The talk about AEO/GEO facilities on whether or not it’s a subset of search engine marketing, a standalone self-discipline, or simply commonplace search engine marketing. Deciding on the place to plant a flag is tough as a result of each argument makes a strong case. There’s little question that change is underway and it could be time discover the place all the competing concepts intersect and work from there.
The Case Towards AEO/GEO
Many SEOs argue that AEO/GEO doesn’t differentiate itself sufficient to justify being something aside from a subset of search engine marketing, sharing computer systems in the identical workplace.
Harpreet Singh Chatha (X profile) of Harps Digital just lately tweeted about AEO / GEO myths to go away behind in 2025.
A few of what he listed:
- “LLMs.txt
- Paying a GEO knowledgeable to do “chunk optimization.” Chunking content material is simply making your content material readable.
- Considering AEO / GEO don’t have anything in widespread with search engine marketing. Ask your favorite GEO knowledgeable for 25 issues that are distinctive to AI search and don’t overlap with search engine marketing. They are going to block you.
- Saying search engine marketing is lifeless. “
The legendary Greg Boser (LinkedIn profile), certainly one of the unique SEOs since 1996 tweeted this:
“At the finish of the day, the core basis of what we do all the time has been and all the time can be about understanding how people use expertise to acquire data.
We don’t want to give you a bunch of recent acronyms to proceed to do what we do. All that wants to occur is all of us agree to change the “E” in search engine marketing from “Engine” to “Expertise”.
Then everybody can cease losing time writing all the ridiculous search engine marketing/GEO/AEO posts, and get again to work.”
Incapacity To Articulate AEO/GEO
What contributes to the notion that AEO/GEO is not an actual factor is that many proponents of AEO/GEO fail to differentiate it from commonplace search engine marketing. We’ve all seen it the place somebody tweets their new tactic and the search engine marketing peanut gallery chimes in, nah, that’s search engine marketing.
Again in October Microsoft printed a blog post about optimizing content material for for AI the place they asserted:
“Whereas there’s no secret technique for being chosen by AI methods, success begins with content material that is contemporary, authoritative, structured, and semantically clear.”
The put up goes on to affirm the significance of search engine marketing fundamentals akin to “Crawlability, metadata, inside linking, and backlinks” however then states that these are simply beginning factors. Microsoft factors out that AI search offers solutions, not ranked listing of pages. That’s appropriate and it modifications rather a lot.
Microsoft says that now it’s about which items of content material are being ranked:
“In AI search, rating nonetheless occurs, but it surely’s much less about ordering complete pages and extra about which items of content material earn a spot in the last reply.”
That type of echoes what Jesse Dwyer of Perplexity AI recently said about AI Search and SEO:
“As for the index expertise, the greatest distinction in AI search proper now comes down to whole-document vs. “sub-document” processing.
…The AI-first strategy is referred to as “sub-document processing.” As a substitute of indexing entire pages, the engine indexes particular, granular snippets (not to be confused with what search engine marketing’s know as “featured snippets”).”
Microsoft just lately printed an explainer referred to as “From discovery to influence:A guide to AEO and GEO” that’s tellingly centered largely on procuring, which is notable and noteworthy as a result of there’s a rising consciousness that ecommerce stands to acquire rather a lot from AI Search.
No such luck for informational websites as a result of it’s additionally progressively changing into understood that Agentic AI is poised to strip informational sites of all branding and value-add and treating them as sources of knowledge.
Frequent search engine marketing Practices That Go As GEO
A few of what some champion as GEO and AEO are really longstanding search engine marketing practices:
- Crafting content material in the type of solutions
Good SEOs have been doing this since Featured Snippets got here out in 2014. - Chunking content material
Crafting content material in tight paragraphs seems to be good in cell gadgets and it’s one thing good SEOs and considerate content material creators have been doing for nicely over a decade. - Structured Content material
Headings and different parts that strongly disambiguate the content material are additionally search engine marketing. - Structured Knowledge
Shut your mouth. This is search engine marketing.
The Buyer Is All the time Proper
A few of in the GEO Is Actual campe have a tendency to regard themselves as evolving with the occasions however additionally they acknowledge they’re simply providing what the shoppers are demanding. search engine marketing practioners are in a tough spot, what are you going to do? Plant your flag on conventional search engine marketing and switch your again on what potential shoppers are begging for?
Googlers Insist It’s Nonetheless search engine marketing
There are Googlers akin to Robby Stein (VP of Product), Danny Sullivan, and John Mueller who say that search engine marketing is 100% nonetheless related as a result of underneath the hood AI is simply firing off Google searches for prime ranked websites to backfill into synthesized solutions and hyperlinks (Learn: Google Downplays GEO – But Let’s Talk About Garbage AI SERPs). OpenAI was just lately hiring a content material strategist that is in a position to lean into to search engine marketing (not GEO), which some say demonstrates that even OpenAI is centered on conventional search engine marketing.
Optimization Is No Longer Simply Google
Manick Bhan (LinkedIn profile), founding father of the Search Atlas search engine marketing suite, provided an attention-grabbing take on why we could also be transitioning to a divided search engine marketing and GEO path.
Manick shared:
“search engine marketing has all the time meant ‘SEO,’ however in follow it has traditionally meant ‘Google optimization.’ Google outlined the interface, the rating paradigm, the incentives, and the complete psychological mannequin the business used.
The problem with calling GEO a ‘sub-discipline’ of search engine marketing is that the LLM ecosystem is not one ecosystem, and Google’s AI Mode is changing into a generative floor itself.”
Manick asserts that there is nobody “GEO” as a result of every of the AI search and reply engines use completely different methodologies. He noticed that the underlying ways stay the identical however the “the interface, the retrieval mannequin, and the reply floor” are all radically modified from something that’s come before.
Manick believes that GEO is not search engine marketing, providing the following insights:
“My place is clear: GEO is not simply search engine marketing with a contemporary coat of paint, and lowering it to that misses the elementary shift in how trendy reply engines really retrieve, rank, and assemble information.
Sure, the ways nonetheless reside in the identical universe of on-page and off-page alerts. These fundamentals haven’t modified. However the machines we’re optimizing for have.
Right now’s reply engines:
- Retrieve in a different way,
- Fuse and weight sources in a different way,
- Deal with recency in a different way,
- Assign belief and authority in a different way,
- Fan out queries in a different way,
- And incorporate person habits into their RAG corpora in a different way.
Even seemingly small mechanics — like logit calibration and temperature — produce virtually completely different retrieval outputs, which is why an identical prompts throughout engines present measurable semantic drift and quotation divergence.
This is why we’re seeing quantifiable, repeatable variations in:
- Retrieved sources,
- Reply constructions,
- Quotation patterns,
- Semantic frames,
- And rating habits throughout LLMs, AI Mode surfaces, and classical Google outcomes.
On this panorama, humility and experimentation matter greater than dogma. Treating all of this as ‘simply search engine marketing’ ignores how completely different these methods already are, and the way shortly they’re evolving.”
It’s Clear We Are In Transition
Possibly certainly one of the causes for the anti-GEO backlash is that there is a loud contingent of businesses and people who’ve little or no expertise with search engine marketing, some who are contemporary out of school with zero expertise. And it’s not their lack of expertise that will get some SEOs in ranting mode. It’s the issues they purport are GEO/AEO that are clearly simply search engine marketing.
But, as Manick of Search Atlas identified, AI search and chat surfaces are wildly completely different from basic search and it’s type of closing ones eyes to the apparent to deny that issues are completely different and in transition.
Featured Picture by Shutterstock/Natsmith1
Disclaimer: This article is sourced from external platforms. OverBeta has not independently verified the information. Readers are advised to verify details before relying on them.
