You'll see three terms a lot in Citera. They overlap, but they measure different things.
SEO (search engine optimization)
Improving how your pages rank in search results such as Google and Bing. The user sees a list of links and does the comparing themselves.
AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization)
Improving whether AI assistants and AI search features, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, name and cite your brand inside the answer. The terms are used almost interchangeably. Here, the AI does the comparing and gives a synthesized answer, often with a few cited sources.
Why they don't always move together
Rankings are per page; AI answers are per entity. Assistants build a picture of your company from everything they've seen, everywhere.
Commercial questions are often answered from third-party sources such as review sites, forums and editorial content, not vendor pages.
AI extracts passages. A page can rank well but lack a clear, self-contained answer an assistant can quote.
AI questions are longer and more conversational than typical search keywords.
A brand can rank well on Google and still be missing from AI answers, and the reverse can happen too. That's why Citera measures them separately.
Why SEO still matters
Google AI Overviews and Gemini are grounded in Google's search results, so strong conventional SEO remains an important foundation. Citera covers both: organic search data from Google Search Console, Google Analytics 4 and Bing Webmaster, alongside AI visibility tracking.
What helps both
Consistent descriptions of what you do, everywhere
Clear, quotable passages that answer specific questions
Presence in the third-party sources your category is answered from
Fresh content with visible dates
A site that crawlers, including AI crawlers, can access