AEO is answer engine optimization: making your page the source that Google's AI Overview quotes when it answers a question. GEO is generative engine optimization: getting recommended or cited when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini for a business like yours. SEO still matters, and both of these sit on top of it.
Here is what changed, what an engine needs from a site, and what to do first.
What changed
- Google now answers many questions above the results, with a generated overview that cites a handful of pages
- People ask ChatGPT and Perplexity for recommendations the way they used to search, and those answers name specific businesses
- The engines pick sources from a small set of pages they trust, and they regenerate the answer on every search
- A page that ranks on page one can still be absent from the answer, and a page that ranks lower can be quoted
What an answer engine needs from your site
- A definitional first sentence. The first sentence of a page should say what the thing is, in a form an engine can quote. "Ampliqa is a managed social media service for small businesses and founders" is quotable. "Welcome to our site" is not.
- One question per page. A page that answers one question well beats a page that touches ten.
- Visible FAQs. Direct questions with two sentence answers, on the page, matching the structured data behind it.
- Consistent facts. The same name, the same description, the same prices everywhere the business appears.
- An llms.txt file. A plain text summary of what you are, who you are for and what you cost, at yoursite.com/llms.txt, for engines that read it.
- Mentions elsewhere. Directories, reviews, Reddit threads and articles that name you. Engines weigh third party mentions above your own pages.
How presence is measured honestly
AI answers are regenerated per search from a sampled set of sources. The same site can be named in one run and absent in the next.
So presence is reported as a count: named in x of n runs of a query on a date. Never as a rank, never from a single run.
This is how Ampliqa reports the monthly check for Launch clients, including the months where the count is zero.
What to do first
- Rewrite the first sentence of your homepage and each service page as a definition
- Add a visible FAQ to each page with the questions customers actually ask
- Publish an llms.txt and a sitemap that lists only public pages
- Make your name, description and prices identical across your site, your social profiles and any directory
- Get named somewhere you do not control: an honest Reddit answer, a directory listing, a review
Ampliqa does this as a website renewal inside the Launch plan. See website renewal for SEO, AEO and GEO.