AEO, GEO, SEO: one page, not
three
“Answer engine optimisation” is the term people search when they
mean: how do I get named in an AI-generated answer instead of just
ranked in a list of links. That is the same job GEO already does. We
don’t run a separate AEO service, a separate AEO team or a separate AEO
price list, because the work (entity clarity, answer-shaped content,
third-party corroboration, citation tracking) is identical whether the
surface is ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity or Gemini.
Splitting AEO out from GEO would mean selling the same deliverable twice
under two names. We don’t do that. This page exists because people
search “answer engine optimization” and deserve a straight answer, not
because AEO is a different discipline from GEO.
SEO is still a separate, necessary job: it gets your page found and
ranked in classic search results. GEO/AEO is what happens after that, whether an AI system reads your page, trusts it, and quotes it. You need
both. Neither replaces the other.
What’s included
Straightforward, and worth being blunt about what’s not in the
box.
- Entity clarity. Consistent naming, a coherent
organisation profile, and commercial facts (pricing model, service
boundaries, who you serve) stated plainly rather than implied. - Answer-shaped content. Self-contained 40 to 60 word
answers under headings that match real questions, with supporting detail
underneath. AI systems retrieve passages, not whole pages. - Third-party corroboration. Presence on the review
platforms, comparison pages and publications an AI system already
trusts, so it has something to check your own claims against. - Citation tracking. A fixed prompt set covering your
buying journey, re-run on a schedule, recording whether you’re named and
which sources back the answer. - Technical access. Making sure your content is
actually in the server-rendered HTML these systems can read, not hidden
behind JavaScript they skip.
What we explicitly don’t sell: FAQPage or HowTo structured data.
Google stopped showing FAQ and HowTo rich results outside a small set of
authoritative government and health sites in 2023, and no AI answer
engine gives markup any preferential weight in what it chooses to cite. They read and synthesise the visible text on the page, not the schema
wrapped around it. Anyone selling you FAQ schema as an “AEO deliverable”
is selling you a rich-result feature that no longer exists. We build
visible, well-structured Q&A content because it answers real
questions clearly, the kind you’re reading right now, not because we
mark it up as FAQPage.
AEO vs GEO vs SEO, side by
side
| AEO | GEO | SEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal | Get named in a single AI-generated answer | Get named and cited across AI answer engines generally | Rank a page in classic search results |
| Surface | Any AI answer box (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity) | Same surfaces, tracked as one programme | Google/Bing organic results pages |
| Measured by | Citation in a specific answer | Citation share across a tracked prompt set, trended over time | Ranking position, organic traffic, keyword visibility |
In practice, AEO is the outcome; GEO is the programme that delivers
it. We sell the programme.
Proof
Official London
Theatre shows 85% AI Search Visibility in the case study’s own
published hero stats, alongside a 432K+ engagement, five-year SEO and
influencer partnership. That figure is our clearest live evidence of
what sustained GEO/AEO work does to citation rate.
Beyond a single client number, the mechanism is visible on our own
site: our healthcare sector page
carries structured, visible Q&A blocks answering the specific
questions healthcare buyers ask, built the way we build AEO content for
clients, answer-first and without any FAQPage markup behind it. Look at
the page source and you won’t find FAQPage JSON-LD, because we don’t add
it.
How we measure it
We track a fixed prompt set across the engines that matter to your
buyers, run on a schedule, and report citation share as a trend rather
than a single snapshot. AI answers are non-deterministic, so one run
tells you little. Get a free first read with our GEO visibility score tool before
committing to anything.
What it costs
Answer engine optimisation sits inside a GEO retainer, from £1,250 a month ex VAT. There is no minimum term and either side can give 60 days’ notice at any point. What moves the number is catalogue size, how clear your entity data already is, and how many answer surfaces you want tracked. See the GEO pricing page for what each tier includes, or book a call and we will scope it against your site.
Related services
- GEO: the full programme this page’s
work sits inside - Technical GEO: the
crawl-access and rendering side of the same job - SEO content: the
classic-search half of getting found in the first place
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Frequently asked questions
It depends on whether the content is in the page source or loaded when someone clicks. Text present in the HTML and merely hidden by CSS is generally readable by crawlers and models. Text fetched only after an interaction usually is not. The bigger issue is structure. An answer split across four collapsed panels is harder for a system to lift as a self contained passage than the same answer stated once, plainly, under a heading. You can keep the design. The answer needs to exist somewhere as a whole.
That is a real commercial judgement and we will not argue you out of it. What we would separate is method from proof. You rarely need to publish the exact process to be cited. You need to answer the question a buyer is actually asking, state what you do and for whom, and be specific about outcomes. Vagueness is what keeps brands out of AI answers, not the absence of a playbook. We will work out where the line sits with you rather than assume everything is publishable.
We make it more likely that when someone asks an assistant a buying question in your category, the answer names you. That means writing pages that answer specific questions directly, making sure the facts about your business are stated the same way everywhere a system might read them, and getting other credible sites to corroborate that. Then we track a fixed set of those questions each month and report whether you were named. It is the same discipline as search, aimed at answers rather than a results list.
We agree the measure before the work starts. Alongside citation share we report the organic sessions and enquiries for the same query set, so you can see whether the questions you are winning are commercially useful ones. If they are not, we change the target set rather than keep reporting a rising number that does not pay for itself. Where a movement cannot be attributed to our work, we say so in the report. That is the difference we can actually promise.
It sits inside a GEO retainer, from £1,250 a month ex VAT. There is no minimum term and either side can give 60 days notice at any point. There is no separate AEO invoice and no upgrade tier that adds it. What moves the number is catalogue size, how clear your entity data already is, and how many answer surfaces you want tracked. The GEO pricing page sets out what each tier includes.
For our purposes, yes. AEO
describes the outcome: getting named in an AI-generated answer. GEO is
the programme we run to get you there. We don’t sell them as separate
services.
SEO gets your
page ranked and found. It doesn’t guarantee an AI system reads, trusts
or quotes it, that’s a separate step with its own requirements, mainly
around entity clarity and answer-shaped content.
No, and we don’t sell
it. Google removed FAQ rich results from general search in 2023, and no
answer engine we track gives markup preferential weight over visible
page content. Build clear, visible Q&A content instead. That’s what
actually gets read.
ChatGPT, Google’s
AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity are the ones we track by default.
The mechanics differ slightly per engine, but the underlying work (entity clarity, answer-shaped content, corroboration) is shared across
all of them.
By citation share: the percentage of a tracked prompt set where an AI
answer names or links you, run on a schedule and reported as a trend,
not a one-off score.
No. Nobody can,
because these systems are non-deterministic and we don’t control them.
What we control is making your content easy to find, trust and quote, and tracking whether that’s working.
A page that’s
already indexed and just needs a clearer answer can be cited within
weeks. Where the gap is entity clarity or third-party coverage, expect
three to six months, because part of that depends on other sites’
publishing schedules.
There’s no published AEO price, it’s priced per engagement from the first call, based on what your site
needs. Book a call for a scoped
quote.
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