What is the difference between AEO and SEO?

For Google, the overlap is nearly complete. Its guide to optimizing for AI search says AI Overviews and AI Mode are rooted in the same ranking and quality systems as the rest of Search. They retrieve pages from the Search index and write a response from what those pages say, with links to the pages that support it.

That sets the entry conditions. To be eligible for Google's AI features, a page has to be indexed, eligible to be shown with a snippet, and included through a setting in Search Console. Google's page on AI features and your website says there are no additional requirements and no special optimizations. You don't need special schema, an llms.txt file, content cut into small chunks or a writing style made for AI.

So for Google, a page that isn't indexed has the same problem in both places. AEO doesn't offer a way around it. We explain the mechanics in how answer engine optimization works.

A conventional results page gives the reader a list of links, and the reader chooses one. A generated answer presents a written response with links to the pages that support it. Your page can inform that response and be one of those links.

The route to a generated answer can run through other searches. Google describes a technique called query fan-out, in which the model issues several related searches at once to gather more material. In its example, a search for how to fix a lawn full of weeds leads to a related search on preventing them. A page about prevention can end up supporting an answer to a question about fixing.

A page can be drawn into an answer through a related search, so it helps to know which neighboring questions a page answers and whether it offers something the other sources don't. Google's guide says its systems look at a variety of sources, and that a first-hand account or an expert view stands out where a summary of common knowledge doesn't.

That doesn't mean writing a page for every neighboring question. Google says that creating separate content for each variation, mainly to manipulate rankings or AI responses, violates its spam policy on scaled content. That's one of the errors we cover in the biggest AEO mistakes to avoid.

In SEO, access mostly means letting a search engine crawl and index your pages. AEO adds controls that are specific to AI features, and each company has its own.

Google added one to Search Console, available to every site since August 31, 2026. The generative AI control includes or excludes a site from AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative features in Discover. Sites are included by default. Excluding a site removes it from those features and, by Google's account, isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal anywhere else in Search. A site can therefore be eligible for ordinary search results and absent from Google's AI answers.

OpenAI works differently. Its crawler documentation lists OAI-SearchBot, which surfaces sites in ChatGPT's search features, and GPTBot, which collects content for model training. Each is set independently in robots.txt. A site that opts out of OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link.

So what Google documents about its own index doesn't carry over to other products. A site in good order for Google can be missing from ChatGPT search because of one line in a file. Other products publish their own rules, and we go through them in which AI platforms an AEO strategy should target.

Search Console reports how often your pages were shown in search results and how often they were clicked. Analytics shows what the visitors it records did next.

For its AI features, Google now gives part of that picture. The generative AI performance report counts impressions, meaning the times a link to your site was shown in AI Overviews or AI Mode. You can group them by page, country, date or device. It tells you that a link was displayed. It doesn't tell you that anyone became a customer.

Outside Google, you measure more of it yourself. You can count the visits your analytics attributes to an AI product and see what those visitors do. You can also run a fixed set of questions and record whether you're cited, which gives you a sample and not a total. We lay out the setup in how to track traffic and referrals from AI answer engines.

Since the foundation is shared, we'd build AEO on the SEO work you already do. Crawling, indexing and useful pages serve both, so the two efforts should draw on one technical foundation, however the teams are organized.

Lean Labs' description of its AEO service shows how the pieces sit together. The question list comes from sales calls, CRM insights and Search Console demand, so search data is one of the inputs. The answers are expert-led and published on the client's HubSpot site. The technical step includes crawl health and indexing checks, which is plain SEO. Measurement then adds the new layer: mentions, citations and prompt coverage are tracked beside AI referral visits and the contacts, deals and pipeline recorded in the CRM.

Much of that list is work an SEO team would recognize. What this service adds is its focus on a managed set of buyer questions and on tracking mentions and citations in AI answers.

Suppose one of your pages already ranks third for a search your buyers use. You'd check whether it holds that place and whether people click. For the same page, you'd also check whether it's linked when a generated answer handles that search or a related one, and whether each product's search crawler is allowed to reach it. Both sets of checks describe one page.