♦ THE FIELD
AEO vs GEO: What They Are and Why You Need Both
If you’ve been paying attention to the AI visibility conversation, you’ve probably come across two acronyms. AEO. GEO. Answer Engine Optimisation and Generative Engine Optimisation.
They tend to appear together. They’re easy to conflate. And that makes sense — both are about being visible to AI systems in a way that earns recommendations and citations. But they’re genuinely different things. They work on different timelines. They require different approaches. And if you focus on one without understanding the other, you’ll build a visibility strategy with a significant gap in it.
Here’s how they actually work — and why you need both.
AI visibility isn’t about ranking pages. It’s about whether the picture AI has of you is coherent enough to earn a recommendation.