SEO, AEO, and GEO are three names for getting found: SEO (search engine optimization) is ranking in Google’s list of links, AEO (answer engine optimization) is being the answer a search feature or voice assistant gives directly, and GEO (generative engine optimization) is being cited when an AI tool like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Mode writes a response. If you run a small business, you have probably been pitched all three in the last year, usually as separate services with separate invoices.
Here is the short version before the long one. They overlap far more than the sales pitches suggest. The work that earns a ranking is most of the work that earns a citation. What has changed is what a “win” looks like, and that is worth understanding before you pay anyone to chase it.
What actually changed in search
For twenty years the deal was simple. Someone searched, Google showed ten blue links, and if you ranked near the top, you got the click. That deal has loosened. Google now puts an AI Overview, a written summary with a few source links, above the results for many questions, and AI Mode turns the whole search into a conversation.
The effect on clicks is measurable. Seer Interactive tracked 3,119 informational queries from June 2024 to September 2025 and found that organic click-through rate on queries showing an AI Overview fell from 1.76% to 0.61%. Queries without an overview fell too, from 2.74% to 1.62%, just less steeply. People are getting their answer on the results page and leaving.
The same study found the other side of it: brands cited inside an AI Overview earned about 35% more organic clicks than brands that were not. Seer is careful to say that is a correlation, not proof that the citation caused the clicks. But the direction is clear. Being the source the summary names now matters about as much as being the first link under it.
Takeaway: fewer people will click through on simple questions no matter what you do. Plan for that, rather than paying someone to promise it away.
SEO, AEO, and GEO, defined plainly
It helps to see the three side by side, because the differences are about where the result shows up, not about fundamentally different work.
- SEO aims for a ranked link in traditional search results. Success is a position and a click.
- AEO aims to be the direct answer: a featured snippet, a “People also ask” box, a voice assistant reply. Success is your sentence being the one read back.
- GEO aims to be named or linked when an AI system writes a response from several sources. Success is a citation, and sometimes a mention of your business by name with no link at all.
AEO and GEO are newer labels, and the industry has not agreed on where one ends and the other begins. You will see them used interchangeably. Do not let the vocabulary drive the budget.
What Google itself says to do
Google’s own documentation for site owners on AI Overviews and AI Mode is blunt: there are no additional requirements to appear in them and no special optimization needed beyond normal SEO best practices. Pages have to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet. That is the whole entry fee.
Google also describes a technique it calls query fan-out. Instead of running your one search, the AI runs several related searches across subtopics and assembles an answer from all of them. For a small business, that is good news. A page that thoroughly answers one specific question can be pulled into an answer for a broader one it would never have ranked for on its own.
Takeaway: if someone sells you a secret AI-search technique that Google’s own guidance contradicts, ask them to show you where it is documented.
What the research says gets cited
The term GEO comes from a 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, presented at the KDD conference in 2024. The researchers rewrote web pages in different ways and measured how much each version showed up in AI-generated answers. Three changes did the most good: adding citations to credible sources, adding relevant statistics, and adding quotations. Those lifted visibility by roughly 30 to 40% in their tests.
Two other findings are worth knowing. Keyword stuffing, the oldest trick in SEO, did little or nothing and sometimes did slightly worse than leaving the page alone. And lower-ranked sites gained the most. For pages sitting fifth in the search results, citing sources increased visibility by about 115%. A small business that will never outrank a national directory can still be the page an AI quotes, if that page has the specifics.
Takeaway: write pages that contain checkable facts. A price range, a timeline, a named standard, a sourced number. Vague pages give an AI nothing to lift.
The work that serves all three
Here is where I would put a small-business budget, in rough order of payoff:
- Answer real questions directly. Put the question in a heading and answer it in the first sentence or two beneath. That format is what snippets, voice replies, and AI summaries all reach for.
- Be specific and sourced. Replace “affordable” with an actual range. Replace “fast turnaround” with a number of weeks. Cite where your figures come from.
- Keep your business facts consistent everywhere. Your name, address, hours, and services should match across your website, your Google Business Profile, and the directories that list you. AI systems cross-check, and contradictions cost you trust.
- Get the technical basics right. A fast site, clean page titles and meta descriptions, a sensible structure, and schema markup, the behind-the-scenes code that tells search engines and AI tools exactly what a page is about.
- Say who you are. Use your business name, not just “we,” so a system summarizing your page can attribute it to you correctly.
None of this is exotic. On the W Department site for a Santa Fe designer clothing and art boutique, the SEO foundation was schema, a deliberate taxonomy for designers and editorial content, meta templates, and internal linking, built into the WordPress architecture rather than bolted on afterward. Structure like that is what lets both a search engine and an AI tool understand what each page is and how the pages relate.
How to measure it when clicks drop
If AI answers mean fewer clicks, traffic alone stops being a fair scorecard. Google Search Console, the free tool that shows how your site performs in Google, has counted AI Mode clicks and impressions in its regular Performance report since mid-2025, blended in with everything else. Watch impressions alongside clicks. Rising impressions with flat clicks often means you are being seen in answers, not ignored.
Then do the low-tech check. Once a month, ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode the three questions your best customers ask before they hire you, phrased the way they would phrase them. Note whether your business comes up and which page gets cited. And ask new clients how they found you. “An AI told me” is now a real answer.
Do I need to hire separately for SEO, AEO, and GEO?
No. For most small businesses, SEO, AEO, and GEO are one body of work: a fast, well-structured website with clear, specific, sourced answers to the questions customers actually ask, backed by consistent business information across the web. Be wary of anyone pricing them as three separate retainers. Ask what they would do differently for each, and if the answer is mostly the same list, pay for it once.
Where to start
Pick the five questions you answer most often on the phone and check whether your website answers each one plainly, on its own page or under its own heading. That single exercise covers more of SEO, AEO, and GEO than most audits. If the answer is that your site was not built to hold that kind of content, Patrick Iverson builds custom WordPress websites with the structure, schema, and content model that search engines and AI tools both read well, and has run an independent practice in Santa Fe since 2001. Happy to look at what you have and tell you honestly where the gaps are.
