AI & search
SEO, AEO and GEO: what your business actually needs
AI answers have changed where customers discover businesses. Here is how to separate useful work from a new set of acronyms.
The useful takeaway
Start with a site that can be found and understood. Then make your expertise specific enough to be useful in an answer, and measure where your business actually appears.
A customer asks an AI assistant which company to hire. The answer names three businesses, explains their differences and links to a few sources. Your company may enter that conversation before the customer ever sees your website.
That is a real change in discovery. It has also created a crowded market for services called AEO, GEO and AI SEO. Before buying another package, a business owner needs to know what the work involves, what it can influence and how to tell whether it helped.
Three labels, overlapping work
SEO—search engine optimization—helps search engines find, understand and present your pages. Answer engine optimization, or AEO, generally describes making information useful in direct answers. Generative engine optimization, or GEO, usually focuses on a brand's inclusion in answers generated by AI systems. These are industry labels, and agencies do not always draw the boundaries in the same place.
HubSpot's guide to AI search optimization reflects that broader shift toward answers and citations. The sensible response is to ask a provider for its actual deliverables. A crawl repair, a rewritten service page and a recurring set of AI visibility checks are understandable pieces of work. An unexplained 'GEO boost' is not.
Fix the foundation before buying a shortcut
Google says its established SEO practices still apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode. There are no additional technical requirements or special schema needed just to appear in those features. Pages still need to meet the relevant search requirements, and inclusion is never guaranteed. That guidance is narrower than a claim about every AI product, but it is a useful check on extravagant promises. Google's AI features guidance
Begin with basic questions. Can a crawler reach the important pages? Are they accidentally marked noindex? Does the page clearly identify the business, service and location? Can a visitor verify who is responsible for the information and make contact? A polished article will not repair a broken contact page or a service page that cannot be indexed.
- Check the pages that matter to customers, not just the homepage.
- Confirm that business details are consistent across your site and key listings.
- Describe each core service in language a customer would actually use.
Write the answer a customer needs to make a decision
Imagine an electrician offering home EV charger installation. A page that says 'trusted experts delivering exceptional solutions' gives a reader very little to work with. A better page explains what the assessment includes, which conditions can change the scope, how permits are handled and what information the customer should provide before booking. Those details must reflect that electrician's real process.
A related article could answer a narrower question: what should a homeowner check before requesting an installation quote? It should lead naturally to the service page. Clear headings and direct explanations make the information easier to use; they do not guarantee an AI citation. The value is in the substance, not in turning every paragraph into a formulaic question and answer.
Keep mentions, citations and recommendations separate
An AI response can mention your company without linking to it. It can cite a page on your website without recommending your service. It can also recommend a similarly named business in another city. A single count that mixes these outcomes will be difficult to act on.
Semrush's AI visibility guide describes the need to observe a brand's presence across AI answers. For your own checks, record the exact question, location, platform, date, named business and cited URL. Include both branded questions and genuine discovery questions, such as how to choose a provider for a particular job. A correct answer to 'Who is Acme Electric?' does not establish visibility for 'Who installs home EV chargers near me?'.
Repeat a consistent set of checks over time. Treat the results as a sample of answers, not a census of everything an AI system might say. Look for patterns before rewriting your strategy around one response.
Ask for a plan you can review
A useful first month might include resolving a confirmed indexing problem, improving one important service page and publishing one article based on questions your team hears repeatedly. The exact work depends on the evidence. A company with excellent pages and inaccurate listings needs a different plan from one with no meaningful service information.
Ask a prospective provider to show the starting evidence, the proposed change, the person responsible and the way progress will be measured. You should be able to explain the plan to a colleague without relying on any of the acronyms.
- Which problem did you find, and on which page or profile?
- What will change, and why should a customer benefit?
- Which outcome will we measure, using which source?
- What remains uncertain or outside our control?
Visibility Insider
Practical reporting and clear explanations for a more visible business. Sources are linked alongside the relevant findings.