SEO gets you ranked. AEO gets you cited in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Here's the difference between the two — and what to actually do about it.
Filipe Lins Duarte
|November 5, 2025|Updated March 28, 2026|7 min read|SEO
If you’re in marketing, you’ve spent years mastering Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But as AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity become the new starting point for customer discovery, a new acronym is entering the conversation: AEO. This guide breaks down what AEO is, how it differs from SEO, and what you need to do to make sure your brand shows up in the new era of AI-powered search.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website and content to rank higher in traditional search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google and Bing. The primary goal of SEO is to drive organic traffic to your website by appearing in the top results for relevant keywords. This involves a wide range of tactics, including on-page optimization (content, keywords, meta tags), off-page optimization (backlinks, brand mentions), and technical SEO (site speed, crawlability, mobile-friendliness).
For years, SEO has been the cornerstone of digital marketing. It’s about winning the click on the results page. But as AI continues to change how users find information, simply ranking on Google is no longer enough.
That said, the SEO fundamentals still matter. Keyword rankings, backlink health, and technical site hygiene don't stop being relevant just because AI search is growing.
What is AEO (and is it the same as GEO)?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the process of optimizing your content and data to be found, understood, and recommended by AI-powered answer engines. Understanding how AI answer engines decide what to recommend is what makes AEO fundamentally different from traditional SEO, which focuses on driving clicks from a list of results.
See where you appear insearch.See where you appear in search.
You may have also heard other terms floating around, like Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or AI Search Optimization (AIO). The industry is still settling on a standard term, and different people use different acronyms. For example, Microsoft Advertising has published a guide on AEO and GEO, defining them as two sides of the same coin:
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): Optimizing for clarity and ensuring AI assistants can find and present your information effectively.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): Optimizing for credibility and establishing your brand as a trustworthy, authoritative source for generative AI.
Ultimately, whether you call it AEO, GEO, or AIO, the goal is the same: to influence what AI engines think and say about your brand. It's about shifting from a strategy of discovery (getting found in a list) to a strategy of influence (being the answer), and tracking traffic from ChatGPT is one of the clearest ways to measure your progress.
What Brands Need to Do to Show Up in AEO
Optimizing for AI requires a different mindset than traditional SEO. It’s less about keywords and more about clarity, context, and credibility. Here are the key things you need to do to show up in AI-generated answers:
Structure Your Content for Answers: AI models look for clear, concise answers to specific questions. Structure your content with headings that mirror likely user queries, use short paragraphs, and focus on one main idea per block. Start with a direct claim or definition, then provide supporting details.
Make Your Data Machine-Readable: AI systems rely on structured data to understand your products and services. Implement schema markup (Product, Offer, Brand, FAQ, etc.) to give AI clear, consistent information about your offerings. This is especially critical for e-commerce brands, as AI uses this data for price, availability, and feature comparisons.
Establish Authority and Trust (GEO): AI models prioritize credible sources. Show your work by linking to primary sources, including dates on your content, and encouraging reviews and user-generated content. The more the AI sees your brand cited and trusted by others, the more likely it is to recommend you.
Ensure Your Website is Crawlable and Fast: Just like with traditional SEO, technical health is critical. AI agents and crawlers need to be able to access and interpret your site easily. Ensure your site is fast, mobile-friendly, and free of technical errors that could prevent AI from understanding your content.
Think in Entities, Not Just Keywords: AI models understand the world in terms of entities (people, places, products, brands). Make sure you have clear, unambiguous pages for your brand, products, and key people. This helps the AI connect the dots and understand who you are and what you do.
The Best AI Visibility Tools for AEO
To succeed with AEO, you need to be able to measure your performance. Traditional SEO tools aren't built for this, which is why a new category of AI visibility platforms has emerged. I spent months testing the best AI visibility platforms in the market, and the best AI monitoring tools for marketing teams is the result of that research. Here are a few of the top tools that can help you track and improve your AEO performance:
Tool
Starting Price
AI Engines Tracked
Best For
Free Trial
AI Peekaboo
$50/mo
ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode
Agencies and brands needing white-label reporting
14 days
Profound
$99/mo
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews (up to 10 on Enterprise)
Enterprise teams with content optimisation needs
Yes (Growth plan)
Peec AI
€85/mo
ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Grok
AI Peekaboo tracks your brand across five AI engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode. You define a bank of prompts your customers would realistically ask, and Peekaboo runs them on a daily cadence, showing whether your brand gets mentioned, how often, and what the AI actually says about you.
It's built for both brands and agencies. The multi-client dashboard lets agencies manage several clients in one place, and white-label reporting means you can send Peekaboo reports under your own brand. Competitor tracking is included on all plans, so you're not just watching yourself.
Pricing: Starter at $50/month (40 prompts, tracking every 2 days), Peek at $100/month (40 prompts, daily), Grow at $200/month (100 prompts, daily). 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Best for: Agencies running AI visibility for clients, and brands that want daily tracking across all five major AI engines without paying enterprise-level pricing.
Profound
Profound is one of the more established platforms in the AI visibility space, built for enterprise teams. It tracks brand mentions and share of voice across AI answer engines, surfaces what prompts users are asking, and includes built-in content generation and optimisation tools. Its Agent Analytics feature connects AI-sourced traffic back to your domains so you can see what's actually driving conversions from AI search. If you're evaluating it, it's worth looking at alternatives to Profound alongside it before committing.
Pricing: Starter at $99/month (ChatGPT only, 50 prompts), Growth at $399/month (3 engines, 100 prompts, content generation included), Enterprise is custom.
Best for: Larger marketing teams that need multi-engine tracking, content optimisation tooling, and detailed share-of-voice reporting in one platform.
Peec AI
Peec AI focuses on tracking brand mentions and citation quality across AI answers. It covers seven models including ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, and Grok. All plans include unlimited users and daily tracking, and multi-country support is available on the Advanced plan. You can check out alternatives to Peec AI if you want to compare before deciding.
Pricing: Starter at €85/month (50 prompts, 3 models, 1 project), Pro at €205/month (150 prompts, 2 projects), Advanced at €425/month (350 prompts, 5 projects, multi-country). Enterprise is custom.
Best for: SEO and content teams that want clean, focused AI visibility data without a bloated feature set. The unlimited users policy makes it easy to scale across a team.
Promptwatch
Promptwatch sits at the intersection of visibility tracking and content creation. Beyond showing you where your brand appears in AI answers, it generates optimisation recommendations and produces AI-ready articles to help close the gaps it finds. It tracks across all major LLMs with country and city-level granularity on higher plans.
Pricing: Essential at $99/month (1 website, 50 prompts, 5 generated articles), Professional at $249/month (2 websites, 150 prompts, 15 articles), Business at $579/month (5 websites, 350 prompts, 30 articles).
Best for: Marketers who want a single tool for both monitoring AI visibility and generating content to improve it. Particularly useful if you're just starting out with AEO and want actionable recommendations built in.
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Filipe Lins Duarte
I'm Filipe, the CEO & Co-Founder of Peekaboo. I lead all commercial and customer facing functions here at the company. I am obsessed about making sure our customers are heard and have a great experience with us!
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