AI Search Terminology Confusion

In a notable debate in Resumé (Swedish), this is described as the core problem: the industry talks about SEO, GEO, and AI as if everyone knew what the words mean, but in practice, everyone interprets them differently. No one has the definitive answer.

This text clarifies the most common concepts, how they relate to each other, and what concretely matters if you want your content to be visible and used in an AI-driven search world.

1. SEO – The Foundation for All Visibility

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is still the foundation for digital visibility. It's about:

• Ensuring pages can be found, crawled, and indexed.
• Matching content to search intent with relevant headings, titles, and text.
• Building technical quality (speed, mobile-friendliness, structure) and authority (links, brand signals).

Google AI Overviews is an AI layer on top of Google's existing search, while standalone AI search engines like Perplexity build the entire experience around an LLM-driven answer engine. In both cases, what the model can do largely depends on whether your content can be found, understood, and trusted.

2. AEO – Answer Engine Optimization

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) focuses on your content being used as the answer itself to a question, rather than just as a link in a list.

In practice, this means:

• Structuring content in Q&A format (FAQ, Q&A blocks, HowTo guides).
• Providing short, clear, and directly quotable answers that AI can lift directly into a "box" or spoken response.
• Supporting with schema markup (e.g., FAQPage, HowTo, QAPage) so machines can easily see what's a question and what's an answer.

AEO is relevant both for "classic" features (featured snippets, People Also Ask, voice assistants) and for AI layers like Google AI Overviews, where the system looks for short, structured answers to build upon.

3. GEO – Generative Engine Optimization

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is about increasing the chance that your content gets selected as a source in longer, generative AI answers where the model combines multiple sources into a summary.

Focus is on:

• Creating deeper, context-rich articles within a topic area, so AI regards your site as an authoritative source.
• Making content semantically clear and well-structured, with independent paragraphs that are easy to quote.
• Covering clusters of related questions and subtopics so you "own" a niche in the AI models' eyes.

Here it's less about a single snippet and more about the model (e.g., ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Copilot) returning to you when building longer answers.

4. AI-SEO, AISO, AIO, LLM Optimization – The Umbrella Terms

Besides SEO, AEO, and GEO, various overarching labels are used: AI-SEO, AISO, AIO, LLMO, "LLM optimization," etc.

Common to them is that they try to describe optimization for AI-driven search and answer systems as a whole, but:

• They're used differently in different articles, sometimes synonymous with GEO, sometimes as broad "AI optimization."
• Some (like LLM optimization) emphasize adaptation to large language models, e.g., with llms.txt, content structures, and security/policy requirements.

The point for you as a buyer is not to get stuck on labels, but to understand what effects you want to achieve: be found, be the answer, be cited, build trust.

5. Differences and Overlaps – Simplified

Despite all the acronyms, it's fundamentally about three levels:

Much of the craft overlaps: good structure, clear headings, high content quality, and credibility help on all three levels.

Read more in our FAQ: What is the difference between SEO and AEO? and GEO vs AEO: Deep Dive.

6. Practical Consequences for You

The terminology confusion makes it easy to get stuck on words. What matters is defining what you're actually optimizing for.

Some concrete guidelines:

1. Define which questions you want to own. Start from real customer questions and write answers that are short, clear, and useful, not just long blog posts.
2. Structure the content. Use FAQ blocks, clear H1/H2 headings, summaries at the beginning, and schema markup where appropriate.
3. Build authority. Produce deeper content within your niche, get relevant links, and be consistent in how you talk about your area. This increases the chance that AI chooses you as a source.
4. Measure AI visibility. Track when you're cited in e.g., Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI layers, not just classic clicks from blue links.

No player (neither agencies, platforms, nor search engines) has the complete answer today. Focus should be on testing, measuring, and adjusting, not on finding the perfect acronym.

7. Why Is This Text Written?

The discussion is not abstract. In Resumé's current state analysis (Swedish) of SEO, GEO, and AI, Swedish examples and actors like AEOmotor.se are highlighted because we work practically with AI visibility every day.

AEO Academy is part of this development. The goal is to:

• Translating buzzwords into concrete work with structure, content, and measurement.
• Showing how small and medium-sized B2B companies can become the answer that AI systems choose, not just a link in the margin.

It's better to experiment with clearly formulated hypotheses than to stand still waiting for a definitive definition of each term.

Further reading: Current State Analysis: SEO, GEO and AI That Nobody Understands – debate article in Resumé (December 2025, Swedish).