AI SEO, GEO and AEO: what the terms mean
- Generative engine optimization (GEO): making your content and brand more likely to be used and cited in answers written by generative AI systems.
- Answer engine optimization (AEO): structuring content so that a system can lift a direct, correct answer from it. The term predates ChatGPT and started with featured snippets and voice assistants.
- AI SEO, LLM SEO, ChatGPT SEO: everyday names for the same goal, AI visibility.
SEO vs GEO
They are not rivals. AI search engines that browse the web find their sources largely through search indexes, so pages that are crawlable, well structured and trusted have a head start. GEO adds a layer on top: answer-first writing, clear entity information about your business, and a presence on the third-party sources AI systems like to quote. If your SEO foundation is weak, GEO has little to build on.
How AI engines pick their sources
No AI company publishes a full recipe, but the broad mechanics are well documented and observable.
Two kinds of knowledge
A language model has knowledge from its training data, which is fixed at a point in time. When an assistant searches the web before answering, it also retrieves fresh pages and cites some of them. Training data shapes what the model already believes about your brand; retrieval decides which pages it cites today.
What retrieval tends to reward
- Access. The engine's crawler must be allowed to read the page. OpenAI, for example, documents separate crawlers for search and for training in its bot documentation.
- Index presence. For Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google states that a page must be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet, and that no special optimization is required beyond normal SEO. See Google's guide to AI features and your website.
- Extractable answers. Passages that answer a question directly, in a few self-contained sentences, are easier to quote than answers buried in long introductions.
- Corroboration. When several independent sources say the same thing about you, a model is more confident repeating it.
What our AI SEO services include
- AI visibility baseline. We build a set of prompts your buyers would realistically ask, such as "best family dentist in Burlington" or "which firm handles commercial leases in Calgary", and record which brands each engine mentions and cites.
- Technical access. We check robots.txt, firewall and CDN settings so the search crawlers of the main AI engines can reach your pages, and decide with you which training crawlers to allow.
- Answer-first content. Key pages get a direct answer near the top, clear headings that match real questions, comparison tables where they help, and a proper FAQ.
- Entity clarity. Your business name, services, locations, people and credentials are described consistently on your site, in structured data and on your profiles, so systems do not confuse you with someone else.
- Third-party presence. We work on the places AI engines often draw from: industry directories, associations, reputable media and review platforms. Earned, not bought.
- Re-testing. We repeat the same prompt set on a fixed schedule and report the change.
Your website itself has to be fast, clean and easy to parse; if it is not, we fix that first or rebuild it as part of our web design work.
llms.txt: useful, but not magic
llms.txt is a proposed convention: a plain-text file at the root of your site that summarizes your most important pages for language models. It is simple to add, and we add one where it makes sense.
We are also honest about its status. It is not an official standard, Google does not use it for Search or AI Overviews, and the major AI search engines have not confirmed that they rely on it. Anyone selling llms.txt as a ranking factor is overselling. Treat it as a tidy extra, not a strategy.
Measuring AI visibility with repeated prompt tests
AI answers vary between sessions, users, locations and model versions. A single screenshot proves very little. That is why we measure with repetition: the same prompts, run several times per engine, on a fixed schedule, with the results logged.
| Measure | How we test it | Limit to keep in mind |
|---|---|---|
| Mention rate | Share of repeated runs in which your brand is named | Answers change between runs and users |
| Citation rate | Share of runs that link to your website as a source | Some engines show few or no links |
| Position in answer | Whether you are named first, in a list or in passing | Order is not stable and not a ranking |
| Accuracy | Whether services, locations and facts about you are correct | Older training data can lag behind changes |
| Competitor share | Which competitors appear for the same prompts | Prompt wording strongly affects results |
| AI referral traffic | Visits from AI tools in your analytics | Not all AI visits are labelled as such |
Honest limits of AI SEO
No one controls what an AI system says. Not us, not any agency that claims otherwise. Models are updated without notice, answers are personalized, and the same question can produce different brands on different days. We cannot guarantee that ChatGPT or Google will recommend you.
What we can do is make your business the easiest and most credible source to cite, remove technical barriers, correct inaccurate information at its source, and show you the trend over time. The same work also strengthens ordinary search, so it keeps its value if the AI landscape shifts again.
We build and run our own brands and websites too, so we test these methods on our own sites before we apply them to yours.
How to show up in ChatGPT and other AI search
If you are asking "how do I get my business on ChatGPT" or "how do I appear in Google AI Overviews", the practical checklist is the same:
- Make sure AI search crawlers can access your site and that your key pages are indexed in Google and Bing.
- Describe exactly what you do, for whom and where, in plain sentences on your own site.
- Keep your Google Business Profile and directory listings complete and consistent; our local SEO work covers this.
- Earn mentions on independent sites your industry trusts.
- Publish answers to the specific questions buyers ask, with facts and clear scope.
For Canadian companies with French-speaking customers, we also test prompts in French. Assistants often answer French questions from French sources, so an English-only site can be invisible there.
Who AI SEO is for
AI visibility matters most where buyers research before they make contact: professional services, healthcare, B2B and higher-value purchases. If most customers find you through a quick map search, start with local SEO.
Every engagement starts with a paid strategy session; see how we work and how we price.