AEO vs GEO: which should a B2B team focus on?

For a B2B team, AEO and GEO are two names for nearly the same work: getting named in AI answers. Focus on the buyer questions that lead to demos, make your pages quotable and get onto the sources engines cite. The label matters far less than the questions you choose.

So this is not a choice between two programmes. It is one programme with two names. This guide shows where the terms came from, the few tasks that really differ, and what to fund first if you are a SaaS or tech company between 1M and 10M ARR. New to the topic? Start with what AEO is.

Where did the terms AEO and GEO come from?

Short answer: GEO comes from a 2023 research paper. AEO came out of the SEO world, from the work of winning Google's answer boxes. Both now describe the same goal.

GEO stands for generative engine optimization. The term comes from a 2023 paper by Aggarwal et al., later presented at KDD 2024. It tested ways to make content show up more in AI-written answers and reports visibility gains of up to 40% in generative engine responses. That was a lab study on test engines, not a result with live buyers. Read it as a signal, not a promise.

AEO stands for answer engine optimization. The idea was the same then as now: be the answer, not just a blue link.

Today, agencies, tools and analysts use both words for the same job. Some add "AI SEO" or "LLMO" too. There is no settled taxonomy, so compare what each team will do, not what it calls it.

What is the same and what is different?

Short answer: almost all the work is shared. The real differences are in where you look and which engine you favour, not in the tasks.

When people draw a line between the two, it usually runs like this: AEO leans toward Google's answer features and short, direct answers. GEO leans toward chat engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity that write longer answers from many sources. In practice, a B2B buyer uses both, so you need both.

This table lists the tasks side by side.

Six of the eight rows are the same work. The two that differ are about emphasis, and a B2B buyer moves between Google and chat tools anyway. If an agency sells AEO and GEO as two separate services, ask what tasks are in one and not the other. For how AEO relates to classic SEO, read AEO vs SEO.

What does Google say?

Short answer: Google says you need nothing special for its AI features. No extra files, no special markup.

Google's AI features doc says no extra requirements or special optimisations are needed to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode. A page must be indexed and allowed to show a snippet.

Its AI optimization guide goes further. Google says optimising for generative AI search is still SEO. It says no special schema, AI text files (llms.txt), Markdown or content chunking is needed.

That matters for the AEO vs GEO debate. Many pages on this topic sell schema or llms.txt as the thing that makes one label different from the other. For Google, it is not. Schema stays useful as part of normal SEO. llms.txt is a proposal by Jeremy Howard (2024), not a standard the main engines have said they use. Both are hygiene, not levers.

Google speaks only for Google. ChatGPT and Perplexity do not publish the same kind of guide. That is where the next section comes in.

What do AI engines actually read?

Short answer: each engine leans on different sources. That is the one difference that should change your plan, and it has nothing to do with the acronym.

From our platform, ChatGPT and Perplexity read very different kinds of pages for the same buyer questions (September 2026).

Source: our platform, September 2026. For ChatGPT, shares of the links it cited. For Perplexity, shares of the sources it read, so do not compare the two columns as volumes.

The engines also disagree on who to name. From our platform, only about 1 in 8 of the companies named (12%) appeared in both ChatGPT's and Perplexity's answers.

So the useful split is not AEO vs GEO. It is engine by engine. To show up in ChatGPT, a complete, honest profile on the directories in your category matters. To show up in Perplexity, the guides and "best of" lists in your category matter. One page will not win both.

What should you fund first at 1M to 10M ARR?

Short answer: fund the buyer questions closest to a demo, then the pages that answer them, then mentions on the sources each engine reads. Skip the label debate.

A team this size has little time and no room for two programmes. Put effort in this order.

1. Pick the questions that lead to demos. "Best [category] for [use case]." "[You] vs [rival]." "[Category] pricing." These are the answers that name vendors. Broad "what is" questions come later.
2. Fix the base. Pages indexed, search bots allowed, key content in the HTML. Google's AI features and chat engines both need this.
3. Make money pages quotable. Open pricing, comparison and use-case pages with a plain answer. Say who it is for, what it costs and what proof you have. Use tables for prices and comparisons.
4. Earn mentions where each engine looks. Complete your directory and review profiles with real reviews. Pitch honest data to the authors of lists in your category. Any community work is always disclosed.
5. Track and repeat. Re-check your questions, see what moved, fix the gaps.

If your buyers or your board use the word GEO, see our GEO agency page. It is the same work under the other name.

How do you measure either one?

Short answer: the same way. A fixed set of buyer questions, checked in each engine on a schedule, tied to pipeline.

1. Questions. Keep one list of buyer questions, grouped by stage. Do not change it every month, or you cannot compare.
2. Engines. Track ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews apart. They read different sources, so one blended score hides the gaps.
3. Re-checks. Ask each question more than once. AI answers change from one ask to the next, so one answer proves nothing.
4. Visits. In GA4, set up a custom channel group with an AI assistant rule so AI visits show as their own channel.
5. Pipeline. Add a "How did you hear about us?" field to your demo form. Tag deals where the buyer says they used an AI tool. Report them next to organic.

Visibility on its own is not the goal. What counts is whether the answers send buyers who book demos.

Find out where you stand today

We turn AI visibility into pipeline. Our free AI visibility audit asks your buyer questions in AI tools. We re-check every question, because AI answers change from one ask to the next. It shows the answers, who is named instead of you, the sources behind them and your top 3 blockers. Results in 12 hours.

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