James CamarotaAEO vs SEO
AEO vs SEO
How AEOdiffers from SEO.
SEO is the work of being found in Google's results. AEO is the work of being named when ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Google's AI Overviews answer a question. Google's own guide says those generative features are rooted in core Search systems, so the two jobs share a page, and neither one is a promise of the first sentence.
Updated Oct 28, 2026
How do SEO and AEO compare?
Same site, two readers. Search still returns a list of links. An answer engine returns a sentence and, when the page can be fetched and trusted, a citation. The table is the short version. The sections under it are the part I will actually do.
| Compared | SEO | AEO |
|---|---|---|
| Aim | Be found in search results | Be named and cited in an AI answer |
| Who reads | Google, Bing, and the person scanning results | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode |
| What they fetch | The HTML of the page | The HTML of the page |
| The question | Often a short query | Often a full sentence |
| What I change | Titles, descriptions, internal links, speed, indexability, and the words on the page | A direct answer at the top, specific facts, schema that matches the visible text, and crawlers allowed |
| What I will not sell | Position one | Being the only name in the answer |
How is AEO different from SEO?
The reader is different, and the shape of the query is different. A title that wins a blue link can still be a page that never states the fact an answer engine needs to repeat. AEO is the work of making your page a page that sentence can point at.
It does not replace the title, the speed, or the links. A page that search cannot fetch is a page an answer engine cannot cite. If someone describes AEO as a layer that ignores ordinary search, they are describing a product I do not sell.
Where do SEO and AEO overlap?
Both need crawlable HTML, one clear topic, internal links, and a URL that stays put. Google's AI optimization guide says that optimizing for generative AI features on Google Search is still SEO, because those features retrieve pages from the Search index. The guide also says you do not need a special file for Google to do this.
On this site the visual walkthrough covers both, at SEO and AEO. The service page for the answer-engine work is AEO services. The questions people ask first are on the FAQ.
Does schema decide who gets cited?
No. Schema that matches the visible text is worth having. It names the business, and it can make a page eligible for rich results. It is not a switch for ChatGPT. Google's guide says structured data is not required for its generative AI features, and that there is no special schema.org markup you have to add for them.
Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD. Across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, and ChatGPT, they found no major uplift in citations. On AI Overviews the treated pages were slightly down, and Ahrefs says it cannot pin that on schema alone. I still add Person and ProfessionalService schema, because the facts should be in the markup and on the page. I do not add a star rating I do not have.
What should a small business do first?
If the site does not exist, start with the site: web design. If the site exists and the words are trapped in JavaScript, or the page never says what you do, fix that before you buy a mention. SISTRIX associated question headings, tables, an author, a visible updated date, and linked sources with pages that get cited. Those are choices on the page, not a placement you rent.
The cost of doing that work, still with no price invented on the page, is AEO cost. Scrunch, from 3.5 million citation events, reported that citation activity for the average source dropped by half in about 4 to 5 weeks. That is a reason to plan a refresh, not a reason to expect your page to vanish on a timer. I will not turn their average into a promise about your business.
Contact
Tell me which one.
If you are not sure whether you need the site, the search work, or the answer-engine work, say so. I will tell you what I would do first, and the price comes with that reply.