Are GEO, AEO and LLMO the same thing?

Functionally yes. All three describe optimising for AI-generated answers - GEO stresses the generative engine, AEO the answer format, LLMO the language model. The tactics and the measurement are the same; pick the term your audience recognises.

Is GEO replacing SEO?

No - it runs alongside it. SEO still governs the link lists in classic search; GEO governs whether AI answers name and cite you. They share foundations (indexable content, authority) but are measured completely differently, and a strong Google position does not guarantee presence in AI answers.

What is the first practical step in GEO/AEO/LLMO?

Measurement. Ask each engine your buyers’ questions several times and record whether your brand is mentioned or your site cited - or use a tracker like CiteLyzer to do it on a schedule across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews and AI Mode. Every later decision depends on that baseline.

GEO vs AEO vs LLMO: what’s the difference?

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization) are, in practice, three names for the same goal: making AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity mention your brand and cite your pages when buyers ask questions. The differences are emphasis, not substance - and whichever acronym you adopt, the work starts with the same step: measuring whether AI names you today.

The category is young enough that its vocabulary hasn’t settled. Agencies pitch “GEO audits”, SEO tools ship “AEO modules”, and research papers talk about “LLMO”. Buyers reasonably wonder whether these are three services or one. Short answer: one discipline, three lenses.

What does GEO mean?

Generative Engine Optimization is the broadest and currently most common term. It covers everything you do so that generative engines - chat assistants and AI search modes - represent your brand well: content structured to be quotable, technical access for AI crawlers, presence in the sources engines trust, and measurement of the result.

The emphasis is on the engine: GEO treats ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews and AI Mode as a new distribution channel with its own rules, the way SEO treated Google.

What does AEO mean?

Answer Engine Optimization predates the current AI wave - it was coined for featured snippets and voice assistants, when Google started answering questions directly. Its emphasis is on the answer: structure your content so an engine can lift a complete, correct response from it (question-shaped headings, the answer in the first paragraph, FAQ blocks with schema).

In the AI era AEO folded into GEO almost entirely: the tactics that won featured snippets are the same ones that get you quoted by chat assistants.

What does LLMO mean?

Large Language Model Optimization emphasises the model rather than the product around it: how brands end up in training data and retrieval, how models learn entities, why a name the model has never seen in trustworthy contexts won’t be recommended. It’s the term you’ll meet in research and technical writing more than in marketing.

For practitioners the practical overlap is, again, near-total: you influence models through the same public, crawlable, well-cited content that GEO prescribes.

So which term should you use - and what should you do?

Use whichever your audience uses; they name the same work. What matters is the sequence of that work:

Measure first: check whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews and AI Mode mention or cite you on your buyers’ questions. Without a baseline you can’t tell whether anything you ship works.
Fix access: make sure Bing (which feeds ChatGPT) and Google index your key pages, and that AI crawlers aren’t blocked.
Ship answer-shaped content: one page per real buyer question, answer front-loaded, FAQ where it genuinely helps.
Build presence beyond your site: rankings, directories, reviews and comparisons are where engines learn brand names.
Re-measure on a schedule and judge trends, not single runs - AI answers are volatile by nature.