GEO vs. SEO (and AEO): What Google Actually Says, and What to Ask Your Agency

An agency just pitched you a GEO package. How you rank in AI, or how you get cited in AI, feels like everything right now, so is this something new or is it SEO with a new name?

Google’s John Mueller told David Iwanow in a recent interview (covered by Search Engine Journal) that a lot of AI systems “build on SEO,” and that technical SEO “is going to remain very relevant.”

If you want to check out the entire interview, read it here.

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What does Google actually say about optimizing for AI search?

Mueller was asked whether AEO and GEO are dead. His answer, as printed in SEJ:

“I think you’ll see that a lot of the AI systems, they build on SEO.”

“I think especially technical SEO is going to remain very relevant.”

On AI crawlers crawling differently, for training or for freshness, he said: “But that’s just is like another flavor of technical SEO.”

Google’s own documentation says the same thing in a drier way. The Search Central page AI features and your website says no special AI-only optimizations are required beyond normal SEO. If your page is indexed and can show a snippet in regular search, it can show up in AI features too. Google’s Succeeding in AI search post leans on content nobody else has and on tracking conversions over clicks.

Most of the prospects we talk to are asking about this:

“Um, pretty much that is majority of everything. Even if they don’t know the terms AEO or GEO. But how we rank in AI or how we’re cited in AI is everything now and I think it’s going to be even more important going forward as AI is filtering. Every time you search on your phone, ask it any question, it’s going to be filtered by AI so. And I think the important thing is not just being cited or being referenced in AI but actually being chosen. And what does it take to do that. I don’t have any specific examples of what other people are charging for it but, uh, I would say if you don’t have some type of strategy of how your company is going to be chosen in AI, you’ll just get left behind.”

What’s the difference between GEO, AEO, and SEO?

GEO is about getting named in AI-written answers, and AEO is the older term for being the snippet or voice answer.

The foundation is mostly shared. Some things really are different, though. eMarketer analyst Nate Elliott argues that “good GEO is good SEO” is a misconception, because AI answers vary from query to query.

With GEO, part of the AI referral traffic never shows up as AI in your analytics, and reviews and mentions on other sites carry more weight.

Is it mostly technical SEO, or is something really different?

“Um, yeah, I think that what AI is really doing is finding who is actually doing really good SEO. That, you know, when SEO also was affecting an algorithm, there’s always people trying to cheat the algorithm. Well, AI can, uh, interpret and actually comprehend what you’re actually doing on the page, so it’s much harder to trick. And I think overall what AI is trying to do is find who is really building the best websites, who really has trust and authority, who has, um, is delivering a good service, which you can see from reviews, who has an expert team, which you can see about, about us page, and then, you know, who has third-party relationships and awards and reviews. So who’s really doing a, a really good job. And I think the aspect of technical SEO really is just making sure that all of that is, uh, being communicated, and that if, um, you know, Google or a search engine can, uh, pick up the content that’s on your website, then so is AI.”

Is technical SEO still important for AI search?

Google says yes. Common problems are a CDN or firewall blocking bots nobody meant to block, or content that only shows up after JavaScript runs. Pages that never got indexed have the same problem, and so does schema that says something different from what’s on the page.

Have technical fixes actually moved AI citations for our clients?

“I think the, the technical side is that, uh, fixing just technical SEO issues has worked for both Google and for AI. Um, and I think just good technical SEO is good, um, SEO.”

What about llms.txt files or separate markdown pages built just for AI? Per SEJ, Mueller has said before that there’s no reason to create special markdown pages for Google’s AI Search. Google’s AI features documentation doesn’t list any special file or page type either.

Are listicles spam now?

Not automatically. Mueller said “I wouldn’t necessarily say anything that is a listicle is spam,” but it needs to add value. The problem is going all in on them:

“So if you go all out and say, my whole strategy is listicles, then at some point that’s going to switch off and you’re left with nothing really.”

That usually means the “Top 10 [industry] companies” page where the company writing it ranks itself number one. In his takeaways, Montti also points out other old tactics showing up again as AI SEO: cloaking for AI crawlers, directories, and reciprocal links. That observation is his, not Mueller’s.

We’ve watched a client get burned by an AI content scheme:

“Yeah, we had a, um, nutritional supplement website that, um, you know, tried to use AI to mass generate content. It wasn’t just listicles, but it’s all sorts of different content. Even though I think it had its, uh, best interest for the customer at heart where it could take research and then have AI really, you know, summarize it, share what it’s about, how does that connect to the different products that they were selling. The fact was is that because the content was 100% AI, even, you know, the expert quotes were still kind of AI polished, the rankings for it just absolutely plummeted. Uh, Google didn’t, um, rank the website anymore. Like the, the traffic really got hurt. And as, as it relates to AI, like AI didn’t use it at all as a reference, didn’t cite it. Um, you know, was never chosen if you asked any questions in AI because when you really get down and think about it, if, if the website is all generated by AI, that means that everything on that website could just be answered by what you ask in an AI chat. So the website didn’t actually create any value. And I think that’s the big thing people miss when they’re trying to use AI, try to automate things, is that our goal of our website is to deliver, um, either data or service or expertise that AI can’t replicate, and who is literally build, uh, delivering the best service for your particular ni, niche.”

What questions should I ask an agency selling GEO or AEO?

Mueller said shady tactics have always existed, and he had advice for small businesses: “So I think as a small business, you have to always question what your vendors are doing…”

These are the three questions I’d ask:

1. “One of the questions I would ask is, what, um, evidence do you have and data that shows that your AI practices have worked in the real world?”
2. “How do you see the, the execution of what we’re going to implement, uh, affect my website long-term?”
3. “How does, um, the, this plan directly correlate to increasing revenue?”

As for what should make you walk away:

“Um, I don’t have, oh so for first, for what would make you walk, I would think that, you know, any type of thing that’s just a big list of tasks that don’t really have a direct correlation to revenue and understanding that entire relationship. I’d also really want to know that the agency is understanding, uh, the, my ICP as an owner, and then how the entire funnel works for not just we delivered a keyword or we delivered traffic or got an AI citation, but how does that work into generating a lead? How does that lead get to the right person so that it can get into the funnel and actually become a, a sale? I think those are critical.”

How do I measure whether AI search is actually paying off?

Tracking traffic from AI tools is messy, because some of those visits come in with a referrer or a UTM tag and a lot of them just land in direct. This is how we measure it:

“Well, the first thing we can do is we can do a manual, um, prompts to AI so we can actually see what they’re delivering to customers and doing it from a, you know, a neutral or non-logged in, uh, website so we can see when we ask a specific questions are they recommending? Are they recommending their customers? Are they just sharing information? So we can have a clear understanding at least of what, um, AI is delivering to potential customers. As relates to attribution, that is a challenge, but as some things we can see, uh, that’ll be, uh, tagged with a UTM, some, that could be going away for ChatGPT. Sometimes we see it as an direct. Um, but there are things that we could see like if we haven’t done any different marketing and we have a increase in the direct traffic that is converting to sales, that has to come from somewhere and if the only difference is what we’re doing for AI, then, uh, it’s an inference. It wouldn’t be like you’d know a hundred percent, but if you knew that we are ranking better in ChatGPT based on our prompt analysis and then our direct traffic had gone up that’s converting, I would say that’s a high correlation.”

After that it comes back to leads and sales, and these are the SEO reporting metrics we hold that to.

Log out of ChatGPT, ask it what your buyers ask, and see who gets recommended.

If you don’t have some type of strategy for how your company is going to be chosen in AI, you’ll just get left behind. Talk to our team about where you stand.