SEO gets your page ranked on Google. AEO, answer engine optimization, gets your business named inside the answer when someone asks ChatGPT, Google AI Mode or Perplexity. Most of the groundwork is shared. What changes is the result you are chasing, where the proof lives, and how you measure it. We have been ranked by one and ignored by the other in the same month, so here is what we learned.
I'm Nezar Humoud, founder of LinkTech Solutions, a web development, SEO and AI SEO company in Chino Hills, California. We sell both, so weigh that. This post is for the owner who has been pitched “AEO” and wants to know whether it is a new service or the old one with a new name. The honest answer is somewhere in between, and our own results show where the line is.
The short answer
SEO gets a page ranked in Google so a buyer clicks it. AEO, answer engine optimization, gets a business named inside the answer an AI assistant writes. They share most of the groundwork: a site that can be crawled, pages that say plainly what you do and where, and structured data that matches the page. AEO adds four things: answer-first writing, facts that agree everywhere you are listed, more weight on reviews and other people's pages, and measurement done by asking the assistants. AEO, GEO and AI SEO are three names for the same work.
AEO vs SEO side by side
| SEO | AEO | |
|---|---|---|
| What you are after | A high position in the list of links | Your name inside the answer, ideally first |
| Where it shows up | Google and Bing results pages, the map pack | ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot |
| What the buyer sees | Your title and a snippet they may click | A sentence describing you, often with no click at all |
| Where the proof lives | Mostly your own site and the links pointing to it | Your site plus your Google profile, directories, reviews and other people's pages |
| What gets written | Pages built around a keyword | Passages that answer one question completely, with the facts in them |
| How you measure it | Rankings, clicks and calls in Search Console and analytics | Asking the assistants your buyers' questions and recording who gets named |
What stays the same
Most of it. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode build their answers from pages Google has already indexed. ChatGPT's web search reads live pages through its own crawler. In both cases, a page the system cannot reach or cannot understand does not get quoted. So the SEO basics are AEO basics too:
- Crawl access. Search and AI crawlers allowed in robots.txt, pages that render without waiting on scripts, and nothing important hidden behind a login. We have seen a law firm's whole site blocked by one robots line, which kept it out of Google and the assistants at the same time. That story is in our post on GEO for law firms.
- Pages that say what you do and where. One page per service, the city or region in plain words, your prices or price ranges if you can publish them.
- Structured data that matches the page. Business, service, FAQ and review markup that repeats what a visitor can read, not something different.
- A business people have heard of. Links, mentions and reviews still separate the businesses that rank from the ones that do not. They matter even more for AEO.
If your site is not showing up in Google at all, start there. Our guide to why a website is not showing up on Google covers the usual causes, and fixing them helps both.
The four things that change
1. The result is a sentence, not a link
In SEO, position 3 still gets clicks. In an AI answer, the buyer reads a short paragraph that names two to five businesses and says something about each. Being named fourth with the wrong phone number is worse than being left out. So AEO starts by reading what the assistants say about you today, and fixing what they get wrong.
2. Pages are written to be quoted
An assistant lifts a passage, not a page. The pages that get cited answer one question completely in a few sentences, near the top, with the specifics in them: the price, the city, the timeline, who it is for. A 2,000 word page with the answer spread across it gives the assistant nothing clean to take. This is the part of AEO that changes how your service pages are written.
3. Other people's pages count for more
For “who should I hire” questions, the assistants lean heavily on sources other than your site. When we asked ChatGPT to recommend 20 local businesses across Orange County and the Inland Empire, 45 of the 53 sources it cited were directories or review lists, and only 2 were a business's own website. That pattern holds for local recommendation questions. Research questions, such as what something costs or how to choose, cite blogs and business sites far more often. The full numbers are in our study of how ChatGPT picks local businesses.
So AEO work happens off your site as much as on it: your Google Business Profile, the directories that matter in your trade, your reviews, and lists that name you. These need to agree with each other on your name, address, phone, services and prices. If they disagree, the assistant hedges or picks someone else.
4. You measure it by asking
There is no rank tracker for AI answers that tells the whole story, and Google Search Console mixes AI Overviews and AI Mode into ordinary web results with no way to separate them. The honest method is manual or scripted: write down the questions your buyers ask, run them in ChatGPT with web search, Google AI Mode and Perplexity every month, and record whether you were named, what was said, who was named instead, and which sources were cited. Our guide to AI visibility covers the setup.
Where Google and ChatGPT disagreed about us
We run our own questions every couple of weeks. On October 18, 2026 we checked the same two markets in Google and in ChatGPT with web search on. The results did not line up.
| Market | Google (organic) | ChatGPT (web search on) |
|---|---|---|
| Inland Empire | Position 30 for “seo company inland empire” | Named first when asked for an AI SEO agency in the Inland Empire |
| Orange County | Position 12 for “orange county seo” | Not named when asked who can help a business show up in ChatGPT; five other agencies were |
The two questions are not identical, so this is not a lab test. It still shows the point. In the Inland Empire, ChatGPT cited one page of ours that answers the buyer's question directly: what AI SEO is, the questions we test, and our prices in plain numbers. That was enough to be named first, even while Google had us on page three for a similar search. In Orange County, Google ranked us on page two, but the AI answer leaned on local agencies with established profiles and reviews, and a ranking page did not carry over.
The same week, ChatGPT named us first for an AI SEO agency in Los Angeles, citing our Los Angeles page, which it had not done on October 10. That page was less than two weeks old and had nowhere near the Google history of our older pages. A clear page that answers the exact question, with prices on it, moved the AI answer faster than it moved the rankings.
Treat any single answer, ours included, as a snapshot. Answers change from week to week and from person to person. The pattern across many runs is what to act on.
Is AEO replacing SEO?
No. The clicks are moving, and the work is not. Pew Research followed the real browsing of 900 US adults and found that when a Google AI summary appeared, people clicked a regular result in 8% of visits, against 15% when none appeared. Links inside the summary itself were clicked in 1% of visits. Fewer people reach your page from a search, but the answer they read was still assembled from pages that rank and listings that agree. A business that drops SEO to chase AEO usually loses both.
What to do first, by type of business
- Your site is not in Google yet. Fix the SEO foundation first: indexing, one page per service, titles that name the service and city. Nothing else works until this does.
- Local service business (trades, dentists, med spas, lawyers). Your Google Business Profile, the directories in your trade and your review count decide most “recommend a ___ in my city” answers. Clean those up and ask every happy customer for a review before you write a single blog post. Our Google Business Profile guide is the place to start.
- Professional or B2B services (accountants, advisors, agencies, software). There are fewer directories to lean on, so your own pages carry more of the answer. Publish your prices or ranges, write a page for each question buyers ask before they call, and get named on the lists people in your field read.
- Already ranking well in Google. You are most of the way there. Ask the assistants your buyers' questions, note who gets named instead of you and which sources are cited, and close those gaps.
What AEO and SEO cost
Classic SEO retainers typically run $1,500 to $5,000 a month; our SEO cost guide breaks down what that buys. Most agencies selling AEO or GEO do not publish a price, and among California agencies that do, monthly retainers start around $1,500 and run past $8,000. Be wary of anyone who sells the two as separate retainers. The foundation is shared, so the work should be too.
Ours, for reference: an AI visibility audit for $750, delivered in 10 business days, which shows what the assistants say about you, who they name instead and why, and doubles as the setup fee for every plan. The Starter plan is $550 a month with a 3-month minimum. The 90-Day AI Recommendation Program is $1,000 a month for three months with a written guarantee: named on 3 of 10 agreed questions by day 90, or up to 2 more months of work with billing paused. The full plan is $1,500 to $5,000 a month. Everything is on our AI SEO services page. If you are comparing agencies, take our 12 questions to ask an AI SEO agency to every call, including ours.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between AEO and SEO?
SEO (search engine optimization) works to rank your web pages in Google and Bing so people click through to your site. AEO (answer engine optimization) works to get your business named and cited inside the answer an AI assistant writes, such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, or Perplexity. Both need a site that can be crawled and understood. AEO leans harder on answer-first writing, consistent facts across your listings, and reviews and mentions on other sites.
Is AEO the new SEO?
No. AEO sits on top of SEO rather than replacing it. Google's AI answers are built from pages Google has indexed, and ChatGPT's web search reads live pages, so a site that cannot be found or understood is rarely named. What AEO adds is a different target: being the business the answer describes, not only a link under it.
Is AEO the same as GEO?
In practice, yes. GEO (generative engine optimization), AEO (answer engine optimization) and AI SEO are names for the same work: getting named and cited when someone asks an AI assistant. AEO is the older term and once meant featured snippets and voice assistants. Today agencies use the three interchangeably. Our guide to what AI SEO services include covers the naming in more detail.
Do I need both AEO and SEO?
Most small businesses need both, in a sensible order. If your site is not showing up in Google at all, fix that first, because it limits both. If it is, add the AEO layer: direct answers on your service pages, consistent facts on your Google Business Profile and directories, and a steady flow of reviews. You do not need two agencies or two retainers for it.
How do you measure AEO?
Ask the assistants directly. Write down the questions your buyers ask, run them in ChatGPT with web search, Google AI Mode and Perplexity on a schedule, and record whether you are named, what is said about you, who is named instead, and which sources are cited. Google Search Console mixes AI Overviews and AI Mode into ordinary web results, so it cannot measure AEO on its own.
Does llms.txt help with AEO?
Not in any way anyone has measured. Google has said no AI system uses llms.txt, and the major assistants do not list it as an input. It costs little to publish one, and we keep one, but it will not get a business recommended. Reviews, listings and pages that answer the question do far more.
Is SEO dead because of AI?
No, but the payoff has shifted. Pew Research found Google users clicked a regular result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when none did. Fewer clicks reach the page, yet the AI answer is still built from pages that rank and listings that agree. SEO is the foundation the answers are built on.