The talk about AEO/GEO facilities on whether or not it’s a subset of search engine optimization, a standalone self-discipline, or simply customary search engine optimization. Deciding on the place to plant a flag is tough as a result of each argument makes a stable case. There’s little question that change is underway and it might be time discover the place all of the competing concepts intersect and work from there.
The Case In opposition to AEO/GEO
Many SEOs argue that AEO/GEO doesn’t differentiate itself sufficient to justify being something aside from a subset of search engine optimization, sharing computer systems in the identical workplace.
Harpreet Singh Chatha (X profile) of Harps Digital just lately tweeted about AEO / GEO myths to go away behind in 2025.
A few of what he listed:
- “LLMs.txt
- Paying a GEO professional to do “chunk optimization.” Chunking content material is simply making your content material readable.
- Pondering AEO / GEO don’t have anything in widespread with search engine optimization. Ask your favorite GEO professional for 25 issues which can be distinctive to AI search and don’t overlap with search engine optimization. They’ll block you.
- Saying search engine optimization is useless. “
The legendary Greg Boser (LinkedIn profile), one of many authentic SEOs since 1996 tweeted this:
“On the finish of the day, the core basis of what we do all the time has been and all the time can be about understanding how people use know-how to realize data.
We don’t have to give you a bunch of recent acronyms to proceed to do what we do. All that should occur is all of us agree to alter the “E” in search engine optimization from “Engine” to “Expertise”.
Then everybody can cease losing time writing all of the ridiculous search engine optimization/GEO/AEO posts, and get again to work.”
Incapability To Articulate AEO/GEO
What contributes to the notion that AEO/GEO will not be an actual factor is that many proponents of AEO/GEO fail to distinguish it from customary search engine optimization. We’ve all seen it the place somebody tweets their new tactic and the search engine optimization peanut gallery chimes in, nah, that’s search engine optimization.
Again in October Microsoft printed a weblog put up about optimizing content material for for AI the place they asserted:
“Whereas there’s no secret technique for being chosen by AI techniques, success begins with content material that’s contemporary, authoritative, structured, and semantically clear.”
The put up goes on to affirm the significance of search engine optimization fundamentals comparable to “Crawlability, metadata, inside linking, and backlinks” however then states that these are simply beginning factors. Microsoft factors out that AI search gives solutions, not ranked record of pages. That’s appropriate and it adjustments so much.
Microsoft says that now it’s about which items of content material are being ranked:
“In AI search, rating nonetheless occurs, however it’s much less about ordering whole pages and extra about which items of content material earn a spot within the closing reply.”
That sort of echoes what Jesse Dwyer of Perplexity AI just lately mentioned about AI Search and search engine optimization:
“As for the index know-how, the largest distinction in AI search proper now comes all the way down to whole-document vs. “sub-document” processing.
…The AI-first strategy is named “sub-document processing.” As a substitute of indexing complete pages, the engine indexes particular, granular snippets (to not be confused with what search engine optimization’s know as “featured snippets”).”
Microsoft just lately printed an explainer referred to as “From discovery to affect:A information to AEO and GEO” that’s tellingly centered totally on procuring, which is notable and noteworthy as a result of there’s a rising consciousness that ecommerce stands to realize so much from AI Search.
No such luck for informational websites as a result of it’s additionally regularly changing into understood that Agentic AI is poised to strip informational websites of all branding and value-add and treating them as sources of information.
Frequent search engine optimization Practices That Go As GEO
A few of what some champion as GEO and AEO are literally longstanding search engine optimization practices:
- Crafting content material within the type of solutions
Good SEOs have been doing this since Featured Snippets got here out in 2014. - Chunking content material
Crafting content material in tight paragraphs appears to be like good in cellular gadgets and it’s one thing good SEOs and considerate content material creators have been doing for effectively over a decade. - Structured Content material
Headings and different components that strongly disambiguate the content material are additionally search engine optimization. - Structured Information
Shut your mouth. That is search engine optimization.
The Buyer Is At all times Proper
A few of within the GEO Is Actual campe have a tendency to treat themselves as evolving with the occasions however additionally they acknowledge they’re simply providing what the shoppers are demanding. search engine optimization practioners are in a tough spot, what are you going to do? Plant your flag on conventional search engine optimization and switch your again on what potential shoppers are begging for?
Googlers Insist It’s Nonetheless search engine optimization
There are Googlers comparable to Robby Stein (VP of Product), Danny Sullivan, and John Mueller who say that search engine optimization is 100% nonetheless related as a result of below the hood AI is simply firing off Google searches for high ranked websites to backfill into synthesized solutions and hyperlinks (Learn: Google Downplays GEO – However Let’s Discuss About Rubbish AI SERPs). OpenAI was just lately hiring a content material strategist that is ready to lean into to search engine optimization (not GEO), which some say demonstrates that even OpenAI is targeted on conventional search engine optimization.
Optimization Is No Longer Simply Google
Manick Bhan (LinkedIn profile), founding father of the Search Atlas search engine optimization suite, supplied an attention-grabbing tackle why we could also be transitioning to a divided search engine optimization and GEO path.
Manick shared:
“search engine optimization has all the time meant ‘search engine marketing,’ however in apply it has traditionally meant ‘Google optimization.’ Google outlined the interface, the rating paradigm, the incentives, and all the psychological mannequin the business used.
The problem with calling GEO a ‘sub-discipline’ of search engine optimization is that the LLM ecosystem will not be one ecosystem, and Google’s AI Mode is changing into a generative floor itself.”
Manick asserts that there isn’t a one “GEO” as a result of every of the AI search and reply engines use completely different methodologies. He noticed that the underlying techniques stay the identical however the “the interface, the retrieval mannequin, and the reply floor” are all radically modified from something that’s come earlier than.
Manick believes that GEO will not be search engine optimization, providing the next insights:
“My place is evident: GEO is not only search engine optimization with a contemporary coat of paint, and lowering it to that misses the elemental shift in how fashionable reply engines truly retrieve, rank, and assemble data.
Sure, the techniques nonetheless dwell in the identical universe of on-page and off-page alerts. These fundamentals haven’t modified. However the machines we’re optimizing for have.
At the moment’s reply engines:
- Retrieve in another way,
- Fuse and weight sources in another way,
- Deal with recency in another way,
- Assign belief and authority in another way,
- Fan out queries in another way,
- And incorporate person habits into their RAG corpora in another way.
Even seemingly small mechanics — like logit calibration and temperature — produce virtually completely different retrieval outputs, which is why similar prompts throughout engines present measurable semantic drift and quotation divergence.
That is why we’re seeing quantifiable, repeatable variations in:
- Retrieved sources,
- Reply constructions,
- Quotation patterns,
- Semantic frames,
- And rating habits throughout LLMs, AI Mode surfaces, and classical Google outcomes.
On this panorama, humility and experimentation matter greater than dogma. Treating all of this as ‘simply search engine optimization’ ignores how completely different these techniques already are, and the way shortly they’re evolving.”
It’s Clear We Are In Transition
Perhaps one of many causes for the anti-GEO backlash is that there’s a loud contingent of businesses and people who’ve little or no expertise with search engine optimization, some who’re contemporary out of school with zero expertise. And it’s not their lack of expertise that will get some SEOs in ranting mode. It’s the issues they purport are GEO/AEO which can be clearly simply search engine optimization.
But, as Manick of Search Atlas identified, AI search and chat surfaces are wildly completely different from basic search and it’s sort of closing ones eyes to the plain to disclaim that issues are completely different and in transition.
Featured Picture by Shutterstock/Natsmith1
