What Is AEO and GEO? Understanding the Future of SEO in an AI-Driven World

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the direction search engines are heading, you’ve probably seen two new acronyms cropping up more and more: AEO and GEO.

At a glance, they might sound like the next wave of industry jargon, but they’re not. These are concepts that sit right at the heart of where search marketing is going. And if you care about staying visible online, now’s the time to start paying attention.

So, what do they actually mean? How are they different from traditional SEO? And why should businesses care?

Let’s break it down.

So… what do AEO and GEO actually stand for?

AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimisation.

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation.

Both have emerged as a response to how search is evolving, particularly with the rise of AI-powered answers in tools like Google’s AI Overviews, Bing’s Copilot, and even chat-based platforms like ChatGPT.

Where traditional SEO has always focused on helping your website appear in organic search listings, AEO and GEO are about something else entirely: helping your content be selected, summarised, and shown directly within AI-generated answers.

It’s no longer just about ranking well. It’s about being used by the engine as a trusted source of truth.

AEO vs GEO: What’s the difference?

Let’s start with AEO. Think of this as the evolution of what we’ve seen with Featured Snippets or voice search results over the past few years. AEO is about making sure your content provides clear, concise answers to specific questions. When someone asks Google a direct question, whether they type it or speak it, AEO helps your content be the one that gets pulled into that instant answer box.

GEO, on the other hand, goes a little further. It focuses on the broader shift to AI-generated responses, not just simple Q&As. As tools like Google’s AI Overviews start to summarise entire topics or compare different products and services in real time, GEO is about optimising your content to be included in those summaries. That might mean being referenced in an AI-generated paragraph, shown as a recommended link, or used as a data source when the engine creates a multi-step guide.

In practice, AEO and GEO overlap a lot, and the same good content often supports both. But while AEO is mostly about answering questions well, GEO is about ensuring your content has enough depth, trust, and clarity to be selected by generative models.

How does this fit in with traditional SEO?

All this doesn’t mean SEO is going away. It’s evolving.

Traditional SEO still matters for a lot of things, particularly branded and transactional searches (think “buy Audi A3 near me” or “Agilita Digital SEO pricing”). Local search, service pages, and bottom-of-funnel keywords will continue to play a vital role.

But here’s the reality. A growing number of users are no longer clicking through ten links to research a topic. They’re asking a single question and getting a full summary directly from Google or Bing’s AI tools. In some cases, they’re not even using traditional search. They’re asking ChatGPT or another assistant instead.

That’s where AEO and GEO come in. They’re not replacements for SEO, but extensions of it. They help ensure you’re still visible and relevant in a world where clicks are no longer guaranteed.

What does this mean for your content?

If your content is built purely around keywords and meta titles with no thought for the actual user, you’re going to struggle.

Google and other platforms are increasingly looking for content that demonstrates clarity, credibility, and experience. It needs to be well-structured, genuinely useful, and ideally offer something unique. AI tools can only summarise what’s already out there, and they still rely on quality content to do that well.

So, if you’re not creating content that’s easy to interpret, rich with answers, and backed by a trustworthy source, you’re probably going to be ignored by AI. And if you’re not included in the AI’s answers, you’re potentially invisible to the growing number of users who never scroll past that first summary.

This is also where things like schema markup, internal linking, and topical depth come back into play. AI models use structured content to help understand what your page is about and how it relates to other trusted content on your site. It’s not about tricking the system. It’s about helping it interpret your site properly.

Will this change how people behave?

Almost certainly, and in some ways, it already has.

As highlighted in recent reports from The Guardian, PCMag, and the BBC, AI-generated answers are leading to fewer people clicking through to websites, particularly when they get what they need straight away. That’s already having an impact on traffic to top-of-funnel blog posts and informational content.

But it’s also changing how people search, full stop. The expectation now is that search engines or chatbots should not only find relevant pages but also do the thinking for you. Combine that with voice search, mobile use, and the rise of conversational interfaces, and it’s clear that businesses need to start preparing for a world where the traditional keyword-driven search journey is no longer the norm.

That doesn’t mean everything has to change overnight, but it does mean waiting too long could leave you behind.

What do we think?

We’ve always believed in building marketing strategies that are flexible, data-driven, and genuinely useful, and AEO and GEO fit perfectly into that.

It’s not about jumping on the latest trend or trying to game the algorithm. It’s about recognising that the way people find and engage with content is changing and making sure the businesses we work with stay ahead of that change.

Whether that’s helping you restructure your content to be more AI-friendly, creating resources that actually answer your customers’ questions, or just giving you a clearer strategy for where to focus your time, we’re here to make it work for you.

Final thoughts…

AEO and GEO aren’t buzzwords. They’re the next stage in how content gets discovered online, and they’re already shaping the future of digital marketing.

If you’ve been relying on old-school SEO techniques without adapting to how search is changing, now’s the time to take a step forward. Create content that’s clear, credible, and easy to understand, and you’ll give yourself the best chance of being found in whatever version of Google (or Bing, or ChatGPT) your customers are using.

And if you’re not sure where to start, you know where we are.