SEO vs AEO vs GEO: The Difference in Plain Words
Contents
You have probably seen three new acronyms on every marketing blog. They sound like hype, but each one describes a real reader with real needs. This post explains them in plain words, then shows which findable checks map to each.
What is SEO?
SEO is search engine optimization. You make a page easy for a search crawler to fetch, understand and rank. The reader is a bot first, a person second. Good SEO means a clear title, a meta description, clean headings, working links and a page served over https.
Google's own SEO starter guide covers these basics. Most of them are boring on purpose. You write a good title, you describe the page, you link to related pages, and you keep the HTML tidy.
What is AEO?
AEO is answer engine optimization. You shape a page so an answer box, a voice assistant or a chat tool can lift a short, correct answer from it. The reader is a program that wants one clean passage, not a whole page.
That means question headings, a direct answer right under each one, and lists, tables and steps that are easy to parse. You also add structured data such as FAQPage so a machine knows what each block is.
What is GEO?
GEO is generative engine optimization. You make a page worth citing when a model writes an answer from many sources. The reader is a language model, or the retrieval step in front of it, that pulls passages from many pages and links some of them.
The GEO paper by Aggarwal et al. tested ways to raise visibility in generative answers. In their tests, adding citations, quotations and statistics helped. The lesson for you is simple: give a model facts it can quote, and say who wrote them.
How do SEO, AEO and GEO compare?
They share a base but aim at different readers. SEO targets crawlers and rankings. AEO targets answer boxes. GEO targets generative models that cite sources. The table below shows what each one targets, what tends to win, and a few real findable check ids for each.
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reader | Search crawler | Answer box, assistant | Generative model |
| Goal | Rank and get indexed | Be the quoted answer | Be the cited source |
| What wins | Clear title, meta, headings, fast clean HTML | Direct answers, question headings, structured data | Citations, statistics, authorship, entity markup |
| Example checks | title_length, desc_length, h1_exists, canonical | aeo_faq, aeo_direct_answers, aeo_question_headings | geo_citations, geo_statistics_density, geo_author_schema |
| Weight in score | 50% | 25% | 25% |
Notice the overlap. A jsonld block helps SEO, and aeo_structured_data reads the same JSON-LD for AEO. Good structure pays off three times.
How do you check each one with findable?
findable runs every check on a page and groups the results into the three families. You install it, point it at a URL and read the failures. Each check has a stable id, so you can search for it, track it and fix it.
go install github.com/findable-page/findable/cmd/findable@latest
findable -k "your keyphrase" https://example.comHere are a few ids you will meet first. For SEO, title_length wants 30 to 60 characters and desc_length wants 120 to 160. For AEO, aeo_direct_answers looks for a paragraph of 30 to 80 words. For GEO, geo_citations wants at least one external link and geo_passage_citability wants a paragraph of 40 to 120 words.
Why does the order matter?
Work in the order SEO, then AEO, then GEO. A model cannot cite a page it never fetched, and an answer box cannot quote a page that is blocked or hidden. That is why SEO carries half of the score.
After the base is clean, answer-ready structure is cheap to add. Then GEO signals, such as a named author in geo_author_credentials and sameAs links in geo_knowledge_graph, tell a model who stands behind the text. Google also explains how its AI features use your pages in AI features and your website.
Key takeaways
- SEO targets crawlers, AEO targets answer boxes, GEO targets generative models.
- They stack. Fix SEO first, then add answer structure, then citation signals.
- findable scores SEO 50%, AEO 25% and GEO 25%, and every check has a stable id.
- Run
findable <url>to see your failures, ranked, in one pass. - A short summary section helps you too:
aeo_summarylooks for the words "key takeaway", "summary" or "conclusion".
FAQ
- Is GEO a replacement for SEO?
- No. GEO builds on SEO. A page that crawlers cannot fetch or index will not be cited by anyone. Fix the SEO basics first, then add answer and citation signals on top.
- How does findable weigh SEO, AEO and GEO?
- The score is SEO 50%, AEO 25% and GEO 25%. SEO carries the most weight because every other layer depends on a page being crawlable and readable.
- Can I check all three with one command?
- Yes. Run findable with a URL and it audits all three families in one pass. Add -site to also check robots.txt and llms.txt.
How does findable score a page?
| Family | Weight | Question it asks |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | 50% | Can crawlers read and index this page? |
| AEO | 25% | Is it easy to lift an answer from this page? |
| GEO | 25% | Does the page give a generative model a reason to cite it? |
The hosted audit waits up to 10 s for a page and fetches at most 5 MB. It reads robots.txt and llms.txt up to 512 KB each.
More guides
- Every findable AEO Check ID and How to Fix It
- All 35 AEO checks in findable explained, from aeo_faq to aeo_summary. See what each id tests, how loose the test is and how to fix it. AEO is 25% of the score.
- Canonical Tags and Duplicate Content: How to Get Them Right
- Use one canonical link per page that points to its own absolute URL. Learn the checks canonical, canonical_self and canonical_absolute and fix them.
- FAQ Schema for Answer Engines: Markup and Checks
- How to add FAQPage JSON-LD that answer engines can lift, and how findable tests aeo_faq, aeo_faq_count and faq_valid. Includes a working example.
- Get Findable in 15 Minutes: A Step by Step Checklist
- Install findable, audit a page and your site, fix the top failures, then add MCP, the web UI, the API and a CI gate. Every step has a copy-paste command.
- Every findable GEO Check ID, Plus AI Crawler Checks
- All 27 GEO checks in findable explained, plus the unscored Site checks for GPTBot, ClaudeBot and llms.txt. GEO is 25% of the score. Fixes included.
- Image Alt Text, Dimensions and Lazy Loading Explained
- Fix img_alt, img_dimensions, img_alt_quality, img_lazy_loading and img_modern_format. See what each image check in findable tests and how to pass.
- JSON-LD Schema Basics: What findable Checks and Why
- Learn what JSON-LD is, which schema.org types findable validates, and how to fix jsonld_valid, jsonld_context and empty or relative values.
- llms.txt: What It Is and How findable Checks It
- llms.txt is a plain Markdown file at your site root that points AI tools to your key pages. See the llms-txt check and how to write the file.
- How to Write a Meta Description That Passes findable
- Write a meta description of 120 to 160 characters, one per page, that matches the page. See the checks desc_exists, desc_length and desc_single.
- Open Graph and Twitter Cards: Fix Your Share Previews
- Add og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url and twitter:card so links unfurl well. See every social check findable runs and how to pass it.
- robots.txt and AI Crawlers: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot
- How robots.txt rules decide whether GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended can fetch your page, and how findable tests each one.
- Every findable SEO Check ID and How to Fix It
- A plain guide to all 98 SEO checks in findable, from title_length to csp. See what each id tests, when it passes and the fix. SEO is 50% of your score.
- Why AI Answer Engines Skip Your Site and How to Fix It
- ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude may ignore your pages for five fixable reasons, from robots.txt blocks to missing answers. Learn each cause and its check id.