Google's guidance on its generative AI search features mentions "AEO" and "GEO" as terms you may see used, then argues that optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and so is still SEO. If you sell AI search services, as we do, that deserves a straight answer.
Our answer: Google is mostly right, and the details still matter.
What Google is right about
Everything that makes a page a good result also helps it show up in AI answers: crawlable pages, clear writing, accurate facts, a useful answer to a real question, and a site people trust. There is no secret trick, and anyone selling one is selling hope. Our own SEO vs AEO vs GEO breakdown says the same thing: they overlap heavily.
What actually changes in practice
The foundation is the same. The emphasis and the measurement shift.
1. You are optimizing for answers, not just rankings. Engines pull a passage, a table or a list. Content that states the answer plainly near the top, with a clear heading, gets lifted. Long preambles do not.
2. Off-site proof counts for more. AI engines weigh reviews, directories, press and community mentions heavily, and your own site less. See why your website is the weakest citation source.
3. Video and social are citation sources. In one Semrush study, YouTube was the top source cited in Google AI Mode. Details in our YouTube post.
4. Brand mentions matter even without links. ChatGPT often names a company without linking. Success is "we were named", not only "we got a click".
5. Measurement moves from keywords to prompts. Instead of one keyword and one rank, you track a set of customer questions and whether you appear across engines. The free self-audit is the manual version.
6. Crawler access is a separate switch. ChatGPT search uses its own crawler and respects robots.txt. Blocking it by accident removes you. See how to get recommended by ChatGPT.
So do you need a separate "GEO" budget?
Not a separate pile of tactics. You need the SEO basics done well, plus a deliberate off-site and video plan, plus tracking that covers AI engines. That is a re-weighting of work you were already doing.
What this means for a Minneapolis business
Many local firms still run a 2019 playbook, which leaves room to stand out. The bigger gap is that few of them can answer the simple test: when a buyer asks ChatGPT or Google AI for the best provider in your category and city, are you named? Start with that, using our Minneapolis AI visibility check.
The label does not matter
Call it SEO, AEO or GEO. The buyer asks a question, an engine answers, and your business is either in the answer or not. Our AI SEO service is built around making sure it is.