AEO vs GEO vs LLMO: AI Search Acronyms, Explained

On a single sales call you'll hear four acronyms for the same thing. One person says AEO, the consultant says GEO, the board deck says LLMO, and a vendor emails about AIO. Everyone nods. Nobody's sure they mean the same thing. They mostly do.

This is the bit of AI search nobody warns you about: the work is genuinely useful, but the language has turned into alphabet soup. So before you let anyone sell you on a three-letter strategy, here's what each one actually means — and the one term that's genuinely different from the rest.

The acronyms, in plain English

SEO — Search Engine Optimisation. The original. Getting your pages to rank on a results page when someone searches Google.
AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation. Being the answer an AI assistant gives when someone asks it who to use or what to buy.
GEO — Generative Engine Optimisation. Getting your business cited and pulled into the answer an AI generates — Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini.
LLMO — Large Language Model Optimisation. Structuring your content so the models themselves understand it and reference you accurately.
AIO — AI Optimisation. The umbrella term that's meant to cover all of the above.

Read those back. AEO, GEO and LLMO are three labels for one job: show up when an AI answers a buyer's question. AIO is just the box you put them in.

So why four words for one job?

Because nobody agreed on a word first. EMARKETER found there are no standardised definitions across the industry, and fewer than a third of SEO influencers used consistent terminology across the whole of 2025. People picked a term, ran with it, and now the market is arguing about vocabulary instead of doing the work.

It's not that the distinctions are meaningless. They're just smaller than the marketing makes them sound. As Lily Ray, VP of SEO Strategy at Amsive, put it: "The overlap with what we've been doing in the SEO space before AI search existed is very, very strong." The fundamentals — answer real questions clearly, earn trust, make your proof easy to find — barely change. The front door changes.

The honest version is somewhere in the middle. Forrester's Nate Elliott names both traps: "The biggest misconception is that good GEO is good SEO. And then on the flip side: the biggest misconception is that GEO is 100% different from SEO." Same toolkit, pointed at a new place. Not a clean slate, not business as usual either.

For a busy business owner, the takeaway is simpler than the debate: don't pay a premium because someone's chosen a fresher acronym. Ask what they'll actually do.

The one that's genuinely different: agentic search

Here's the term worth separating from the rest, because it isn't a synonym.

AEO, GEO and the others are all about answers. The AI tells your buyer something, and your buyer decides. Agentic search is when the AI stops answering and starts acting — comparing options, checking stock and prices, and in some cases buying, on your customer's behalf.

The behaviour is already moving. EMARKETER reports 38% of shoppers now use AI while shopping, and 80% expect to lean on it more for comparing options and making decisions. ChatGPT has had in-chat checkout live since late 2025, and in January 2026, Google launched its own agentic shopping protocol with Walmart, Target, Shopify and others behind it. The customer is increasingly becoming the approver, not the researcher.

That's a different game to being quoted in an answer. When an agent is doing the comparing, you're not just trying to be mentioned — you need to be the option that survives a machine weighing price, delivery, reviews and returns against the buyer's stated intent. Clean data, real reviews and clear sourcing stop being nice-to-haves. EMARKETER found 89% of shoppers still verify what AI tells them before buying. The trust signals you'd build for a human are exactly what an agent checks for.

The practical point: AEO is about turning up in the answer. Agentic search is about being the choice when nobody's reading the answer at all.

What to actually do about it

You don't need to learn the alphabet. You need to do the work the acronyms all point at, and then watch the agentic shift.

Pick one word and stop arguing about the rest. Internally, we call it AEO and move on. The label doesn't change the task.
Answer your buyers' real questions in plain language. This feeds every acronym at once — answers, citations, the lot.
Make your proof machine-readable. Reviews, specifics, clear sourcing. It's what AI quotes today and what an agent will weigh tomorrow.
Go and look. Ask ChatGPT who's best in your field in your town. If your name isn't there, that's the gap — whatever you call the work to close it.

The field is still wide open: Digiday's 2026 research found 27% of brands haven't changed their strategy for AI search at all, and 16% aren't even familiar with the terms. The businesses that win won't be the ones who picked the cleverest acronym. They'll be the ones who turned up in the answer while everyone else was still debating what to call it.

Don't buy the acronym. Do the work.

Want to know which AI search work actually moves the needle for your business — and skip the jargon? Ask us for a quick check and we'll show you where you turn up, and where you don't.

FAQ

Are AEO, GEO and LLMO the same thing?

Largely, yes. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation), GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and LLMO (Large Language Model Optimisation) are different labels for the same goal: getting your business found when an AI answers a buyer's question. The tactics overlap heavily with good SEO. Pick one term and focus on the work.

What's the difference between AEO and agentic search?

AEO is about being the answer an AI gives a person, who then decides. Agentic search is when the AI acts for the buyer — comparing, shortlisting, even purchasing on their behalf. AEO gets you mentioned; agentic search means being the option a machine actually picks.

Which acronym should my business use?

Whichever your team will stick to. The label matters far less than doing the underlying work: answer real questions clearly, make your proof easy to find, and check what AI already says about you.