---
title: "GEO vs AEO vs LLM Optimization: What&#8217;s the Difference?"
date: "2025-02-15"
author: "Flavio Longato"
categories: ["GEO"]
url: "https://www.longato.ch/geo-aeo-llm-which-one/"
---

What does this GEO / AEO and LLM Optimization all mean?

 &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-pullquote&quot;&gt;&gt; *The optimization (improvement) of your content (be it website, video, images, document etc..) so that it has higher visibility on large-language models* (LLMs) / GPT

&lt;/figure&gt;GEO acronyms
------------

 &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt;&lt;table class=&quot;has-fixed-layout&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;**acronyms**&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;**Meaning**&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;GEO&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;**G**enerative **E**ngine **O**ptimization&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;AEO&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;**A**nswer **E**ngine **O**ptimisation&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;LLM&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;**L**arge **L**anguage **M**odels&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;

&lt;figcaption class=&quot;wp-element-caption&quot;&gt;This table explains each acronym used &lt;/figcaption&gt;&lt;/figure&gt;In essence, similar to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You want LLMs / GPTs to be able to:

1. Discover your content
2. Crawl and be able to extract information from this
3. Add this information to their knowledge graph
4. Answer questions in reference to this content
 
Common questions about **G**enerative **E**ngine **O**ptimization (GEO):
------------------------------------------------------------------------

&lt;div class=&quot;schema-faq wp-block-yoast-faq-block&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;schema-faq-section&quot; id=&quot;faq-question-1753948172006&quot;&gt;**Why don’t we just call it SEO?**Most people assume that “search” is in relation to a specific search engine such as Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go and so on. A GPT doesn’t “search” for spesific keywords / queries within an index of information. What it does is try to understand the intent of the prompt and deliver knowledge based on this.

 &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;schema-faq-section&quot; id=&quot;faq-question-1753948183304&quot;&gt;**One think you REALLY need to understand about modern LLMs:**Modern GPT LLMs often break prompts into search queries and run searches to find the most up to date information. They often only look on the 1st SERP (Search Engine Result Page) and then refresh the content they have. In essence, if the topic has some form of freshness i.e. younger than the last update of the model (GPT 4.0 is over 1 year old) then they will perform a search. Essentially, if you are not ranking on the first page of a search engine you will not be in the results.

 &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;schema-faq-section&quot; id=&quot;faq-question-1753948190416&quot;&gt;**Does this mean SEO is not dead?**100%, without search all models would be stuck to old and often out-data data. This is the only way the models currently can still give relevant information.

 &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;schema-faq-section&quot; id=&quot;faq-question-1753948198873&quot;&gt;**Does optimizing for SEO improve LLM visibility?**Most of the cases, yes!

 &lt;/div&gt; &lt;/div&gt;