Quick answer
GEO (generative engine optimisation), AEO (answer engine optimisation) and LLMO (large language model optimisation) all mean the same practical goal: making AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Mode name, recommend and cite your company in their answers. GEO comes from a 2024 research paper; AEO is common among agencies; LLMO is common in German-speaking markets, including Switzerland.
Key takeaways
- The term GEO comes from research. “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization” by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues was accepted at KDD 2024.
- The paper found content changes can move visibility by up to 40%. The edits tested include adding citations, quotations and statistics.
- The gains depended on where a page already ranked. Adding citations lifted a rank-five page by 115.1% and cut the rank-one page by 30.3%.
- Most of the work happens off your site. In large studies, mentions on other websites correlate with AI visibility far more than backlinks do.
- In Switzerland, “LLMO” and “GEO” are both used. Zurich agencies sell “LLMO”; “geo seo” is the most searched variant in German and French.
Three names, one goal
| Term | Stands for | Where you hear it |
|---|---|---|
| GEO | Generative engine optimisation | Research and agencies; the most searched term in Switzerland as “geo seo” |
| AEO | Answer engine optimisation | English-speaking agencies |
| LLMO | Large language model optimisation | German-speaking markets, e.g. Zurich agencies |
Whatever the name, the outcome is the same: when a buyer asks an AI assistant which provider to consider, your company is in the answer, described correctly, ideally with a link.
Where the term GEO comes from
The term was introduced in “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization” by Pranjal Aggarwal, Vishvak Murahari, Tanmay Rajpurohit, Ashwin Kalyan, Karthik Narasimhan and Ameet Deshpande, accepted at KDD 2024. They built GEO-bench, a benchmark of user queries across many domains, and tested ways of editing a web page to see which made a generative engine use it more in its answer.
Their headline result: edits such as adding citations, quotations and statistics improved a page's visibility in generative answers by up to 40%, and what worked varied by domain.
The part of the research most people skip
The gains depended on where the page already ranked. As Finseo's review of the techniques points out, adding citations lifted a rank-five page by 115.1% and cut the rank-one page by 30.3%. The same edit can help one page and hurt another. Finseo also reports that adding quotations and statistics does not reliably transfer across engines.
On-page edits help pages that are already in the running. They do not make an unknown company appear. For that you need to be talked about on the sites the engines read.
What the work actually involves
- Measurement. Asking your buyers' questions on the engines they use, several times each, and recording who is named and which sources are cited. See our method.
- Technical access. Letting AI search crawlers read your pages. OpenAI, for example, uses OAI-SearchBot to decide what can appear in ChatGPT search.
- Pages that answer the shortlist question. Comparisons, honest “best X for Y” pages and answers to buyer objections, written so the answer comes first.
- Mentions on other sites. In Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands, branded web mentions correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.664 against 0.218 for backlinks.
How long it takes
In published case studies, first citations typically appear after several weeks. Novig reported first citations at week 6 and the top position at week 12, and Ramp went from 3.2% to 22.2% AI visibility in about ten weeks (Alex Birkett's collection). Those are good outcomes, not guarantees.
Questions people ask
Is GEO the same as AEO?
In practice, yes. Both describe getting your company named and cited in AI-generated answers. GEO comes from the 2024 research paper of that name; AEO is the term many agencies use.
What does LLMO mean?
Large language model optimisation. It is the term used by several agencies in German-speaking markets, including Zurich, for the same work as GEO and AEO.
Does GEO work?
Content changes measurably shifted visibility in the original research (up to 40%), and agencies have published case studies with large gains, such as Ramp's move from 3.2% to 22.2% AI visibility. Results depend heavily on how established the brand already is.
Do I need GEO if I already do SEO?
SEO is the foundation: pages that rank on Google are more likely to appear in AI answers. GEO adds measurement of AI answers and work to earn mentions on the sites AI engines cite.
Sources