SEO, GEO or AEO? What changes for a B2B website when buyers ask AI.

SEO gets your pages into Google's and Bing's results. GEO and AEO are newer names for getting your firm into the answers AI tools write. Google says the work is still SEO. What changes is where the answer shows, what you check each month and how you measure it.

SEO is the work that gets your pages into the results of Google and Bing. GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization) are newer names for getting your firm into the answers AI tools write, in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Microsoft Copilot and Google's AI Overviews. For a B2B firm the three overlap almost completely. Google says that optimizing for its AI answers is still SEO. What GEO and AEO add are two jobs: asking the AI tools what they say about you, and making sure every one of them can read your site.

This guide is for owners and marketing leads at engineering, construction, manufacturing and other B2B firms who are being sold all three and want to know what to pay for.

The three names describe one job in different places.

SEO (search engine optimization) aims at the ranked list of links on Google and Bing. A buyer types a search, sees ten results and clicks one.

GEO comes from a research paper published in November 2023 that studied how content shows up in answers written by AI search engines. It's used for getting cited or named in those written answers.

AEO is used for much the same thing: being the source an "answer engine" draws on when it replies to a question instead of listing links.

In practice, GEO and AEO are used almost interchangeably. Agencies pick whichever term their buyers search for. Google's own guide puts both in one sentence, as terms "used to describe work specifically focused on improving visibility in AI search experiences," and then says that from its side the work is still SEO, because its AI features are built on its core ranking and quality systems.

Google treats AI answers as part of search.

Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode answer from Google's normal index. When someone asks a question, Google runs several related searches to cover it, which it calls "query fan-out", and writes an answer from the pages that come back. A page that doesn't rank in Google's index has little chance of being read for its AI answer.

The same guide lists what you don't need. No new machine-readable files, no AI text files and no special markup. Google Search ignores llms.txt, and it says there's no need to break your pages into tiny pieces for AI. We covered the file in should your business website have an llms.txt file.

ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity are a different case. They run their own searches with their own crawlers and partners, so a site that Google reads well can still be closed to them. That's where GEO and AEO work earns its name: we cover the crawlers in is your website blocking ChatGPT and Claude.

Each one shows its answer somewhere else.

We built this table to show where each name points, what it reads and what we change for it.

Read down the middle column and the point is plain. For Google, GEO and AEO are SEO. The extra work sits in the right-hand column.

What AI tools sent to our own site in October 2026.

We track our own site the way we track a client's. Google Analytics added an AI Assistant channel to its default channels in May 2026. It counts visits from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot. Visits from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode don't go there: they count as Organic Search.

Google Analytics counted 571 sessions in all in the first week and 472 in the second (its channel rows for that week add up to 471). AI assistants sent 35 of them in the first week (about 6%) and 14 in the second (about 3%). Organic search sent 8 to 18 times as many. Two weeks is a small sample from one site, and a single shared answer can move the AI line, so read it as a snapshot.

Two things follow for a B2B firm. Cutting SEO to pay for GEO would trade the larger channel for the smaller one. And because GA4 can't see an answer that names you without a link, the AI line undercounts how often you're mentioned. That's why we also ask the tools directly.

A B2B site needs four things for all three.

The work that serves all three names is mostly the same list.

1. Let every crawler in. Check that robots.txt, Cloudflare and any security plugin let Google, Bing and the AI companies' search crawlers fetch your pages.
2. Put the facts in text. Say on the page what you do, where, for whom and with what proof. Words inside images, slides and PDFs are harder for every tool to use. More in why AI tools can't read some websites.
3. Give each service and sector its own page. A buyer asks a specific question, and a specific page is what gets found and quoted.
4. Be named elsewhere. Reviews, association directories, suppliers' case studies and trade press feed AI answers as well as Google. More in how ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity decide who to recommend.

Measure each one on its own terms.

For SEO, Search Console shows clicks and impressions by search and page, and your contact form and phone show the inquiries. For Google's AI answers, Search Console's generative AI performance report shows how often links to your site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, device and date. For ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity there's no console, so ask the questions your buyers ask, several times each, and record who gets named. We explain how we do that in what an AI visibility report shows.

Whichever name is on the invoice, the measure that matters is the same: qualified inquiries from buyers you want.

Where to start this month.

Run our Free Search Check. It asks Claude three questions your buyers would ask, shows who it names and whether AI tools can get into your site and read it. Then look at the AI Assistant line in your own Google Analytics for the last month.

If you'd like the work done for you, our AI search optimization service runs it every month as part of the SEO Growth Program: the SEO, the crawler checks and the questions we ask the AI tools, in one plan with one report. We don't promise that any tool will name you. We set a goal in inquiries, measure it and show you what changed.