GEO vs AEO vs SEO: what each one means for a B2B company
Last updated: · Reviewed by Noah Charak, Managing Director
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of getting your brand cited and recommended inside AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the on-site part of that work: structuring pages so an AI system can lift a passage as the answer. SEO earns a position in a ranked list of links. Checkpoint GTM starts Seed to Series B B2B SaaS companies with a 4-week GEO Sprint at €4,950 fixed: a multi-run AI visibility baseline across the major answer engines, on-site fixes, entity cleanup and measurement setup. A GEO retainer at €3,500 per month, month to month, then runs content and off-site work. Prices exclude VAT.
GEO vs AEO vs SEO, compared by goal, where each shows up, what moves it, how it is measured and who controls it
Dimension
GEO
AEO
SEO
Goal
Get your brand cited, and named in the shortlist an AI answer gives the buyer.
Get a passage of your content quoted as the answer to a specific question.
Rank a page high in a list of search results so the buyer clicks through.
Where it shows up
Inside AI answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, as a cited source or a named recommendation.
Inside AI answers, as a quoted source.
Google and Bing results pages: a ranked list of links.
What moves it
AEO on your own site, plus off-site authority: entity data, reviews, communities, listicles, digital PR and third-party mentions.
AI crawlers can fetch the page; then answer-first structure, passages that stand alone, specific claims with named sources, schema and freshness.
Content that matches search intent, backlinks from relevant sites, title tags and technical health such as Core Web Vitals.
How it is measured
Share of model: the percentage of relevant AI answers that cite, reference or recommend you.
Citation rate on a fixed set of buyer questions.
Rankings, organic traffic and click-through rate.
Who controls it
Only partly you: the shortlist forms off-site, so it is slow and earned.
You, on your own site: the lever you control, though engines set the timing.
Mostly you, on your own site, plus the links others give you.
Definitions
What do GEO, AEO, SEO and the related terms mean?
These terms get used for overlapping work. Here is how we use each one, and the article that goes deepest on it.
Generative engine optimisation (GEO)
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of improving how often a brand is cited or recommended in AI-generated answers. The term comes from a 2023 research paper (Aggarwal et al., Princeton and IIT Delhi, published at KDD 2024). In that controlled benchmark some tactics raised visibility by up to about 40%, with statistics and quotations among the strongest. Those are lab results, not production guarantees, and later studies have not found stable gains.
Answer engine optimisation is the practice of structuring your content so that AI systems, and featured snippets in search, surface it as the answer when a buyer asks a relevant question.
In practice AEO is mostly the on-site half of GEO: answer-first sections, passages that stand alone, clear definitions and named sources. The two labels are often used interchangeably; the distinction that matters is whether off-site work is in scope. Read what answer engine optimisation changes about B2B demand generation.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Search engine optimisation is the practice of earning a high position for your pages in a ranked list of search results, through signals such as relevant content, backlinks, title tags and technical health.
SEO still drives traffic, and much of its groundwork (original thinking, clear writing, named expertise, credible links) also feeds AI citation. What it does not do is optimise for the passage an AI system quotes. Read why an SEO retainer is not improving your visibility in AI answers.
LLM SEO and AI search optimisation
LLM SEO and AI search optimisation are umbrella labels for the same goal as GEO: being visible in answers produced by large language models, not only in ranked search results.
Share of model is the percentage of relevant AI-generated answers that cite, reference or recommend your brand across a defined set of buyer questions.
Relevance engineering is technical work on the signal layer that language models read when they build an answer: covering the sub-questions an AI engine generates from one prompt (query fan-out), structuring passages so they can be lifted into a response (passage retrieval), and aligning your semantic footprint with your category (embeddings).
What are the citation game and the recommendation game?
The citation game is getting quoted as a source; the recommendation game is getting named in the buyer's shortlist. GEO is both, and most teams only play one.
Get quoted. Fast and controllable.
The citation game
The citation game is getting your pages quoted as a source inside AI answers. It is won on your own site: answer-first structure, extractable claims, schema and freshness. It is the lever you control, and the smaller one.
Get named. Slow and earned.
The recommendation game
The recommendation game is getting your brand named in the shortlist an AI answer gives a buyer. It is won off-site: entity data such as Wikidata, reviews, communities, listicles, digital PR and third-party authority. The shortlist forms here, and you cannot win it from your own site.
AEO tips can win the first game. Only a program wins the second. The citation game overlaps heavily with SEO; the recommendation game shares only its off-site tactics, such as digital PR.
The honest answer
Should a B2B company care about GEO yet?
Yes, if your buyers already research with AI before they talk to sales. A buyer who asks an assistant which vendors to consider gets a short answer with a few names, and builds a shortlist before you know the opportunity exists. If you are not named, you never see the lost deal in your analytics.
Be honest about the limits too. The playbook is still being written, the chain from an AI citation to a booked call is not clean yet, and no one can guarantee what a model will say. Share of model is a leading indicator, not a revenue number.
Start now if
Buyers tell you they used ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews during their research.
Your positioning is specific: who you serve, the problem you solve, the outcome you produce.
Your CRM can capture an AI-sourced contact and route it into a sequence within 48 hours.
Fix this first if
Your ICP is a gut-feel paragraph rather than a codified definition.
Nobody owns the loop from AI visibility to CRM field to pipeline review.
You would be buying a monitoring tool with no one to act on what it shows.
Either way, fund a quarter, not a year: a baseline of where you appear today, a pilot with a narrow prompt set and attribution from day one, then a scale decision based on whether citations show up in pipeline. Read how to budget a GEO program conservatively.
Measurement
How do you measure GEO and AEO?
The core metric is share of model. Three ways to track it, in the order we recommend:
Run your own query set
List the 30 to 50 questions your ICP is most likely to ask an AI assistant. Run them monthly across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, and record whether you appear, whether you are cited, and how prominently.
Add a monitoring platform
Automate the same runs once the manual set gives you a baseline. Before you buy, ask which questions, which models, how often, and how the scoring works.
Work backwards from your CRM
Log every buyer who says an AI assistant pointed them to you, then compare how AI-sourced contacts convert against the rest of your pipeline.
Who handles GEO and AEO, and where does Checkpoint fit?
Three kinds of provider sell into this space, and they sell different things. A monitoring tool measures. An SEO or content agency produces pages, which covers the citation game. A RevOps team connects visibility to pipeline. Comparing their prices side by side is how a small tool subscription and a six-figure agency retainer end up in the same spreadsheet.
Checkpoint GTM plays both games and ties the result to your CRM. We embed with Seed to Series B B2B SaaS teams, and as a HubSpot Platinum Partner and Salesforce Advanced Administrator we build the attribution layer rather than describe it.
What the program builds
Entity foundation: Wikidata, schema and sameAs, consistent company data.
Citable content: answer-first pages for definitions, comparisons and cost.
Off-site authority: reviews, community presence, listicles and digital PR.
Measurement: prompt-panel runs across model APIs and a share-of-model scorecard.
Not ready to commit? A 30-minute strategy call comes with a free custom GEO report: a live answer-engine probe, an on-site AEO audit and an off-site gap analysis. See the GEO program and the report.
Fixed price, 4 weeks: a multi-run AI visibility baseline across the major answer engines, on-site fixes (answer-first pages, schema, consistent facts), entity cleanup and measurement setup.
GEO retainer
€3,500
Per month, month to month: content and off-site work after the sprint.
Prices exclude VAT.
Go deeper
The GEO and AEO reading list
Each article below goes deeper on one part of this page.
Relevance engineering vs GEOWhat query fan-out, passage retrieval and embeddings do, and why to build AI-sourced attribution before the technical program.
What a GEO program costs for B2B SaaSThe four cost drivers (engine coverage, content velocity, measurement depth, pipeline attribution) and how to budget a pilot quarter.
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of getting a brand cited and recommended by AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. It has two parts: the citation game, where your pages get quoted as a source, and the recommendation game, where your brand gets named in the buyer's shortlist.
Should my B2B company care about GEO yet?
Yes, if your buyers research with AI before they talk to sales and your positioning is specific enough for a model to repeat. Start small: a baseline of where you appear today, then a pilot quarter with attribution wired into your CRM. Scale only if AI-sourced contacts show up in pipeline.
How is answer engine optimisation different from traditional SEO?
SEO earns a page a position in a ranked list of links, through relevant content, backlinks and technical health. AEO earns a passage a place inside an AI answer, through answer-first structure, passages that stand alone and specific claims with named sources. AI systems retrieve passages, not pages, so a page can rank well and still never be quoted.
Who handles answer engine optimisation well?
Look at what each provider actually does. Monitoring tools measure where you appear. SEO and content agencies produce pages, which covers the citation game. Fewer work on the off-site recommendation game or connect AI visibility to pipeline, so ask for both, plus share-of-model reporting. We run both games and report which AI-sourced contacts became opportunities in your HubSpot or Salesforce.
Is GEO the same as LLM SEO or AI search optimisation?
In practice, yes. All three describe being visible in answers produced by large language models, and AEO is often used for the on-site part of the same work. The useful question is not the label but the scope: on-site content only, or off-site authority and pipeline attribution as well.
How long does GEO take to work?
Citation gains depend on when engines re-crawl and re-rank your pages, so no one can promise them on a fixed timeline. Being named in AI recommendations is a 60 to 90 day flywheel at minimum. Track leading indicators such as share of model monthly from the start.
What does GEO cost?
Price moves with four drivers: how many AI engines are covered, how much content ships, how deep the measurement goes, and whether pipeline attribution is in scope. At Checkpoint GTM a 4-week GEO Sprint is €4,950 fixed, and the GEO retainer is €3,500 per month, month to month, both excluding VAT.
Does GEO replace SEO?
No. A page that ranks in Google still drives traffic, and much of the groundwork, such as original thinking, clear writing and named expertise, feeds both. Traditional search and AI search are overlapping audiences with different content needs, so build content that serves both.
Find out where you stand in AI answers
Book a 30-minute strategy call and leave with a free custom GEO report: where AI engines name you today, and a 90-day roadmap to change it.