Perplexity

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Handdrawn editorial illustration on a cream background splitting two worlds: on the left, a stack of classic search result pages with a search bar and ten blue ranked links labelled SEO; on the right, an AI answer speech bubble with a small robot, lines of generated text, and three cited-source chips labelled AEO / GEO — the shift from ranking links to being cited inside the AI answer
AI SearchAEOGEO

AEO vs GEO vs SEO: The Difference, and Which One You Need in 2026

SEO ranks links in classic search. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) optimise to be cited inside the AI-generated answer in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. AEO and GEO are near-synonyms for the same goal; SEO is a separate, still-necessary discipline that feeds the retrieval pool. The practical answer in 2026 is that you do all three — but you measure AEO/GEO on citation share, not blue-link position, and the winning levers (off-site footprint, entity authority, content shape, freshness) sit mostly off your own site.

Marco Lobo
Marco Lobo·Jun 6, 2026·6 min read