GEO vs SEO vs AEO: what changes, what stays

A marketing manager asks this question when the SEO budget stands and a board asks what GEO adds. In the 28 days to 30 October 2026, Grok ran 9 search wordings that compared GEO, generative search or AEO with SEO. It ran them 42 times before it answered our prompts. The most frequent, "how does SEO for generative search differ from traditional SEO", ran 12 times. The wording "GEO vs SEO vs AEO marketing strategies" ran 5 times.

The guide defines the three terms, lists what stays the same, lists what changes, and gives one table of tactics and one of measures. For the tools of the category, read our guide on what GEO tools are. It sorts them into five jobs and ends with a buying checklist.

GEO vs SEO vs AEO: what do the three terms mean?

SEO, GEO and AEO name the work of making a machine that answers questions find and use your page. They differ in which machine.

• Search engine optimization, SEO, makes a page rank in the list of links that a search engine returns for a keyword. The reader clicks a link to reach the page.
• Generative engine optimization, GEO, makes AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity name, cite and recommend a brand in the one answer they write. A reader may act on the answer and open no page.
• Answer engine optimization, AEO, makes a page the source that an answer engine quotes for a direct question.

GEO and AEO overlap, and the platforms search for both. In the 28 days to 30 October 2026, ChatGPT and Grok ran 15 search wordings that contained AEO or "answer engine". They ran them 29 times before they answered our prompts. Our guide on what GEO tools are counts the wordings that contained GEO.

What stays the same across the three?

Three things stay: a crawler must read the page, the page must answer a question in plain text, and other sites must vouch for it.

1. Crawlability. An answer cites only what a crawler read. In the 28 days to 30 October 2026, AI crawlers made 1,311 requests to the pages of our three logged hosts. Our guide on checking that AI crawlers can read your website names the crawler behind each platform and reads a robots.txt line by line.
2. Clear pages. A page must serve its text to a request that runs no JavaScript, and the first lines must answer the question. Our guide on what Google says about AI Overviews and AI Mode summarizes Google's own page on AI features. It states what Google asks of a page.
3. Authority. The answers cite the domains of three SEO suites among their 14 most cited. In the 28 days to 30 October 2026, on 7 AI platforms, semrush.com, ahrefs.com and seranking.com ranked second, tenth and fourteenth among the cited domains. Our guide on alternatives to GEO tools gives the citation count of each.

What changes from SEO to GEO?

Four things change: the unit, the output, the page that wins, and who types the search.

• Prompts over keywords. A keyword is a string a person types. A prompt is one question in one language, asked in one market, and the same prompt draws a different answer on each platform. The SEO keyword does not vanish. It moves from the person to the platform. In the 28 days to 30 October 2026, ChatGPT and Grok ran 57 search wordings that contained SEO. They ran them 215 times before they answered our prompts.
• Citations over rankings. A rank is one position in one list. A citation is one answer's use of one page, and one answer cites several pages. In the 28 days to 30 October 2026, on 7 AI platforms, an answer that cited a page cited 5.9 on average. Our guide on what an AI visibility tool is counts the cited pages of the same window.
• Answers over clicks. A platform can read your page and cite nothing. It can cite your page and still leave your brand unnamed. In the 28 days to 30 October 2026, 67 answers used a page of fullreach.ai. 24 cited one, and 43 read one and cited none of ours. 10 of the 24 citing answers did not name the brand. The platforms read our guide to GEO tools 28 times and cited it 8 times, and none of the 8 citing answers named the brand.
• Third-party pages over your own. In the 28 days to 30 October 2026, the tool labeled 962 pages on the 50 most cited domains. Each label says what a company can do about the page. Those pages took 15,487 citations. Vendor pages, a company's own pages about itself, took 41%. Roundups took 28%, community threads 17%, guides 9%, other pages 4% and directories 1%. So pages that no vendor owns took 59% of those citations.

Our guide on generative AI SEO tools holds the share of all citations that the SEO suites and the AI-answer trackers took.

Which tactics belong to which discipline?

The tactics that read the answers belong to GEO and AEO, and crawler access belongs to all three. The table names each tactic, the discipline it serves, and the read behind it.

The Search Console row reads the 90 days to 29 October 2026. Every other row reads the 28 days to 30 October 2026.

Our guide on how a brand earns a mention in ChatGPT answers reads the pages ChatGPT cites for 50 buying prompts. It gives the four moves that follow.

What do you measure for each?

Measure SEO by keyword, GEO by prompt, and AEO by the page a question lands on.

Search Console still measures the SEO side of a page about GEO. In the 90 days to 29 October 2026, fullreach.ai showed for "geo seo tool" 5 times at an average position of 83. It showed for "generative search ranking" 3 times at position 91.

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Example

Visibility▲5.8 pts vs previous 7 days

41.1%

210 of 511 answers

Share of Voice

22.0%

2nd of 5 brands

Sentiment

73%

positive, 15 negative

Recommended

52%

109 of 210 mentions

The GEO numbers need the same prompts asked every day, because an answer changes from one day to the next. Our guide on what an AI visibility tool is defines each number and its denominator, and states when a tool pays off. Our guide on why AI visibility numbers differ measures how much the answers move between two days. FullReach AI costs 65€, 165€ and 360€ a month, billed yearly, for 50, 150 and 350 prompts, with every platform included.

What to do next

1. Open your robots.txt. Check that the * group allows every crawler, or that it names the ones it blocks.
2. Ask three buyer questions in ChatGPT. Note the pages each answer cites, and whether one is yours.
3. Keep the keyword report, and add 25 to 50 prompts beside it. Our guide on how many prompts to track explains the count.

For how FullReach AI collects and labels the answers, read the methodology.