
GEO and AEO: how they differ and what actually works
GEO, AEO, LLMO, AI SEO: four names, one job. This guide explains what each term means, where they genuinely differ, and which parts of the work actually move a measurement.
The four terms
GEO, AEO, LLMO and AI SEO are four names for the same discipline: making a company visible in the answers AI systems generate for buyers.
AEO
Answer Engine Optimization. Emphasis on being the source an answer engine draws from, including AI Overviews and featured answers in search.
LLMO
Large Language Model Optimization. Used mostly for what a model recalls without searching the web, which is the slowest part to change.
AI SEO
Umbrella label used by agencies adding AI visibility to an existing offer.
Where they genuinely differ
The only distinction that changes what you do is between answers grounded in a live web search and answers recalled from model memory. One new comparison page or review can influence a grounded answer within days. What a model knows without searching shifts over training cycles and responds mainly to the breadth of independent evidence about you. That is why an EntityRise audit does not mix these two with technical readiness: the visibility result comes only from measured answers, and the conditions around the brand are reported separately.
What the work involves
The work of GEO and AEO consists of four layers: an unambiguous entity, content for buyer questions, verifiable external evidence, and technical accessibility for AI crawlers.
Make the entity unambiguous
One category, one audience, one sentence that a model can repeat without hedging. Structured identity data and consistent naming across your own surfaces.
Cover the questions that carry money
Pages that answer the specific buyer questions in your category, including comparisons and objections, not generic blog volume.
Build evidence where AI looks
Review profiles, named customer proof, editorial mentions and reference sources that appear in citations for your category.
Keep the plumbing clean
Fetchability, rendering, indexability and consistency of your evidence pages.
How to know it worked
Measure the same confirmed question set before and after, on a sealed test set, with brand-name questions excluded from the index. Anything else measures your own optimism. That is the whole argument for a reproducible audit rather than a rolling dashboard.
Four terms, one measurement.
Instead of picking an acronym, look at the numbers: where you are visible, where you are cited, and what is missing.
Frequently asked questions
Should I hire a GEO agency or an SEO agency?
Ask either one how they will measure the result, whether brand-name prompts count toward it and whether the test set is fixed between measurements. The answer tells you more than the label on the offer.
Is GEO a real discipline or a rebrand?
The work overlaps heavily with good SEO, but the measurement is genuinely different: there is no ranking position inside a generated answer, so you measure presence, prominence, description accuracy and citations instead.