In 2025, new terms are popping up for a growing marketing channel: traffic coming from AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Perplexity.

Let's break them down into plain talk.

Definition

AI SEO: Artificial Intelligence Search Engine Optimisation

Initially AI SEO meant to use AI to speed up SEO tasks e.g. keyword research or content writing. Today it also refers to traffic driven by LLMs.

AEO: Answer Engine Optimisation

It initially appeared with the rise of voice search and featured snippets, aiming to optimize content that answers questions directly in search results.

GEO: Generative Engine Optimisation

GEO was once referring to geo targeting / local SEO, optimising one’s visibility based on geography. focuses on visibility in AI-driven search engines. Now, GEO is more and more being used as a term to define optimisting LLM responses for search.

GAIO: Generative AI Optimisation

It emerged as tools like ChatGPT began shaping search behavior, focusing on optimising for conversational AI.

LLMO: Large Language Model Optimisation

Similar to GAIO, it’s about making your website content more appealing and relevant to these AI models, which are increasingly used in search and knowledge-based systems.

Usage popularity

In Google Search [1], we see

• 181,000,000 results for AI SEO

• 600,000 results for GEO SEO

• 570,000 results for AEO SEO

• 335,000 results for LLMO

• 95,000 results for GAIO SEO

Search queries were adjusted to exclude non-relevant results e.g. local geo seo

Looking at Google Trends [2], LLMO, AEO and GEO (”AI SEO” was excluded as it can means many things) are roughly the same, with the latter being slightly above.

When looking at major SEO tools [1]:

• Ahrefs likesLLMO

• Semrush uses AEO

• SurferSEO goes with GEO

Bottom line

No clear winner yet, though GEO and AEO are slightly ahead.

Here's what matters: they all mean the same thing – making your content work well with AI search.

Given that ChatGPT is the world's sixth most-visited website, it's not something to ignore [3].

Citations

[1] https://www.google.com/

[2] https://trends.google.com/trends/

[3] https://x.com/Similarweb/status/1909544985629721070

This article was partially written by AI but finalised and fact checked by a human.