If you’ve spent any time in a marketing Facebook group in the last year, you’ve watched three acronyms show up like they’re new. SEO. AEO. GEO. Everybody’s suddenly got a framework, a webinar, a “here’s what you’re missing” post.
But I think all that AEO vs. GEO commentary is a waste of breath.
You don’t actually need to memorize what the letters stand for or decide when to use each. Instead, let’s focus on what’s happening underneath them — because once you do, you’ll see all three of them running on a single Google results page, right now, for the exact same search. (Because Google is no longer just a search engine, it’s AI now.)
Let’s get the labels out of the way first, since you’ll see them everywhere.
SEO = Search Engine Optimization. The original acronym. Getting found in classic organic search results by matching what someone typed to words and signals on your page. Keywords, backlinks, page structure.
AEO = Answer Engine Optimization. Optimizing to be the answer, not just a link that might contain one. A system pulls one direct answer out of a single source and pastes it whole — no click required.
GEO — Generative Engine Optimization. Optimizing to be one of the sources a generative system pulls from when it blends several sources into a new, generated answer. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews.
Now forget the letters, because every one of these is really just a different answer to one question: Is the system matching, extracting, or synthesizing?
- Matching (SEO): Does your page contain the words and signals the system is looking for?
- Extracting (AEO): Can the system pull one clean, direct answer out of your content and present it whole?
- Synthesizing (GEO): Does your content say something clear and specific enough to get folded into a generated answer alongside other sources?
Three mechanisms, but not three separate optimization campaigns you have to sequence. All three things can happen on the same page, for the same query, at the same time. Which is easiest to see by looking at an actual Google results page.
How SEO, AEO, and GEO look on a real SERP
Take a single search engine results page (SERP) and look at what’s actually showing up, top to bottom.
AI Overview sits at the top for most informational queries now. Google reading across multiple sources and generating a new paragraph that answers the question directly, sometimes with citations. This is synthesis (showing up there requires GEO). And it’s not an outlier anymore: AI Overviews now show up on roughly half of all Google searches, and it’s still growing.
AI Overviews replaced Featured snippets — one direct answer, extracted from a single source, presented as position zero. Featured snippets were the first obvious sign of AEO, but snippet visibility has dropped sharply as AI Overviews have expanded. Snippets still appear for simple factual questions (“how many continents are there”), but for anything with real complexity, the Overview has taken the spot.
People Also Ask runs the same extraction mechanism as a snippet, just widened. Instead of one answer to your one question, Google predicts a cluster of related questions and pulls a separate direct answer from a separate source for each. Same extraction mechanism as the snippet (using AEO) just operating across a set of questions instead of a single one.
The organic results — the actual list of blue links — are still there, usually pushed further down the page, still running on the oldest logic: keywords, entities, backlinks, structure. Classic SEO matching.
So: one page, one query, and you’ve got synthesis at the top, extraction in the snippet and PAA slots, and matching still underneath it all in the organic list. Three mechanisms, doing three different jobs, on one page, at the same time.
How the overlap of SEO, AEO and GEO matters for your content strategy
This is why “should I focus on SEO or AEO or GEO” is the wrong question. Google isn’t picking one approach — it’s running all three, live, on the same page you’re trying to show up on. Optimize for only one, and you’re leaving two mechanisms untouched that the page is already using.
So what does this mean in practice?
- Write to repeat and respond to the exact query language your ideal client is searching.
- Write so one paragraph or sentence can stand alone as a complete, correct answer that could easily be extracted. (This is why I encourage my clients to include FAQs — they produce concise answers to common questions.)
- Write with enough clarity and specificity that an AI can accurately restate your point in its own words when synthesizing an answer. Vague, hedge-everything marketing copy fails at this — there’s nothing clean for a system to pull out and cite.
Here’s a useful exercise: Screenshot a results page for one of your own target queries. Label each section — this part’s synthesis, this part’s extraction, this part’s matching. You’ll probably find you’ve been writing for only one or two of those sections, while the rest of the page runs on rules you haven’t touched at all.
And if you’re wondering how these different matching, extracting, and synthesizing mechanisms apply on platforms other than Google, check out where other platforms land on the SEO-to-GEO spectrum, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon.
