Generative Engine Optimization vs AEO: The Practitioner Answer, The Free Stack, And The Models Doing The Drafting

Generative engine optimization vs AEO has a short practitioner answer: prioritise GEO when your buyers ask AI "who is the best", and prioritise AEO when they mostly ask quick "how" or "what" questions.

In both cases, do the shared work first, because many of the tactics lift both jobs at once.

GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is getting your business named inside answers that AI writes.

AEO, or answer engine optimisation, is getting your page chosen as the one direct answer in a featured snippet or a spoken reply.

If you'd like my team to set the priority for you, book a free one-to-one GEO, AEO AI audit and get a custom game plan.

Near the end, I'll show which free AI brain I used to run this workflow and how the models like it score on this leaderboard.

Generative engine optimization vs AEO: which tactics belong where

This table splits the common tactics into GEO only, AEO only and both, so you can see where your effort goes.

The lines between the columns are soft, so use the table as a guide rather than a rulebook.

The two terms in one line each

GEO comes from the 2023 paper GEO: Generative Engine Optimization by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, which was accepted to KDD 2024.

AEO is the term from the featured snippet and voice assistant era, when one page got boxed or read out.

Google's featured snippets documentation describes those boxes as results where the descriptive snippet shows first.

For the longer history of both terms, read my post on generative engine optimization vs answer engine optimization.

Which one to prioritise, by business type

This is my opinion on where different businesses should put their first month of effort.

If you're not sure, type the question a customer asks right before they pay you into Google and ChatGPT.

If the answer is a short list of business names, it's a GEO question, and if it's one box or one fact, it's an AEO question.

The shared work to do first

Google's AI features and your website page says a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to be a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode.

The same page says there are no additional requirements, no special schema and no AI text files needed.

For ChatGPT search, OpenAI's crawler documentation says OAI-SearchBot controls appearing in its search results separately from GPTBot.

For Perplexity, its crawler page says PerplexityBot surfaces and links websites in its search results and isn't used to crawl content for AI foundation models.

After access, rewrite your key pages answer-first and make one fact file that every site mentioning you should match.

📞 Not sure which side your buyers sit on?

Book a free AEO SEO strategy session and my team will look at your site, your competitors and the keywords you're closest to winning.

→ Get your custom game plan for Google and AI search

The GEO-only tactics in practice

The GEO paper found citing sources, adding quotations and adding statistics gave a 30% to 40% relative improvement on its position-adjusted word count measure.

It also found keyword stuffing didn't help, and that the best method changed by subject.

On my own sites, the GEO tactic that matters most is a real case study on every page, which I call be the source.

I also run several sites with different angles that point to the same answer, which I call be everywhere.

And I try to publish within 24 hours of a new topic appearing, which I call be first.

Together those three moves make up the system I call the answer engine.

The AEO-only tactics in practice

AEO is mostly format, which is why it's quicker to ship.

Use the exact question as a heading and answer it in plain words in the first one or two sentences.

Add a short list or table when the answer has steps or options.

Add the follow-up questions people ask next, because snippets can also appear inside People Also Ask.

Read the answer aloud, and rewrite it if it doesn't make sense spoken.

The tools for each job

Most of this can run on free tools, and paid trackers are optional.

I've described the paid tools only from their own pages and left prices out.

My free workflow for finding GEO topics

In my Hermes GEO video, I export Google Search Console data to a CSV, which is free.

I give it to Hermes Agent and ask it to analyse the data and suggest keyword and topic ideas to rank inside AI search engines, based on what's actually working.

Hermes builds a report with clicks, brand share of clicks, non-brand click-through rate and the best pages.

In my data, comparison articles were one of the things working, which is part of why posts like this exist.

I point out in the video that this is Google organic data, because Google and the AI engines don't yet report AI traffic well.

Then I give Hermes my SEO skill and access to the sites, so it can write from a case-study angle and publish.

A simple weekly routine for both jobs

On Monday, re-run your prompt list and log who the AI replies name, then check who holds each featured snippet.

On Wednesday, add a case study and sources to one GEO page you're close on, and tighten the first two lines of one AEO page.

On Friday, publish one different-angle piece on another site or platform, and add the next follow-up question to one FAQ.

Every page gets a human fact-check before it goes live, whichever job it serves.

Mistakes to avoid when you pick a side

People pick one job and skip the shared work, which caps the results of both.

People buy paid trackers before they've logged a single prompt by hand.

People add special AI files or schema, even though Google says AI features need none.

People stuff keywords, even though the GEO paper found it didn't help.

People expect a guarantee, but nobody controls what an AI answer says, and that includes me.

Proof from my own screens

In my GEO examples video, Google's AI Overview for "best geo expert" names me first and cites several of my pages.

The AI Overview for "best HARO agency" lists five suppliers and links Goldie Agency first.

In my Hermes GEO video, AI Mode lists me first when asked for the best GEO experts to follow in 2026.

One of my sites went from zero to more than 1,300 clicks a day.

Those are my results from my own screens, not a promise for yours.

What Google's 1 October 2026 guidance adds

Google's updated page on using generative AI content says it's "critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content" before publishing.

That review covers titles, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text as well.

So whichever job you prioritise, a human checks every page before it goes live.

📞 Want the free workflow pointed at your own data?

Claim a free one-to-one GEO, AEO AI audit and leave with a custom game plan for Google and AI search.

→ Book the free call

The free brain behind the workflow, on GoldieBench

GEO and AEO don't ship their own models, because they're ways of publishing content.

The model only matters for the drafting and analysis part of the workflow, such as reading your Search Console export and drafting answer-first pages.

In my Hermes GEO video, the free brain was DeepSeek V4.1 Flash running inside OpenCode, which was free when I recorded.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash isn't on this board, so I can't give you a score for it.

The closest model on the board is DeepSeek V4 Flash, and its live page says the builds are on the bench but not yet scored, so it's unranked for now.

In another video I named other free brains inside OpenCode, and here's how the ones on the board score today.

LongCat-2.0 scores 8.12, but only on four demos, so I'd treat that number with care.

GLM-5.2 scores 7.77 over 47 demos, and the GLM-5.3 Flash version I mentioned in my video isn't on the board.

The free OpenCode line-up changes often, so check what's free on the day before you rely on it.

Qwen 3.8 and Claude Opus 5 are in the table as reference points, not because they're free.

What these scores do and don't tell you

GoldieBench scores one-shot builds, which is a different job from writing a GEO page or reading a Search Console export.

A higher score doesn't make an AI tool more likely to name your business.

What the scores do give you is a rough sense of how well a model follows a detailed brief, which matters when it's drafting pages for you.

Whatever model you pick, you still check every claim by hand.

Related reading on GoldieBench

My longer comparison of GEO and AEO covers the history and the overlap.

My free GEO audit post checks whether your pages are worth citing.

My AEO audit post shows how to take a baseline first.

If you want expert eyes on your plan, book a free strategy session and see the keywords you're closest to winning.

Also On Our Network

• Agent Operatorsthe operator setup for whichever one you pick first
• AI Income DeskGEO vs AEO priorities for every type of business
• AI Tool Verdict12 GEO and AEO tactics scored for impact and effort
• agentos.guidean Agent OS loop that sorts GEO from AEO questions
• agentos.guidemy Claude AI SEO rank #1 guide

Sort your buyer questions, do the shared work, and you'll know exactly where to start on generative engine optimization vs AEO.