SEO is appearing in a list of search results. AEO is being the answer shown above that list, in the snippet box or read out by a voice assistant. GEO is being named inside an answer an AI writes from scratch, where there is no list underneath at all. You do not choose between them: all three run on the same foundation, which is a page a machine can read, your facts written in a form a machine can parse, and other sites confirming you exist. What differs is how much of your writing can be quoted with nothing around it.
Three acronyms for what is largely one job, arriving in the order the search box changed. It is still worth knowing which is which, because they fail in different ways and the fix for one is not the fix for another.
The short version: you can rank well and never be quoted, and you can be quoted constantly by an assistant while ranking nowhere. Most businesses have done none of the three, which is the good news, because the first fixes are the same for all of them.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation is the older one: getting a page into the list of results for a search somebody actually types. Google ranks pages rather than businesses, so the work is a page per thing you sell and a page per area you cover, each written to answer one search rather than to contain a keyword.
It fails quietly and it fails early. A site that is not indexed at all, or whose text is assembled in the browser rather than sent in the HTML, has not lost a ranking contest — it never entered one. That is the first thing to rule out, and the reasons a site does not appear at all are worth working through in order before anything else here.
What is AEO?
Answer engine optimisation is about the part of the page above the list: the snippet box, the "people also ask" rows, the map card that says whether you are open, and whatever a phone reads aloud when somebody asks it out loud. There is one answer in each of those places rather than ten, so second place is not a consolation.
What wins them is unglamorous. Ask the question as a heading, answer it in the first two sentences underneath, and keep the answer short enough to lift whole. Then put your facts in structured data so the machine does not have to infer them from a footer.
Opening hours are the clearest example of the gap. When we measured 1,030 working business websites across five Gulf cities for the GCC Business Website Index, only 15.9% stated their hours in a form a machine can read. "Open now" in search and maps comes from that markup, not from the hours you typed into the bottom of the page.
What is GEO?
Generative engine optimisation is about being one of the businesses named inside an answer that an assistant writes. Somebody asks ChatGPT or Perplexity or Google’s AI answers for a cleaner in Dubai Marina, and what comes back is two or three names and a sentence each. There is no page two to be on.
The mechanics overlap heavily with ordinary search, with one genuine difference: models answer from what several sources appear to agree on. A business that has never been mentioned anywhere except its own website has no consensus behind it, and no amount of good writing on your own domain substitutes for that. The full version is in its own guide, because it is the part most people skip.
What do all three need before any of them work?
The same four things, in the same order, and the numbers below are how often the businesses we measured had each one. This is 1,030 sites that answered, in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Riyadh and Jeddah.
- AI crawlers allowed in robots.txt
- 86.3%
- Text readable without JavaScript
- 70.5%
- Structured data identifying the business
- 49.5%
- Publishes a sitemap
- 26.7%
- Machine-readable opening hours
- 15.9%
Blocking the crawlers is rarer than the noise suggests and almost never deliberate. The second line is the expensive one: on nearly a third of these sites, a crawler is handed something close to an empty page, and every acronym on this page fails at once when that happens. It is decided by whatever built the site rather than by anything you write afterwards.
You can check your own site for all five in about a minute with our free website check.
Which one should I do first?
In this order, because each step is worth nothing until the one above it is true.
- Confirm you are indexed and that your text arrives in the HTML. Search site:yourdomain.com and check the free website check.
- Claim and fill in your Google Business Profile. It works immediately, which nothing else on this list does. See the guide to setting one up.
- Write a page per service and per area, each answering one question in its first two sentences.
- Mark up the business, the hours, the services and the questions in structured data.
- Get mentioned somewhere other than your own site: directories, reviews, and lists for your trade and city.
The first four are yours to control and take effect within days to weeks of a crawler returning. The fifth is slower and is the one that decides whether an assistant names you, so it is worth starting now rather than after the rest is perfect.
Where does this stop being a website job?
At the point it works. Everything above changes how many enquiries arrive; none of it changes what happens to one after it lands in an inbox at nine in the evening. That is a different problem with a different fix, and it is usually the cheaper of the two to solve.
We build both halves: the pages that get found, and the automation that answers what they bring in. If the enquiries already arrive and go cold, start with the guide on where they go.
Questions people actually ask
- Is GEO just SEO with a new name?
- It overlaps heavily and shares the same foundation. Two things genuinely differ. AI answers lean much harder on whether other sites mention you, because a model answers from what its sources agree on. And they have no page two, so a position that would have earned some traffic in a list earns none in an answer.
- Do I need separate pages for SEO, AEO and GEO?
- No, and separate pages would work against you. One page that asks a real question in a heading, answers it in the first two sentences, and states its facts in structured data serves all three. Duplicating that page three times splits whatever authority it has.
- Does llms.txt make a difference?
- Very little on its own. It is a proposed file for describing your site to AI systems, adoption is thin, and Google ignores it. It takes twenty minutes and does no harm. Readable HTML, structured data and being mentioned elsewhere all matter more.
- How do I tell whether any of this is working?
- Google Search Console shows impressions and clicks for the searches you appear in, which covers SEO and most of AEO. There is no console for AI answers yet, so the practical test is asking the assistants the questions your customers ask and recording whether you are named. Do it monthly and keep the answers, because the useful signal is the change rather than any single result.