GEO and AEO explained

SEO (search engine optimization) makes sure your pages show up in the results of Google and Bing. GEO (generative engine optimization) has a different goal: your business should be named or linked in the answers of AI tools such as ChatGPT or Google's AI Overviews. AEO (answer engine optimization) aims at your page giving the direct answer to a specific question.

You will also read terms like LLMO or AI SEO. They are not defined in one consistent way and in everyday use mostly mean the same as GEO. The question behind them matters more than the name: when someone asks an AI assistant about your offer, does the assistant find answers from you?

For Google's AI features, Google's documentation says explicitly that there are no additional requirements. Your page has to be indexed and allowed to appear in Search with a snippet. That is ordinary SEO work. If your technical basics are not clean, you will not show up in Google's AI answers either.

The basics are the same ones SEO covers anyway: allow crawling in robots.txt and in your hosting or CDN, offer important content as text, and keep structured data in line with the visible content. For other AI tools such as ChatGPT there is no comparable official documentation. We assume a clean, readable page is the best starting point there too, but we cannot prove it.

Google counts clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode in the Search Console performance report, under the search type Web.

AI assistants read the text of your page and the data behind it. The building blocks below help them place you correctly. Google does not demand any of them as a rule. They are practice recommendations.

• Clear structure: one heading per topic, short sections, important statements as text and not as an image.

• Short answers: the direct answer stands in the first sentences of a section, the details follow.

• FAQ: real customer questions with short answers that match the text on the page.

• Structured data: machine-readable details about your business, the author and the article. They have to match the visible text.

• Author and date: who wrote the text and when it was last updated.

• Sources: statements point to the place where they are backed up.

• llms.txt: a text file that gives AI tools an overview of your site. Google does not need it, and we know of no independent study that proves its effect. nexene.at has one.

• Mentions on other sites: your business named in directories, by partners or in articles. Practice guides treat them as a sign that you exist and what you do.

Most of these blocks also make the page quicker to read for people. We did not find an independent study that measures what each single block adds to mentions in AI answers.

You do not need your own marketing department for this. Work through these seven steps in order.

1. Check that your pages are crawled and indexed. Google Search Console shows which pages are indexed. Our free SEO audit also covers this.

2. Check robots.txt and your hosting. They must not lock crawlers out, and neither must a CDN.

3. Write one page per service with a clear heading. Answer the most important customer question in the first sentences.

4. Add an FAQ with real questions from customer conversations. Answer each one briefly and in the text of the page.

5. Show who wrote the content and when it was updated. Name sources for numbers and claims.

6. Get listings and mentions outside your own website, for example in industry directories or with partners. If your business has a local focus, a Google Business Profile belongs here.

7. Add structured data that matches the visible text.

The basics of SEO for small businesses are in our guide SEO for small businesses.

GEO gives no guarantee. Even if your page meets every requirement, Google does not promise that it will crawl, index or show it. The same applies to AI answers. Nobody can promise you that ChatGPT or Google will name your business, and we do not promise it either.

The evidence is also thin. Most numbers about GEO come from blogs of agencies and tool vendors, not from independent studies. For single measures such as a table of contents, schema or llms.txt we found no independent study that proves their effect. Google's official documentation and a page that is easy to read are the safe part. Everything beyond that is experience and assumption. SEO also takes time, and there is no promise of first place.

We sell SEO and GEO as one package because they depend on each other. You cannot book them separately with us. The start is an SEO audit. It is free at the moment, and you get the PDF by email within 24 hours.

After that comes the setup: the technical fixes from the audit, plus directory listings and, if your business has a local focus, the Google Business Profile. The price depends on the audit, meaning on how many fixes are needed, and is up to 2,990 Euro net as a one-off. After that we look after your SEO and GEO every month from 590 Euro net, with new articles, a report and link opportunities. The minimum term is 6 months.

You find the details on the pages Search engine optimization and GEO and AEO optimization.