Key takeaways
- SEO earns a ranking and a click. AEO and GEO earn a mention or citation inside an AI answer.
- Most of the foundations are shared, and Google says AI features need nothing extra.
- AEO shifts budget from links toward mentions on the sites engines read.
- In finance, accuracy matters as much as visibility, and content for engines still needs compliance review.
- The right starting point depends on how your buyers search, which differs by company type.
On this page
The short answer
SEO earns a ranking and a click. AEO earns a mention or citation inside an AI answer. GEO is a newer name for AEO. They share most of their foundations, and they differ in what counts as winning.
| SEO | AEO and GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank on the results page and win the click | Be named and cited in the written answer |
| Unit of success | Position, clicks, and conversions | Mention rate, citation rate, and accuracy |
| Where it happens | Google and Bing results pages | ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode |
| Main levers | Technical health, content, and links | Technical access, quotable facts, and mentions on sites engines read |
| How you measure it | Search Console and analytics | Repeated prompt runs, reported as ranges |
Where SEO and AEO overlap
Most of the work is shared. Google says pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode the same way they appear in search: there are "no additional requirements" and "no special schema.org structured data" needed.1 A page that can't be crawled, indexed, or shown with a snippet won't be cited either.
Content quality overlaps too. In the research paper that coined GEO, the rewriting methods that helped most added citations, quotations, and statistics to the text.2 Those are the same things a careful editor would add for a human reader.
So a company that skips SEO to "do AEO" usually ends up redoing the SEO work anyway.
Where they differ: clicks, citations, and mentions
The difference is in what pays off.
- Clicks shrink. Ahrefs found that an AI Overview correlated with a 58% lower average click-through rate for the page in position one.3 Ranking first is worth less when an answer sits above you.
- Citations recover some of it. Seer Interactive found that brands cited in an AI Overview earned about 120% more organic clicks per impression than brands that were not cited, though still fewer than before AI Overviews existed.4
- Mentions are earned off your site. In Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands, brand web mentions correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, compared with 0.218 for backlinks.5 SEO has long chased links. AEO chases being named.
That last point changes the budget. Some of the money that used to go to link building goes to getting reviewed, listed, and quoted on the sites engines read.
Why finance is different
For a mortgage lender, an insurance agency, or an advisory firm, being mentioned is not enough. The answer has to be right.
In a July 2026 Which? test of five AI tools on 15 personal finance questions, aggregate scores ranged from 60% to 68%, with made-up figures and outdated tax rates among the errors.6 When an engine states your rate or fee, it may be quoting a page from last year.
That adds three things to AEO in finance:
- Every rate, fee, and limit on your site needs a date and an owner, so engines read the current figure.
- Content written for engines to quote goes through the same compliance review as any other marketing.
- Accuracy becomes a tracked measure, alongside mentions and citations.
Our finance claims checker flags the rate, fee, and superlative claims a reviewer would question.
Which to prioritize, by company type
Where you start depends on how your buyers search.
| Company type | Start with | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Insurance agency | Local SEO and Google Business Profile, then AEO | Buyers search near me, and AI answers lean on local listings |
| Financial advisor or RIA | AEO on directories and reviews, with compliance review | AI answers to who to hire draw on third-party lists |
| CPA or accounting firm | Local SEO, then tax-season AEO content | Demand peaks January to April, and answers change with tax law |
| Mortgage lender | SEO for rate and program pages, then accuracy tracking | Stale rates in AI answers are a compliance risk |
| Tax or accounting software | AEO on comparison and alternatives questions | Buyers ask AI to shortlist tools before they search |
| B2B software | AEO first, with SEO for product pages | Shortlists form in AI answers and on review sites |
These are starting points, not rules. The AI search audit sets the order for your company from your own data.
What not to do
- Don't publish AI text files as a fix. Google says you don't need "new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup" to appear in its AI features.1 An llms.txt file is cheap, but it won't fix a page engines can't read.
- Don't publish "best" lists that rank yourself first without criteria. Engines read them, and so do buyers. A list with disclosed criteria and a "when not to choose us" line holds up better.
- Don't mass-produce thin pages for every question. Engines quote pages with specific facts and sources, not near-duplicates.
- Don't report a single run as a result. AI answers change between runs, so report ranges across repeated runs.
How to check where you stand
Run the free AI visibility checker to see how often ChatGPT and Claude name you for your category. Then run the AI crawler checker to make sure engines can read your site at all.
If you want both measured properly, with competitors, accuracy, and a 90-day plan, see the audit or our SEO and AEO services.
Questions people ask
Will AEO replace SEO?
No, AEO depends on SEO. Most AI answers are built from pages that are crawlable, indexed, and already rank. What changes is how you measure success: mentions and citations, not only clicks.
Should a regulated firm do AEO before SEO?
No, not usually. Fix crawling, indexing, and the accuracy of your own pages first, because engines quote what they find there. The exception is software companies whose buyers shortlist vendors in AI answers.
Does ranking first still get me into AI answers?
Yes, often, but not reliably. Ranking helps a page get read. Whether it gets cited depends on whether it answers the question directly, and whether other sites mention you.
Which matters more in finance, citations or mentions?
Both matter, and accuracy matters more than either. A mention with the wrong rate can do more harm than no mention at all.
Do compliance rules apply to content AI quotes?
Yes, your own pages are marketing whether a person or an engine reads them. Rate, fee, and performance claims need the same review they always did. What an engine says on its own is not your advertising, but fixing the source it learned from is your job.
Sources
- Google Search Central, AI features and your website
- Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD 2024
- Ahrefs, AI Overviews and click-through rate, December 2025 data
- Seer Interactive, AI Overview CTR study, 2026 update
- Ahrefs, brand factors that correlate with AI Overview visibility
- Which?, can AI answer your money questions, July 2026