What Is AI Visibility? GEO, AEO and the Rest, in Plain English

Last updated: 14th July

Every term on this page describes the same underlying question: when someone asks an AI assistant about your category, are you in the answer? The marketing industry has produced at least five acronyms for this, most of them interchangeable, some of them ignorable. This page defines each one in plain English, tells you which are worth knowing, and explains how any of it relates to the SEO you've already paid for.

The one-paragraph version

Your buyers increasingly ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini for software recommendations instead of scrolling through Google results. Being named, and described accurately, in those answers is AI visibility. GEO and AEO are the two most common names for the practice of improving it. It overlaps heavily with SEO, but you're being judged by different judges reading different sources, so some of the rules change. That's it. Everything below is detail.

What is AI visibility?

AI visibility is the degree to which a company appears in AI-generated answers: whether assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini mention it when buyers ask relevant questions, how prominently it features, whether it's described accurately, and whether it appears in the sources those answers cite.

In practice, good AI visibility looks like three things. You're named when someone asks for recommendations in your category. You're described correctly, with current pricing, features and positioning rather than a summary of your 2021 website. And you appear in the material AI engines cite as evidence, the review platforms, comparison articles and independent write-ups they lean on when constructing an answer.

It's the term I use with clients, and the one I'd suggest you use internally, for a simple reason: it describes the outcome. The acronyms below describe tactics for achieving it, and tactics get renamed every eighteen months. The outcome doesn't.

What is GEO?

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimising your content and online presence so that generative AI engines cite you and recommend you in their answers. Where SEO aims to rank your pages in a list of results, GEO aims to get you quoted in the single answer that replaces the list.

The term emerged from academic research in 2023 and has become the closest thing this field has to a settled label. The day-to-day work of GEO involves making your facts extractable (an engine can only quote a clear, self-contained statement), building comparison content for the "X vs Y" questions buyers actually ask, and strengthening the third-party mentions AI treats as evidence.

The one-line distinction worth remembering: SEO optimises to be ranked. GEO optimises to be quoted.

What is AEO?

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the practice of structuring content so that answer engines, from Google's featured snippets to AI assistants, can extract it as a direct answer to a question. It predates GEO, with roots in the featured-snippet era, and today the two terms are used largely interchangeably.

Some practitioners draw a distinction: AEO for winning direct answer boxes and voice results, GEO for being cited by generative AI. It's a fair technical line, and you should not spend a single minute of your life worrying about it. In practice the tactics overlap almost entirely, and anyone using one term will understand you if you use the other. Pick whichever your team says naturally and move on.

The rest of the alphabet (and what to ignore)

LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization) is the same idea under a third label: optimising to be represented well by large language models. Worth recognising when you see it in a vendor pitch. Not worth adopting. Verdict: know it, don't use it.

Zero-click search describes searches that end without a click, because the answer appeared directly on the results page or in a chat response. This one is genuinely worth knowing, because it's the buyer behaviour that makes everything else on this page matter. If your organic traffic has been sliding while your rankings hold steady, zero-click behaviour is almost certainly why. I've written about that pattern in detail here: [link: traffic post].

AI SEO, generative SEO, chat SEO, conversational search optimisation and their cousins are vendor coinages, invented mostly so a tool or agency can appear to own a category. If a pitch deck leads with one of these, the substance underneath is GEO. Verdict: safe to ignore.

GEO vs SEO: what actually changes

The question underneath most conversations about this topic is really "is my SEO investment now worthless?" The short answer is no. The longer answer is that four things genuinely change:

SEOGEOWho judges youA ranking algorithm scoring pages against a queryA language model synthesising an answer from many sourcesWhat winsRanking signals: links, relevance, technical healthQuotable, verifiable, current statements of factWhere the battle happensMostly your own websiteLargely other people's websites: reviews, comparisons, communitiesHow you measureRankings, impressions, sessionsPresence, position and accuracy in AI answers

The reassuring part: most of what good SEO built still feeds GEO. Authoritative content, clean site structure and a healthy backlink profile all contribute to how language models perceive you. The uncomfortable part: they're no longer sufficient on their own, because a large share of the judging now happens on pages you don't control, using sources you may never have thought about.

Does this actually matter yet for B2B SaaS?

Yes, and specifically for B2B SaaS more than almost any other sector, because software buyers were among the first to move their research into chat interfaces.

Two numbers tell the story. AI chatbots are now the single most influential source B2B buyers use to build vendor shortlists, ranking ahead of review sites. And roughly a third of B2B marketers report that AI platforms are already where qualified prospects first hear of their company. This isn't a future trend to monitor. It's a current channel, and most companies have never once checked how they appear in it.

The honest calibration: it matters most if your buyers research software in chat interfaces. B2B SaaS buyers demonstrably do. If you sell to them, this page is describing your funnel.

How to find out where you stand

Two options. The manual route: ask the major AI assistants the questions your buyers ask, from a clean session, and record whether you appear. I've written the full 20-minute method here. The fast route: my free mini audit queries the major engines about your company and sends you a visibility score in about a minute. Run the free check →

Frequently asked questions

What does GEO stand for in marketing? GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization: the practice of optimising your content and online presence so that AI engines such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini mention, cite and recommend your company in their answers. It's the AI-answer equivalent of what SEO does for traditional search rankings.

Is GEO the same as AEO? Effectively, yes. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is an older term with roots in featured snippets, while GEO refers specifically to generative AI engines. Some practitioners distinguish them, but the tactics overlap almost completely and the terms are used interchangeably in practice. Use whichever comes naturally.

Is GEO replacing SEO? No. GEO extends SEO rather than replacing it. Strong SEO fundamentals still feed AI visibility, but they're no longer sufficient alone, because AI engines also weigh third-party sources such as reviews, comparison articles and community discussions when deciding which companies to recommend.

How do I measure AI visibility? Track three things across the major AI engines: presence (whether you're mentioned when buyers ask relevant questions), position (where you sit in recommendation lists) and accuracy (whether descriptions of your product are correct). Repeat the same questions monthly from clean sessions, since AI answers change over time.