AEO means answer engine optimization. GEO means generative engine optimization. If you’re comparing agencies, neither label tells you enough to choose a supplier.

An AEO proposal might focus on answering questions on your website. A GEO proposal might include research into why ChatGPT recommends competing businesses. Either provider could offer both. You’ll need to read the scope to find out.

The useful distinction is where the work will happen and what you’ll receive. Our agency selection guide gives you questions to use in that conversation.

The labels describe an emphasis

AEO is commonly used for work on how information appears in answer-based search. That can include making a product explanation clearer or answering a question the site has left unresolved.

GEO emphasizes visibility within generated answers. A campaign may examine which brands get recommended and then inspect the outside pages cited around those recommendations.

The GEO paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues was first submitted in November 2023. Its abstract reports visibility improvements of up to 40% within the research evaluation. That number describes a study result. It doesn’t forecast the return from an agency’s retainer.

It’s reasonable to ask a provider using that statistic how its proposed work relates to the study. The answer needs more than a citation pasted underneath a sales claim.

Follow the work through a buying question

Imagine a restaurant operator looking for payroll software that handles tips across several locations. A software provider wants to be considered for that question, but its website only says it supports restaurant payroll.

The product team would need to explain how the workflow operates. An editor could then add that explanation to the relevant page, including the limits a buyer should know about. An agency might put that assignment under AEO.

Suppose an industry comparison also describes an older version of the product. Someone needs to inspect the entry and prepare a correction for the publisher. An agency might put that assignment under GEO.

Both assignments concern the same buying question. Your team can review the proposed page edit and the publisher correction regardless of the acronym on the invoice. Our GEO services separate the tasks so you can see which ones are included.

Make the agency explain its measurement

A report should distinguish a company being named from a page being cited. It should also preserve the context. Your product might appear in a warning about unsuitable software, which would be a strange result to celebrate as improved visibility.

If the agency tracks a fixed question set, you should know how it chose the questions and whether later reports use the same set. The audit guide explains what belongs in the observation record.

Ask how it handles answers that vary between runs. A report that includes the unfavorable observations gives you a better basis for a decision than a selection of flattering screenshots.

For referrals and inquiries, agree on what the agency can observe. A citation count by itself won’t explain whether the people who contacted you came from those answers.

Google puts both inside SEO

Google’s guidance recognizes AEO and GEO as terms for work on AI-search visibility, while treating optimization for its own generative search experiences as SEO.

That overlap is worth checking against your existing marketing contracts. Your current agency may already own the page changes in a new proposal. The new supplier may contribute source research that nobody has been doing.

Our GEO vs SEO comparison explains how to assign that work without paying for the same rewrite twice. For the payroll example, your product marketer might write the workflow while the outside specialist investigates comparison pages.

When we describe the work at GEO Agency, the scope has to identify those responsibilities. Before choosing between an AEO and GEO proposal, ask both providers to name the first page they’d inspect and explain what they would do with a finding. Their answers will give you something you can compare.