AEO vs GEO vs SEO: the 2026 definitions.

Short version: SEO gets you ranked in Google's blue links. AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation — gets your answer picked when someone asks an AI. GEO — Generative Engine Optimisation — gets your business cited inside AI-generated answers. In 2026 you need all three, but the centre of gravity has moved to AEO and GEO.

SEO — Search Engine Optimisation.

The discipline everyone knows: optimise a page so it ranks highly in Google's organic results. It's about keywords, backlinks, technical health and content depth, and it's measured in rankings and clicks. It still matters — Google isn't gone — but a growing share of the research step now happens inside an AI, where a ranking on page one is invisible.

AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation.

AEO optimises for the answer, not the ranking. When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity a question in your category, the model assembles a direct answer from the clearest sources it can find. AEO is the work of making your content that source: answer-first paragraphs, FAQ and how-to structure, schema markup, and pages a model can extract cleanly. The unit of success is being quoted, not being clicked.

GEO — Generative Engine Optimisation.

GEO is the broader, brand-level game: getting your business named and cited across generative engines and the sources they pull from. Where AEO is mostly on-page, GEO adds entity grounding (LinkedIn, Google Business, Crunchbase, Wikidata), third-party mentions, reviews and citations. It's what moves you from "technically optimised" to "the business AI actually recommends".

So what's actually different?

• Target: SEO targets a ranked list; AEO targets the answer; GEO targets the citation and the brand mention inside it.
• Signals: SEO leans on keywords and backlinks; AEO leans on structure and schema; GEO leans on entity clarity and third-party trust.
• Metric: SEO counts rankings and clicks; AEO counts whether you're quoted; GEO counts appearance rate and share-of-voice across the AI engines.

Which should an Australian SMB prioritise?

In this order: get the AEO foundations right (structure, schema, llms.txt) because they're fast and fully in your control; then build GEO authority (entities, listings, reviews, mentions) because that's what actually earns citations and it compounds slowly. Keep enough SEO hygiene that Google still understands you — but stop pouring the whole budget into keyword pages whose traffic is declining. The buyers moved; the work should move with them.

Common questions.

Is AEO the same as GEO? They overlap. AEO is mostly the on-page work of getting your answer extracted; GEO is the wider brand-and-entity work of getting cited across generative engines. Most engagements do both.

Can I stop doing SEO? No — keep the hygiene. But if you're being sold another quarter of keyword blog posts with falling traffic, you're funding the old playbook. Shift the emphasis to AEO and GEO.

How do I measure any of this? Run a monthly query panel across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity for the prompts your buyers actually ask, and score your appearance rate. A free scan at belver.ai/audit gives you the six-category baseline to start from.