SEO, AIO, AEO and GEO: how to make AI talk about you
SEO, AIO, AEO and GEO: understand the difference between the four acronyms, who each one optimizes for, and what changes in your content when AI gives the ready answer.
NinaKalkazu.org
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Think about the question "what's the best running shoe for beginners?". A few years ago, it ended in Google's list of blue links. Today it can end in a box with the ready answer, in an AI summary at the top of search results, or in a conversation with ChatGPT that recommends three brands by name.
Each of these paths has its own acronym: SEO, AIO, AEO and GEO. The market mixes the four, especially AEO and GEO, and they are not the same thing. In this article you will understand what each one means, who the "reader" is that it tries to please, and what to do in practice to make AI talk about you.
Quick summary: the answer in 30 seconds. SEO is appearing well in Google's list of links. AEO is becoming the direct answer, like the featured snippet or the voice assistant's response. AIO is being used in the AI summary that Google shows at the top of search results. GEO is being cited and recommended by chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity. All four rest on the same foundation: clear, trustworthy content that is easy to find.
Index
- SEO, AIO, AEO and GEO in one sentence each
- SEO: the foundation that still holds
- What is AEO: optimizing to become the answer
- AIO: the AI summary at the top of Google
- What is GEO: being cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity
- SEO for AI in practice: a single checklist
- The downside: the race to manipulate AI
- Frequently asked questions
SEO, AIO, AEO and GEO in one sentence each
The difference between SEO, AIO, AEO and GEO lies in who reads your content before the audience. In SEO, it is the search engine's bot (a program that visits sites on its own) that builds the list of links. In AEO, it is the system that chooses a single answer. In AIO, it is Google's AI that writes a summary. In GEO, it is the chatbot that converses with the person.
| Acronym | Full name | Who you optimize for | What you gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | Search Engine Optimization | Google and Bing, in the list of links | Position and click |
| AEO | Answer Engine Optimization | Answer box at the top of Google and voice assistants | Being the direct answer |
| AIO | AI Optimization | AI Overviews (AI summary at the top of search) and Google's AI Mode | Being a source for the summary |
| GEO | Generative Engine Optimization | ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini | Being cited or recommended |
A warning: there is no official dictionary for these acronyms, and many agencies use AEO and GEO as synonyms. The division above is the most useful for understanding what changes in each case.
SEO: the foundation that still holds
SEO is the set of practices for a page to appear well positioned in a search engine's traditional results. It involves making the site accessible to Google's bot, writing about what people search for, loading fast, and receiving links from other sites, which work as votes of confidence. The final goal is the reader's click.
The first step is technical. A bot visits the pages (crawling) and stores them in a large catalog (indexing). A page outside the index does not appear anywhere, not even in AI summaries. That is why SEO has not died: it is the ground floor of the building, and the other acronyms are floors above it.
What is AEO: optimizing to become the answer
AEO is preparing content to be chosen as the single answer to a question. It appears in Google's featured snippet, in the "People also ask" block, and in voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. The person receives the answer without needing to open any site.
The featured snippet has a technical name: featured snippet. Google describes it in the official documentation about featured snippets as a result in which the text appears first and the link comes after. The site owner has no way to mark their own page to become featured. Who decides is Google's system.
What works is writing as the answer would be read aloud: the question becomes a subheading, and the answer comes right below, in two or three objective sentences.
The FAQ that Google stopped showing
For years, the AEO recipe included marking questions and answers with structured data (an invisible code that explains to the machine what each part of the page is). In August 2023, Google changed the rule. According to the announcement on the Google Search Central blog, FAQ results began to appear only for known and trusted government and health sites. HowTo results stopped being displayed.
Questions and answers continue to help reader and machine understand the page. They just no longer guarantee that expanded block.
AIO: the AI summary at the top of Google
AIO, in the most used sense, is optimizing for AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries that Google shows above the links, and for AI Mode, the search in conversation format. The goal is for your page to be one of the sources that the AI consults and cites in the summary.
AI summaries already appear on Google in Portuguese. In October 2024, Google announced on the official blog the expansion of AI Overviews to more than 100 countries and territories, in languages including Portuguese, with more than 1 billion users per month. In September 2025, AI Mode gained Brazilian Portuguese. If you want to understand what you can use without paying, the guide to free Google AI helps.
Attention: AIO is also used as an umbrella term, in the sense of "optimizing for any AI". Ask whether the subject is Google or all AIs.
What Google says officially
This is the fact that most dismantles the miraculous promises. On the official page about AI features, Google states that there are no additional requirements or special optimizations to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. The fundamentals of SEO, the company says, continue to hold.
The page only needs to be in Google's catalog and be able to appear in search with the text summary below the title. Google also cites query fan-out: the AI makes several searches about subtopics to build the answer. Thus, a page that answers well to one part of the question can also enter the summary.
What is GEO: being cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity
GEO is optimizing so that generative AIs, like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini, cite your brand or your site when they answer someone. The goal is no longer to be first in a list, but to be remembered by name inside the answer that the AI writes.
An example from VentureBeat about the startup Geostar: in Paris, the founder's parents asked ChatGPT for a day's itinerary. The AI indicated tours and restaurants by name, without a list of links.
Where the term came from
The name GEO appeared in a study published in November 2023 by researchers from Princeton, IIT Delhi (Indian Institute of Technology) and independent researchers. The scientific paper "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", accepted at KDD 2024, one of the main data science conferences, shows that certain changes in the text increase by up to 40% how much of it appears in AI answers.
Attention to the detail: the number came from a test set up by the authors themselves, comparing the page before and after the change. It is not a guarantee of results in everyday ChatGPT.
The best methods in the study were citing sources, including expert quotes, and adding statistics. The old trick of repeating keywords yielded little or nothing and, on Perplexity, appeared 10% less in answers than the original text.
Mention without link became valuable
In classic SEO, Google counted links, not cited names, and mention without link was worth little. AIs, however, read enormous volumes of text and understand what is said about a brand in forums, news articles and videos.
That is why the recommendation from experts interviewed by VentureBeat about traffic coming from AIs is to be where people talk: Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia and the industry press.
In one sentence: in GEO, what others say about you weighs as much as what your site says.
SEO for AI in practice: a single checklist
You do not need four strategies. All the acronyms reward clear, trustworthy content that is easy to find, and the checklist below covers all four at once, at no cost.
- Guarantee the technical foundation. Check whether Google can crawl and index your pages. Without this, no Google AI will cite you.
- Answer right at the beginning. Open each section with the direct answer in two or three sentences.
- Use real questions as subheadings. Write the titles the way the reader asks: "how much does it cost?", "is it worth it?".
- Bring numbers and sources. The GEO study showed that statistics and citations increase visibility. Put the source next to the fact.
- Keep content updated, with dates on prices and versions.
- Be where people talk about your topic. Participate in forums, record videos and seek mentions in the press.
- Do the chatbot test. Ask a chatbot the question that your page answers, without pasting the link, and see if it cites you.
| Your profile | Where to start |
|---|---|
| Blog or content site | SEO and AEO: direct answers and questions as subheadings |
| Store or local business | Local SEO (appearing on the map and in neighborhood searches) and GEO: reviews and mentions |
| Company that sells to companies | GEO: proprietary data, studies and presence on LinkedIn and in the press |
| Content creator | GEO: YouTube and social networks, where AIs search for opinions |
The downside: the race to manipulate AI
Every new way to appear attracts those who try to game the system. The Verge showed a typical case. A software company published a "complete comparison" of 15 tools in its own sector, and number one on the list was itself. Google's AI Mode used this page as a source for the answer. A competitor did the same, also with its own product in first place.
The money shows the size of the race. Profound, which sells software for brands to appear in AI answers, received from investors $180 million in September 2026, in a deal that valued the company at $1.8 billion, according to Profound's official announcement. TechCrunch placed it in a wave of GEO and AEO startups.
The lesson for those who ask: when AI recommends products, open the sources and see who wrote them.
Frequently asked questions
Did SEO die with AI?
No. Google itself states that the fundamentals of SEO continue to hold in AI summaries. What changed was the goal: in addition to the click, now being cited counts.
What is GEO, in a few words?
It is optimization to be cited by AIs like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity. In the study that created the term, citing sources, including statistics and bringing expert quotes worked best.
Do I need a paid tool to do SEO for AI?
Not to start. The checklist above costs nothing. Paid tools help measure how many times your brand appears in answers.
Do AI Overviews work in Portuguese?
Yes. AI Overviews have had Portuguese support since the October 2024 expansion, and AI Mode arrived in Brazilian Portuguese in September 2025.
The next step
In the end, SEO is the ground floor, and AEO, AIO and GEO are the floors above. Start with the chatbot test and, to understand these AIs from the inside, see the artificial intelligence guides at Kalkazu.
