What are AEO and GEO, and why do they matter now?

AEO and GEO are labels people now stamp on “show up when someone asks an assistant”. They are not products I sell, and they are not a rank I can buy you. A dental clinic in Green Park still needs a page that opens and a listing that is true. An agency that wants a package with those letters should ask what the package actually changes on the page.

I will not invent a lift from “AEO work”. I will point at what the companies themselves wrote.

What the labels are trying to name

People type a question into Google or into ChatGPT. They get a short answer and some links. Shop owners want to be one of those links. The new names are AEO, answer engine optimisation, and GEO, generative engine optimisation. They are marketing words. They are not a third search engine with a form I can submit you to.

Google’s note on AI features and your website says the usual SEO practices still apply, and that there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet. A page that cannot be crawled cannot be an answer.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT search help describes ranking as a mix of factors, with no promised first result. To be included, allow OAI-Searchbot to crawl the site, and allow their published IPs through the host.

What it means for a website to be found by ChatGPT is that crawl in plainer words. What schema markup is is the extra clues on the page. Whether a website will bring more customers is the refusal on a lift figure.

Labels, not a product on my pricing page

A Defence Colony clinic was offered an “AEO sprint” that never named robots.txt, never named the listing hours, and never named the wait on a phone. The deck sold letters. The page still hid the fee. I will not match that deck. Rs 30,000 is the site floor on pricing. It is not an AEO tariff. I will not add a second price for the acronym.

If an agency wants those letters on a slide for their own clients, ask what file changes. If the answer is “we write more FAQ copy”, that is copy. Call it copy. If the answer is a guaranteed citation, they are selling a slot the help pages do not sell.

What a small shop can actually do

Do the boring things.

• A website that opens on a phone. People leave after three seconds. A spinner cannot be cited.
• Hours, fees, the door, written as text, not only as a picture of a menu.
• A Google listing that matches the door. Google’s local ranking page says complete, accurate information makes a profile more likely to show, and that you cannot pay for a better local rank.
• robots.txt that does not block the crawlers you care about. I will not pretend I know ChatGPT picked you this week.

What I will not tell you

I will not tell you I can place you inside an AI Overview. Google does not sell that placement on that help page.

I will not tell you an agency “GEO sprint” is measured in extra chairs. Ask them for a number they can show from your own week, not from a deck.

I will not tell you schema alone makes an assistant read you out. Google says structured data helps it understand a page. It does not say a dental clinic in Saket then wins every “near me” answer.

Downside of chasing the acronym

You will pay for a PDF. The listing will still have last year’s Sunday. The page will still weigh too much. That is the usual waste.

Downside of ignoring assistants entirely: some people now ask a chat before they ask Maps. I cannot tell you how many in your colony. I have not surveyed Delhi NCR. I can tell you a page that never arrives still loses the ones who tap a link.

Office hours are Monday to Saturday.

What to do instead of buying the letters

Open your own URL. If it fails the wait, that is the job. If the listing is wrong, that is the job. If both are true, start with the listing.

Then get in touch if the page is the hole. Bring the URL, not an AEO brief. I will name a figure for a page that can be read, or I will tell you the page you have already can be read and the acronym can be ignored.