What do the three terms mean?
Search engine optimisation, or SEO, concerns making useful information discoverable, understandable and competitive in search. It includes technical access, content, site structure and the experience after a visitor arrives.
Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, generally describes efforts to appear accurately in AI-generated answers, as a mentioned business, cited source or relevant option. Bing's current guidelines distinguish SEO's technical clarity and accessibility from eligibility for grounding and reference in AI responses, while warning that neither guarantees the desired appearance. Bing Webmaster Guidelines
Answer engine optimisation, or AEO, is commonly used for making information answer a question effectively, sometimes encompassing featured answers, voice responses and generative services. It is not a universally agreed technical standard or a separate permission to appear in an answer. Ask a supplier which surfaces and tasks they mean.
Use the vocabulary when it helps a brief. The commercial question remains how a relevant buyer discovers, understands and considers the business.
Which foundations are shared?
Accessible public pages, correct redirects and canonical choices, internal links, accurate business and product facts, evidence for consequential claims and a usable customer journey are relevant across several discovery routes. Assign each underlying repair once, with clear acceptance evidence.
Google's current approach keeps established SEO principles central to its generative search features. That does not establish identical retrieval rules for every assistant or make a generic “GEO score” an official Google metric. Google's explanation of its approach
Accept content that answers the question promptly, supports consequential claims and puts conditions beside the promise they limit. A meaningful comparison or worked example should help the buyer decide what to do. The editor remains responsible for the facts, whatever the package is called. Keep one useful answer for an intent instead of near-identical pages for each label or wording.
Select those questions from sales conversations, support records, actual query data and customer research. Cover the decisions that affect need, suitability, comparisons and supplier choice. Rank them by relevance and business consequence; a marketer's convenient prompt list is not a measured distribution of customer demand.
What genuinely needs different work?
Identify the retrieval system and relevant controls before commissioning access work. For Google’s AI features, check the effective Search generative AI control in Search Console when eligibility is in doubt: Include is the default, with inherited or explicit exclusions possible. It affects these features separately from ordinary search and AI training. Google’s control definitions OpenAI’s search and training crawlers have independent settings; a decision about one cannot stand in for the other. OpenAI crawler documentation Helping an authorised browser agent select the right item needs different evidence from a mention in a search answer. Test the interface and stopping conditions separately from discovery. A technical file or visibility score cannot demonstrate a completed task.
An AI answer may describe the business incorrectly or combine sources in an unhelpful way. Save the exact answer, question, date, market, service and cited URLs, then correct underlying information where possible. Check commercial relevance as well as accuracy: a citation may be accurate but irrelevant, and a mention may not be a recommendation.
Relevant profiles, product feeds, reviews, specialist coverage or customer information can affect what is available about a business. Maintain accurate records and earn credible coverage. Purchasing unrelated mentions is not a defensible substitute.
How can you stop the labels creating duplicate costs?
Consider three invented proposals for the same service business. The prices illustrate scope reconciliation and are not market rates or supplier quotes.
The £1,200 SEO proposal includes a canonical correction, a service-facts rewrite and alignment of structured data with the visible page. The £900 GEO proposal includes that same facts rewrite and structured-data alignment, plus a recurring check of six buyer questions. The £600 AEO proposal includes the same facts rewrite and the same six-question check.
The headline fees total £2,700. There are four distinct named outputs: the canonical correction, one facts rewrite, one structured-data alignment and one defined question check. Buying three labels does not create three different repairs to the price or service description.
Ask for a revised allocation: one technical owner for the canonical correction; one approved source and editor for the facts; one implementation owner for markup; one reporting specification for the question sample. Define the platform, market, question wording and accuracy criteria for that last job. A separate independent review can add value, but it should be explicitly described and priced as a review rather than another identical rewrite.
Ask suppliers to rescope and quote the distinct work, including maintenance and specialist responsibilities, so the purchase is comparable before negotiation. Subtracting arbitrary line items from bundled fees cannot establish the saving.
How should the programme be measured?
Keep technical eligibility, exposure, accuracy, referred visits and commercial contribution distinct. Google Search Console offers dedicated generative-AI exposure views already included in overall performance; Bing reports citations on its supported surfaces. Neither exposure count supplies a lead or order. Google's report announcement, Bing's definitions
Use a stable, bounded set of real buyer questions to inspect answer quality and representation. Record the exact wording, market, language, service, search-enabled and account context, date, complete answer and cited URLs. Do not keep changing the wording until the brand appears, then report that chosen result as market visibility. Record changes in the service or test conditions.
Reconcile recognised referral visits to meaningful outcomes under the available consent and attribution evidence. In GA4, use the session acquisition report and distinguish AI Assistant referrals from Organic Search, which includes non-ad visits from Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. GA4’s channel definitions Exclude known internal tests and separate paid placements. Incremental return requires a credible counterfactual, beyond an attribution rule. For cost and counterfactual principles, see the AI-marketing return guide; its workflow examples concern a different investment from search discovery.
Who should own the work?
Give one accountable marketing lead the complete question and budget. Website engineering owns route and interface repairs; content and subject specialists own accurate explanations; commercial and analytics owners define qualified outcomes and cost. Suppliers can contribute specialist work without owning competing versions of the business facts.
Use the labels to organise expertise and choose the work from the observed obstacle nearest a valuable buying situation. A blocked service page needs access repaired. Investigate the source of an inaccurate assistant description; where visibility is accurate but enquiries are weak, examine the audience, offer and next step.