Ranking is not the same as being recommended

For twenty years, getting found online meant one thing: rank on the first page of Google. People typed a few words, scanned ten links, and clicked. The job was to be one of those ten, near the top.

That still happens, and it still matters. But a growing share of questions now get answered before anyone clicks: in Google's AI overviews, in ChatGPT, in Perplexity, in the assistant on a phone. Those answers often name one or two businesses. Being one of them is a different job from ranking.

Three jobs with three names

• SEO — search engine optimisation. Making the site readable and trustworthy enough to rank for the searches buyers type.
• AEO — answer engine optimisation. Writing so a direct question gets a direct, quotable answer from your page.
• GEO — generative engine optimisation. Making sure AI models have enough clear, consistent facts about you to recommend you at all.

What answer engines actually reward

Answer engines quote passages, not pages. They favour a clear claim near the top, specific facts they can check, and the same facts repeated consistently across your site, your profiles and the places that mention you. A page that argues it is the best gives them nothing to quote. A page that explains how to choose, and shows where you stand, gets cited as the source.

The basics overlap with good SEO: a fast site, clean structure, structured data, honest content. The difference is emphasis. SEO asks whether a page deserves a position. AEO and GEO ask whether a sentence on it deserves to be repeated.

Write the sentence you would want an assistant to say about you. Then make it true, and put it where it can be found.

None of this replaces a business worth recommending. It makes sure that when someone asks, the machine has enough to go on.