AEO and gEO are new complex sounding acronyms but the underlying idea is simple. AI systems behave more like smart readers than traditional search crawlers. They reward clarity, coherence and consistency.
If your website tells the truth about what you do in clear, concrete, human-readable language both AEO and gEO should work in your favour.
5 minute read
Insights
For twenty years SEO has meant making your website discoverable by search engines that return a list of links. That world is changing. Increasingly, customers state a question in natural language and receive an answer rather than a page of search results. AI systems are taking on the role of an interpreter. They read, summarise and decide what information to surface.
This shift does not make SEO irrelevant as many claim. It changes the shape of the work. Instead of designing for a crawler that indexes keywords, you are designing for a model that interprets meaning, context and clarity. The objective remains the same, helping customers find you. There is just a new method to design for.
Understanding these new rules is essential for businesses, especially those that rely on bookings or reservations. If an AI agent cannot understand what you offer, you risk disappearing from the conversations where customers make decisions.
Traditional search engines rely heavily on keywords, structured tags and backlinks. They match patterns. AI-based systems behave more like readers. They look for clear explanations, consistent signals across your site and enough context to understand what you actually do. This is why vague slogans perform poorly in AI search. A line like “We create unforgettable experiences” tells a machine nothing. A line like “We run guided sea-kayaking tours in Cornwall for beginners and intermediate paddlers” tells it almost everything it needs.
AI systems reward signals that are factual, unambiguous and supported by context. This requires very literal writing, it is less brand led and your tone of voice can suffer but it is clear and explicit.
As AI systems become the first stop for many customer queries, two new ideas are becoming important, AEO and gEO. They sound technical, but the principles behind them are straightforward.
Where AEO focuses on being included in an answer, gEO focuses on being understood correctly. This matters because generative models form their conclusions by interpreting your content, not just scanning for keywords. AI systems extract meaning. They do not reward abstract marketing language. Write your service descriptions as if someone needs to understand them with no prior context. Say what you do, where you do it and how it works.
AI systems weigh E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) heavily. To signal credibility:
We estimate that content with specific data points is 30–40% more likely to appear in AI answers.
Don’t throw SEO out the window. GEO builds on SEO by adding structure for machines. Schema, clear subheadings, and concise summaries improve your performance both in traditional search and in AI summaries. As we explain in our post on how to optimise your website for LLM search, the approaches overlap.
In an answer-driven world, you are no longer competing for ranking position. You are competing for inclusion. The model chooses what it believes is the clearest, most trustworthy and most relevant source. This raises the stakes for clarity.
The good news is that unlike traditional SEO, which can feel technical and opaque, optimising for AI search relies on common sense of accuracy, coherence and useful information. If you run a business, the advantage is yours. You can adjust quickly. A few focused improvements can make a noticeable difference in your visibility.
Breezy is used by businesses across the UK, Europe and America. Our mission is to ensure that all businesses, regardless of size, can take advantage of the AI revolution.
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