If you’ve landed here because somebody has told you that you need AEO, GEO, AI SEO or LLM optimisation, you’re in the right place.
We’re just not necessarily going to sell you one.
AI is changing the way people search. Google is changing. ChatGPT is influencing discovery. AI Overviews and AI Mode are changing what a Google search looks like.
Your brand absolutely should be thinking about how it appears in those places.
But before you sign another statement of work because somebody has told you your SEO strategy is suddenly obsolete, there’s one question worth asking: What, exactly, are they going to do differently?
Because if the answer is better content, stronger authority, clearer information, technically accessible websites, structured data, digital PR, relevant brand mentions and demonstrating genuine expertise…
We have some awkward news; That’s good SEO.
And that isn’t just us being stubborn SEOs refusing to accept that the world has changed.
Google’s own guidance says its generative AI features are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems. It says existing SEO best practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode, with no additional technical requirements or special schema needed to appear.
So, let’s talk about what has actually changed, what hasn’t, and what you should know before somebody sells you SEO again with a shiny new acronym.
What are AEO and GEO?
Let’s get the acronyms out of the way.
AEO, or Answer Engine Optimisation, is generally used to describe improving your visibility in search experiences that answer a user’s question directly, rather than simply returning a list of links.
GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation, usually refers to improving the likelihood that your brand or content appears, is referenced or is cited within generative AI responses.
You’ll also encounter AI SEO, LLM optimisation, AI search optimisation and probably another acronym somebody invented between us writing this and you reading it.
There are differences between these concepts. And there are absolutely new search behaviours worth understanding.
The problem starts when new terminology gets mistaken for an entirely new marketing discipline.
Because much of what makes information useful, accessible and authoritative to an answer engine should sound remarkably familiar to anyone who has been doing SEO properly.
In fact, Google now addresses AEO and GEO by name. Its position is refreshingly straightforward: when it comes to Google’s generative search experiences, optimising for them is still SEO.
That brings us to the slightly uncomfortable bit.
What are you actually buying from an AEO or GEO agency?
Let’s say somebody has pitched you a shiny new GEO service.
Fine.
Ask what they’re actually going to do.
Are they going to improve your website’s technical accessibility?
Create genuinely useful content around the things your customers are searching for?
Make your products, services and expertise easier to understand?
Improve your structured data?
Build topical authority?
Earn authoritative coverage and mentions elsewhere online?
Strengthen your brand’s digital footprint?
Make content easier for search engines to discover, understand and surface?
Brilliant.
Now ask another question: Why wasn’t your SEO agency already doing that?
Because putting a new acronym on the proposal doesn’t automatically make the work new.
That’s where we think brands need to be careful.
AEO and GEO aren’t bullshit. But some of the ways they’re being sold are.
There’s an enormous commercial incentive right now to make businesses feel as though something fundamental has broken.
“SEO is dead.”
“Google is dying.”
“Nobody searches anymore.”
“Your strategy is obsolete.”
“You need GEO.”
“You need AEO.”
“You needed it yesterday.”
Convenient, isn’t it?
We’re not interested in telling clients that nothing has changed. It has.
We’re equally uninterested in frightening them into buying SEO twice.
Even Google is myth-busting some of the GEO “hacks”
This is where things get particularly interesting.
Google has now published specific guidance addressing some of the tactics being discussed as ways to optimise for generative search.
Its advice? You don’t need special AI text files or markup to appear in Google’s generative search features. There isn’t special schema for them. You don’t need to break every page into tiny “AI-friendly” chunks. And you don’t need to rewrite your content into some special style purely for generative AI.
That doesn’t mean there is nothing to optimise.
It means businesses should be very wary of paying a premium for “hacks” that the platform itself says it doesn’t require.
Sometimes the boring answer really is the right one.
Make something genuinely useful. Make it accessible. Make it authoritative. Make sure search engines can understand it.
Good SEO, then.
But AI search is growing, and you shouldn’t ignore it
Here’s where the conversation needs some nuance.
Because after everything we’ve just said, going to the opposite extreme and dismissing AI search would be equally daft.
AI referral traffic remains small compared with established search channels.
Ahrefs analysed around 35,000 websites and found AI accounted for approximately 0.1% of total referral traffic in its study. It also found Google sent around 345 times more traffic than the three major AI platforms it measured combined.
But there’s an important caveat.
Referral traffic is not the same thing as influence.
Someone could encounter your brand in ChatGPT, see it referenced in an AI-generated response, subsequently Google your name and eventually arrive through organic search or direct traffic.
Your analytics aren’t necessarily going to neatly credit that journey to AI.
Ahrefs makes much the same distinction in its own research, noting that trackable AI traffic is only part of the picture and pointing towards brand awareness and mentions as additional measures of AI visibility.
So the question isn’t simply:
“How many clicks did AI send us?”
It’s also:
“Are we visible when our customers use it?”
That’s a much more useful question.
And it’s where we start getting into the genuinely new parts of this conversation.
What actually is different about AI search optimisation?
There are things search teams need to start measuring and understanding differently.
How often does your brand appear for relevant questions in AI responses?
What sources are being cited?
Which competitors appear when you don’t?
What questions and prompts are your customers using?
Where do AI Overviews appear across your existing organic search landscape?
Which pages attract visits from AI platforms?
Does that visibility ultimately contribute to leads, revenue, brand search or other commercial outcomes?
Those are worthwhile questions.
They require new tools, new reporting and, in some cases, a broader definition of what search visibility actually means.
AI-powered search can also explore a subject differently from a traditional query. Google, for example, says AI Overviews and AI Mode can use “query fan-out”, running multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources to construct a response.
That matters.
It creates new things for good search strategists to understand.
But it doesn’t suddenly render everything we knew about search useless.
Quite the opposite.
The measurement is evolving faster than the fundamentals
This is probably the most important thing we can tell you about GEO right now.
The measurement is evolving faster than the fundamentals.
What earns visibility still comes back to a lot of familiar territory.
Google’s guidance for its generative AI experiences includes a clear technical structure, crawlability, unique and valuable content, good page experience, sensible internal linking, useful text, relevant high-quality images and video, accurate structured data and up-to-date business and product information.
There is no magic “rank me in AI” button.
There never was a magic “rank me on Google” button either.
Good search has always involved understanding what people want, creating something genuinely useful for them, making that information understandable and accessible, and building enough authority that search engines have a reason to trust it.
The places that information can now surface are multiplying.
The fundamentals haven’t suddenly become shit. They’ve become more important.
So, do you actually need a GEO agency?
Maybe.
Sorry. We know that’s considerably less exciting than telling you the entire internet changed overnight.
There will be businesses for whom AI visibility deserves significant dedicated resource.
There will be businesses whose customers are already heavily using generative AI to research complicated purchases, compare providers or understand technical subjects.
There will be others where AI currently plays a much smaller role.
That’s why we’re wary of universal advice telling businesses to move an arbitrary percentage of their SEO budget into GEO.
Even current AI referral studies produce substantially different figures depending on methodology, sample and definition. Ahrefs’ research has also found differences according to website size, industry and geography.
So don’t start with a percentage.
Start with your customers.
Measure your own search landscape.
Look at where your customers actually search.
Look at the questions they ask.
Look at whether AI experiences appear.
Look at whether your brand appears.
Look at where your competitors appear.
Look at your existing organic performance.
Look at the commercial value behind all of it.
Then decide where the investment belongs. Not because somebody on LinkedIn told you you’re already behind.
Search isn’t a channel anymore. It’s a behaviour.
This is where we think the whole SEO vs AEO vs GEO debate starts missing the bigger picture.
Imagine someone discovers a product through a creator.
They ask ChatGPT about it.
They search the category on Google.
An AI Overview appears.
They read a Reddit thread.
They see the brand mentioned by a publisher.
They search the brand directly.
Then they buy.
Which bit was SEO? Which bit was GEO? Which bit was AEO?
The customer couldn’t give a shit. They were searching.
And that’s why we’ve never believed search begins and ends with ten blue links.
People search when they’re curious, they search when they’re comparing, they search when they want reassurance, they search when they’re almost ready to buy. More and more, they don’t always do it in the same place.
That’s the thinking behind our full-funnel search approach.
It brings together onsite technical SEO, content strategy, brand authority and digital PR, and the wider social media signals that make brands discoverable wherever their customers go looking.
The platforms are changing.
The interfaces are changing.
The way we measure visibility is changing.
The job isn’t.
Make your brand visible when people go looking.
Before you buy GEO, ask one question
We’re not anti-AI search. Quite the opposite.
We’re watching it, measuring it and incorporating it into search strategy because that’s our job.
What we’re against is manufactured panic.
So if an agency tells you that you urgently need AEO, GEO, LLMO, AI SEO or whatever acronym comes next, ask them:
What are you actually going to do differently?
There might be a brilliant answer.
There might be new analysis, measurement or opportunities your existing strategy is missing.
And if there are, you should absolutely pay attention.
But if you hear a list of things your search agency should already have been doing?
You probably don’t need to buy SEO again.
You might just need better SEO.
Because whatever we end up calling the next evolution of search, the job remains the same: Make your brand visible when people go looking.
That’s what we mean by search made visible.
Talk to Lamproom about your search strategy.
AEO and GEO FAQs
What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
SEO is the broader practice of improving a brand’s visibility through organic search. AEO typically refers to optimisation for answer-led search experiences, while GEO refers to visibility within generative AI responses.
The lines between them aren’t always neat. In Google’s case, its own guidance says optimising for generative AI experiences such as AI Overviews and AI Mode remains rooted in established SEO principles.
Is GEO replacing SEO?
No. Generative AI is changing how information is discovered and presented, but established SEO fundamentals remain important.
Google explicitly says its generative AI search experiences rely on its core Search ranking and quality systems and that SEO best practices continue to apply.
Do I need an AEO or GEO agency?
Not necessarily.
You may need additional expertise in measuring AI visibility, understanding generative search behaviour and identifying opportunities your existing strategy isn’t covering.
But before appointing a separate AEO or GEO agency, look carefully at the proposed deliverables. If you’re predominantly being sold content, technical optimisation, authority building and other established SEO activity under a new name, ask what additional value the service actually provides.
How do I get my website into Google AI Overviews?
There is no separate application or special markup required.
Google says pages need to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet. Its existing SEO fundamentals remain relevant, and Google says there are no additional technical requirements for appearing as a supporting link within AI Overviews or AI Mode.
Do I need special schema or an llms.txt file for GEO?
Not for visibility in Google’s generative search features.
Google says there is no special schema.org markup required and that it does not use llms.txt files for Google Search. That doesn’t mean other platforms cannot use emerging standards differently, but they shouldn’t be presented as a universal requirement for AI visibility.
