Marketers use AEO and GEO interchangeably, but there is a difference, and that’s what will be defined and explained in this article. In brief, AEO optimizes content for answer boxes and voice search results, while GEO targets AI chatbot citations and generated summaries.
It might be challenging to get everyone in agreement on what’s what, but let’s try. AEO and GEO are not going away, and the faster the industry can align on what these acronyms mean, the better. From a strategic perspective, it doesn’t matter that much since all SEO specialists should already be laying the foundations for AEO, GEO, and, of course, SEO. But with a unified definition, it’ll be much easier to talk about it all.
If you’re not sure you’re laying down the work required for AEO or GEO or how to measure their impact, stay tuned because we’ll cover that after defining our terms.
Table of Contents
AEO vs. GEO: What’s the difference?
AEO vs. GEO: Do you need both?
Shared Tactics Between AEO and GEO That Drive Results
How to Measure the Impact of Both AEO and GEO
What’s next for AEO & GEO?
Frequently Asked Questions About AEO vs. GEO
AEO vs. GEO: What’s the difference?
AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. AEO focuses on direct answers in search results. It helps website content appear as direct answers in search results.
Think:
Featured snippets.
People Also Ask.
Knowledge Panels.
And other SERP features.
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. GEO optimizes for brand citations in AI-generated summaries. It helps brands get cited inside AI-generated summaries on platforms like Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT.
In simplest terms: AEO optimizes for answers while GEO optimizes for citations.
Here’s a comparison table:
Strategy
Primary Goal
How It Shows Up
What It Optimizes For
Best Use Case
AEO
Deliver direct answers in search
Featured snippets, People Also Ask, and AI short answers
Clarity, structure, question coverage
High-intent, question-driven queries
GEO
Earn brand citations in AI summaries
Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity
Authority, entity clarity, quotable insights
Research queries and informational discovery
SEO
Earn rankings and organic traffic
Traditional, organic blue links in search engines
Relevance, backlinks, technical performance
Long-term acquisition and traffic growth
AEO vs. GEO vs. SEO
Traditional SEO focuses on three core pillars:
Content strategy.
Technical SEO.
Backlinks.
SEO is a broad marketing tactic that encompasses a lot, and many of the elements described under AEO and GEO also fall under its “umbrella.” However, these tactics are increasingly bearing a greater onus due to their impact on AEO and GEO in modern-day SEO.
AEO focuses on delivering answers that search engines can extract cleanly.
GEO focuses on earning citations inside AI-generated responses — often without requiring a click.
When combined, these three strategies ensure brands are:
Discoverable in search.
Present in the AI tools buyers now rely on for research, vendor comparison, and decision-making.
Appear in AI Overviews and other SERP features for maximum visibility.
AEO vs. GEO: Do you need both?
Both GEO and AEO are rapidly emerging as core marketing priorities as AI-powered search becomes a popular format for consumers to discover brands, compare solutions, and make decisions. According to the HubSpot Consumer Trends Report, 72% of consumers surveyed indicated they intend to rely more heavily on AI-powered search when shopping.
From experience, brands absolutely need both (and SEO, of course).
I’ve had leads come in from ChatGPT and other generative tools for my own agency and for clients, and those results only happened because my brand is visible across both answer engines and generative engines.
AEO and GEO require structured content and clear entities. AEO ensures a website’s content is extractable, structured, and eligible for direct answers in Google and other search engines. GEO ensures that when someone asks an AI model for recommendations, comparisons, or best-of lists, your brand is one of the citations the model pulls into its summary.
In today’s search landscape, where buyers increasingly start research in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews, relying on SEO alone is no longer enough.
Pro tip: Read HubSpot’s AEO guide here.
Shared Tactics Between AEO and GEO That Drive Results
AEO and GEO may show up differently across search and generative search platforms, but they’re powered by many of the same foundational practices. The brands that perform best in AI search are the ones that build structured, answer-first content and maintain strong entity clarity across every page. Below are five core tactics that strengthen both AEO and GEO performance: answer-first content structuring, entity management and consistency, quotable insights and data passages, schema and structured markup implementation, and reinforcement through repetition.
Answer-First Content Structuring
Answer-first content structuring means leading with the most straightforward answer to a user’s question before adding supporting detail, examples, or context. Instead of burying the key point halfway down the page, writers must surface the most important point immediately in a clean, skimmable format that answer engines and generative engines can extract with zero ambiguity. Writers and AEO or GEO specialists must design content to provide the answer, then elaborate later.
For example, in a piece of content, there is a heading, “What is Answer Engine Optimization?”
The response, designed to perform well in AI search, will define AEO immediately, like this:
“Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so search engines can extract direct, authoritative answers for featured snippets, AI summaries, and other answer-driven results.”
Writing content like this isn’t new to search. SEO specialists have been using this method of writing for years because it helps secure featured snippets or rankings in People Also Ask. But now, with generative engines pulling answers instead of links, content writers need to pay even closer attention to how cleanly and confidently the first 1–2 sentences answer the core question. That opening line is no longer just for users; it’s for the AI systems deciding whether your brand deserves to be cited.
Pro tip: Journalists have used a similar structure for decades with the inverted pyramid: Start with the headline and core facts, then layer in context, quotes, and background. Answer-first content is simply the search-optimized version of that same newsroom principle — and it’s now one of the most important practices for AEO and GEO success.
Entity Management and Consistency
Entity management is the practice of defining your key entities, be it people, products, or concepts. A brand, for example, is an entity. Once established, marketers control entities and ensure they remain consistent wherever they appear.
Consistently maintaining accurate, unified references across your website, blog, product pages, documentation, PR, and external mentions means generative citations are more likely to be accurate.
When your product names, features, claims, and categories are described consistently across multiple surfaces, AI tools can reliably connect those references back to you. The more precise and consistent your entities are, the more confidence generative engines have when deciding which brand to cite in overviews or summaries.
With AI models pulling from thousands of sources (your site, competitor sites, Reddit, forums, UGC, reviews), inconsistent entity signals become a real risk. If your materials list is described one way on your product page but differently in a press release or a reseller listing, AI systems may merge or misinterpret your data. Entity management fixes this by making your information stable, repeatable, and unambiguous across the entire web — which is now essential for earning citations in AI-powered search.
For example, if you sell running shoes, you will likely cover the shoes’ lifespan. Mentioning the sneakers’ lifespan on the product page might make sense since the entities are connected, but the manufacturer’s guarantee of the shoe’s lifespan might differ from experience. Users on Reddit might claim they last 200 miles, others say 1,000. There’s no universal truth, but if you clearly cite the accepted industry ranges (e.g., 300–500 miles) and explain why, you give AI models the best possible chance of repeating the correct information and citing you as the source.
Entity clarity is becoming a form of quality control in AI search.
Unfortunately, it won’t guarantee citation. Here’s an example I found when I tested AI search engines for Backlinko: A search for the lifespan of running shoes returned information stating 450–500 miles. But the actual range on the manufacturer’s website is 300–500 miles.
Quotable Insights and Data Passages
Quotable insights are short, authoritative statements or data points that AI engines can lift directly into summaries. These might be stats, expert explanations, definitions, or clear recommendations.
Pro tip: Use quotable insights in a separate paragraph, and don’t forget to answer the heading directly first. This means quotes or additional insights should come after the short paragraph that defines the main point.
Generative engines prefer clean, self-contained passages that can be cited without restructuring. Give them a “ready-made” quote; it may increase the chances of appearing in AI Overviews or ChatGPT responses. It also improves AEO because those same passages often get pulled into answer boxes.
Clear definitions, strong statements, data, and expert opinions have long been part of SEO, helping demonstrate experience, expertise, authority, and trust (E-E-A-T). Still, AEO and GEO ask SEO specialists to remember and emphasize the importance of insights and data.
Schema and Structured Markup Implementation
Schema markup is structured data that helps search engines understand the meaning of content — from products, FAQs, authors, how-tos, ratings, and more. It turns plain text into clearly defined entities and relationships that machines can trust. Basically, schema markup is additional code that crawlers can read.
Schema is crucial for AEO and GEO because it tells answer engines exactly what content represents, increasing a website’s eligibility for snippets and rich results. It’s equally important for GEO because structured markup reinforces entity consistency, which generative engines use to verify information and decide which brands to cite.
As an SEO specialist, I’ve been adding schema for years. For me, it’s non-negotiable.
Some of my most used schema types for B2B include:
Person schema helps understand who a subject-matter expert is, including their credentials, roles, specializations, and publications. This is especially powerful for E-E-A-T because it ties authoritative content directly to a real expert.
Organization schema defines the company as an entity, including the legal name, brand name, industry category, contact details, social profiles, and subsidiaries. It creates the “source of truth” about a company.
FAQ schema explicitly marks up questions and answers, giving search engines and AI models a clean, structured understanding of what each section of content represents.
Service schema defines the specific services a business provides, including what the service is, who it’s for, what problems it solves, and any related offerings.
Product schema provides structured data about products, including specs, features, benefits, variations, materials, ratings, and more.
Reinforcement Through Repetition
Reinforcement through repetition means getting key facts, claims, and definitions repeated consistently across multiple reputable sources so AI systems start treating your version as the authoritative one. AI models don’t take websites at face value; they triangulate. They look for patterns, overlaps, and repeated assertions across the web.
If only a brand’s website says a product reduces downtime by 30%, AI treats it as unverified. If 10 independent sources say the same thing, including press, partner pages, documentation, industry publications, and comparison sites, then AI models adopt it as truth, and citations become more representative of the message brands want to share.
Pro tip: I know how it is to worry about repetition, but marketers must remember that only a small percentage of their audience sees the content they publish. Lots of variables play into this, including what the algorithm shows, when people log into their devices, and what they’re looking for at the time. A social media post, for example, may only reach 8% of a large audience. It doesn’t hurt to post things twice, or again on another platform.
How to Measure the Impact of Both AEO and GEO
Measuring AEO and GEO requires a shift away from traditional SEO metrics like rankings and traffic. AI-driven search changes where users discover information, how they evaluate brands, and what signals influence their decisions.
Instead of tracking only clicks, marketers now need to measure visibility within AI-generated answers, citation accuracy, and the downstream impact on conversion quality and pipeline.
Below are the five metrics that give the clearest view of AEO/GEO performance and where to optimize next. They include AI visibility and citation coverage, content quality and answer readiness, conversions and revenue influenced by AEO/GEO, lead quality from AI-influenced discovery, and page performance and user behavior.
AI Visibility and Citation Coverage
AI visibility and citation coverage measures how often a brand appears in generative search experiences like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Instead of tracking only clicks or rankings, this metric tells marketers whether AI systems are pulling content into their answers, summaries, and recommendations.
Plus, marketers can establish whether AI tools are mentioning a brand positively or negatively.
The easiest way to track this is with HubSpot’s AI Search Grader. AI Search Grader measures brand visibility and citations in AI search. It’s a free tool that analyzes any domain and shows how visible a brand is across AI engines. It highlights where the brand is earning citations, what’s missing, and which pages need improvement to gain traction in generative search.
Here’s what the dashboard looks like; it offers a full report, too.
To manage this metric, regularly audit the most important topics and pages.
Look for:
AI Overview appearances.
Mentions or citations in ChatGPT or Perplexity.
Whether generative engines use your definitions, stats, or product data.
Which competitors are being cited.
Pages that show up without being clicked.
Content gaps where your answers aren’t being surfaced.
Content Quality and Answer Readiness
Content quality and answer readiness measure how effectively content meets the structural, clarity, and formatting requirements that AEO and GEO depend on. Content must be cleanly extractable, well-researched, entity-consistent, and answer-first. This metric evaluates whether pages are written in a way that answer engines and generative engines can confidently understand, reuse, and cite.
This is where Breeze Content Assistant, HubSpot Marketing Hub, and HubSpot Content Hub work together to improve and monitor answer readiness across your entire content library.
Breeze Content Assistant helps marketers and writers generate structured, answer-first content that’s optimized for AEO/GEO from the start. Breeze Intelligence supports entity monitoring and consistency. It understands HubSpot’s AEO best practices, so Breeze can generate definitions, FAQs, schema-ready structures, and entity-aware passages that AI engines are more likely to extract.
Best for: Quickly producing AEO-ready passages, FAQs, definitions, and structured updates.
HubSpot Marketing Hub includes SEO tools that evaluate the SEO and AEO fundamentals that underpin answer readiness, such as page structure, metadata quality, internal linking, topic coverage, and readability. Marketing Hub orchestrates campaigns and reporting for AEO and GEO.
HubSpot Content Hub includes an AI content writer that ensures content is built on a foundation that’s SEO- and AEO-friendly. Content Hub enables answer-first, structured content creation. It offers in-editor SEO suggestions, internal linking recommendations, and on-page analysis so your content remains aligned with AI ranking and extraction criteria.
To measure content quality, review the content for:
Clear, answer-first introductions.
Definitional statements and quotable insights.
Consistent use of entities and terminology.
Strong internal linking to reinforce meaning.
Well-structured FAQs, headers, and schema.
Frictionless readability and minimal fluff.
Conversions and Revenue Influenced by AEO/GEO
Conversions and revenue influenced by AEO/GEO measure how often AI-powered search surfaces contribute to the pipeline, whether through:
Direct clicks.
Assisted influence.
Unclicked brand citations that steer buying decisions.
Conversions and sales made in sessions started from AI sources like ChatGPT.
Visibility matters, but conversions and revenue will always be the ultimate benchmarks of performance. AEO and GEO are only doing their job if they help businesses grow.
The best way to measure conversions and revenue influenced by AEO/GEO is to measure behavior on site within sessions that started with a referral from an AI source like ChatGPT or Perplexity.
I do this on Looker Studio. Here’s a look at my report. I show how many referrals came from AI sources:
And how many conversions took place:
Reporting gives marketers the data they need to ask questions to sales. If marketing knows they secured a top lead, they can see whether or not it converted.
Pro tip: Qualify marketing leads by adding qualifiers on contact forms. For example, I add “budget.” From doing this, I know ChatGPT led to a 10k lead for my client. That’s the level of insight you need to quantify AEO/GEO impact.
But here’s the nuance: Not all influence is trackable.
Many users see brands inside an AI Overview or conversational answer, don’t click in the moment, but return later through another channel. Those unclicked citations still shape decision-making, which is why conversion analysis is one of the most important AEO metrics.
When reporting, look at:
Assisted conversions influenced by AI exposure.
Conversions on pages that appear in AI answers.
Conversion-rate shifts after implementing AEO updates.
Multi-touch attribution where AI surfaces are part of the journey.
Lead Quality From AI-Influenced Discovery
Lead quality from AI-influenced discovery measures how well the leads generated from AEO/GEO align with ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and whether those leads move through the funnel faster than traditional organic traffic. AEO doesn’t just expand visibility; it improves the type of visibility brands receive.
How?
Content appears in highly contextual AI answers, and the traffic that follows is often warmer, more targeted, and already primed with problem-awareness.
AI-generated recommendations act as an intent filter. If someone finds a website through a generative engine’s answer or vendor comparison, it usually means they’re actively researching a problem you solve. That’s why AI-sourced leads often show stronger fit scores, higher qualification rates, and faster progression into the pipeline.
What to measure:
Fit score of leads generated from pages appearing in AI answers.
Sales-qualified lead (SQL) rate from AI-originating sessions.
Lead velocity and time-to-first-action (e.g., demo booked, asset downloaded).
Topics and pages that consistently drive high-quality conversions from generative engines.
High-quality leads are one of the clearest indicators that answer-first content, structured entities, and topic clarity are working. When AI repeatedly recommends your brand to the right audience, your pipeline improves even before attribution fully captures the source.
Pro tip: For a sophisticated setup, use HubSpot lead scoring to compare leads influenced by AI surfaces with those from traditional organic search. HubSpot lead scoring allows sales and marketing teams to quickly see whether the AEO/GEO strategy is attracting the right buyers that the sales team wants and can convert.
Page Performance and User Behavior
Page performance can give marketers an idea of which pages are performing well. The more a page has sessions from AI sources, the more times it’s recommended.
Once marketing knows the top page cites, they can analyze user behavior to see how people interact with the page.
To track this, monitor sessions where the referrer is an AI tool.
Look at how visitors behave:
Do they stay on the page or bounce quickly?
Do they view multiple pages?
Are they interacting with high-intent elements like CTAs, pricing pages, or demo forms?
Are they triggering key events like downloads or form fills?
Combining AI-originating behavior data with AEO/GEO visibility provides a clear picture of which pages are doing the real heavy lifting and which ones deserve priority for schema enhancements, answer-first rewrites, quotable insights, entity reinforcement, or deeper optimization.
What’s next for AEO & GEO?
AI search is evolving fast. I’ve been writing about AEO and GEO for a while, and it moves so fast that sometimes, I have to make significant edits to my articles between the first draft and publication (which takes about two weeks!) because things have already changed significantly.
Here are the three trends I expect to define the next phase of AEO and GEO.
AI discovery will become the new “top of funnel.”
More buyers will start their research in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other conversational tools. We already know, thanks to HubSpot’s Consumer Trends Report, that 72% of consumers surveyed said they plan on using AI-powered search for shopping more frequently.
This means the first impression of brands may no longer be your website; it’s whatever the AI model says about you. AEO and GEO success depends on question coverage, schema, and distribution.
I think this is the biggest mindset shift marketers need to make. Your homepage isn’t the first touch anymore; AI presence is, and visibility is crucial.
Here’s an example of how visibility impacts consumers. In a search for “best free CRM for small business,” HubSpot was recommended in the AI Overviews, then again in “Sources across the web.” The citation in AI Overviews is not HubSpot but Zapier (third-party credibility).
All of this visibility and trust is built from sources across the web (not just HubSpot).
This goes to show the power of consistent brand messaging and third-party credibility, as well as having content on a brand’s website.
The search industry will settle down.
I firmly believe that the search industry will settle down about AEO, GEO, and SEO, and remember what’s important: The consumer and reaching them wherever they search or hang out online.
When I wrote The Future of SEO, I spoke to Mark Williams‑Cook, who had some SEO predictions. He believes we’re “near the peak of where we are going to be with LLMs” in terms of novelty and hype.
In other words, the explosive growth, the dizzying promises, the confusion from everyone’s stance on what’s what, and the rapid experimentation phase of AI search are beginning to plateau.
Supporting that view, data shows that conversational AI tools like ChatGPT still capture only a tiny slice of all search activity. Reports estimate the click-share to be around 1.3%. Here’s a graph from Datos’ State of Search Q3 2025. In Q3, visits to AI tools hit around 1.3% and steadied. Before, it was slowly growing, from 0.85%.
SEO teams will report on AEO and GEO as much as SEO.
Although the AI hype is plateauing (I believe), it doesn’t mean it’s not important. SEO specialists must adapt SEO reporting to include AEO and GEO. It’s becoming too important to ignore, and those who do risk falling behind.
AEO and GEO now need to be a standard component of every SEO audit and reporting workflow. The same way we evaluate rankings, backlinks, Core Web Vitals, and keyword visibility, we also need to measure AI visibility, citation frequency, entity consistency, and AI-originating sessions. If your brand isn’t appearing in generative results, that’s a performance gap, not an accident.
What this looks like in practice:
Add AI sources (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude) to your acquisition reporting.
Track which pages AI engines are recommending — and whether those are your high-intent assets.
Monitor AI-originating sessions as a standalone channel.
Evaluate how often your definitions, stats, and product data appear in AI summaries.
Identify missed citation opportunities where competitors are being selected instead of you.
I built this into my clients’ Looker Studio dashboards months ago.
Once you embed AEO metrics into your reporting cadence, patterns emerge quickly — which pages earn citations, which topics attract high-quality traffic, and where you need to tighten entities or restructure content.
Pro tip: Treat AI visibility exactly the way you treat keyword rankings. Add AEO metrics to your monthly reporting and review them with the same rigor — that’s how you stay ahead of competitors who are still only tracking organic traffic.
If you want to understand how visible your brand is across AI engines, start with the HubSpot AI Search Grader. It gives you an instant view of your AEO/GEO performance and actionable steps to improve. And when you’re ready to build AEO-ready content at scale, HubSpot’s Content Hub, Breeze Content Assistant, and Marketing Hub make it easier to create, manage, and measure search visibility across every modern surface.
Frequently Asked Questions About AEO vs. GEO
How do I measure AEO vs. GEO performance without relying on traffic?
Track citation frequency, AI Overview appearances, entity consistency, AI-generated mentions, and the fit score of leads influenced by AI-derived surfaces. Tools like the HubSpot AI Search Grader make this easier.
What schema helps with AEO and GEO?
Some of the best schema to help with AEO and GEO include FAQ, Product, Service, Person, Organization, and SameAs. They improve entity clarity, answer extraction, and citation reliability. Don’t rely on just these schemas, though; there are so many!
How do I get my brand cited in ChatGPT or Perplexity?
Use answer-first formatting, entity consistency, quotable passages, and schema. Then reinforce those facts across authoritative external surfaces so AI models trust your version of the information.
How often should we refresh AEO-ready content?
At least quarterly for key pages, or whenever product updates, regulations, or competitive shifts occur. AI engines reward freshness, accuracy, and clarity.
AEO and GEO are now essential layers of search visibility.
AEO and GEO aren’t add-ons; they’re the new foundation of brand visibility in an AI-first world. AEO wins the direct answers. GEO wins the citations. Together, they shape how buyers discover your brand, evaluate your solutions, and move toward a decision. It’s not AEO vs. GEO, but both working together.
The marketers who adopt answer-first content, structured entities, and strong distribution will dominate modern search. HubSpot’s AEO grader can help marketers optimize their sites for the new era of search.
I’ve seen firsthand how AEO and GEO drive warm, high-intent leads. When you focus on clarity, structure, and citation-worthiness, AI models start doing your distribution for you, and the results can be game-changing.
