(FIELD GUIDE / SEARCH DISCOVERY)
SEO. AEO. GEO.
One connected foundation.
SEO helps make useful pages discoverable in search. AEO focuses on clear answers to buyer questions. GEO examines how a business is represented and cited in generated answers. These are overlapping disciplines that should connect to one business goal.
What changes in the work?
| Discipline | Practical work | Useful evidence |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Crawl and index eligibility, page intent, technical quality, internal links and credible content. | Queries, canonical landing pages, clicks and relevant enquiries. |
| AEO | Direct definitions, clear processes, useful comparisons and specific answers. | Answer coverage, accurate explanations and observed answer-surface inclusion. |
| GEO | Accurate entity facts, source quality, original evidence and repeated citation sampling. | Actual cited pages, brand mentions, referrals and business outcomes. |
A worked example: a B2B service
Suppose a buyer needs help routing website enquiries. A useful commercial page explains the problem, the intake fields, routing rules, ownership and what happens when delivery fails. A supporting guide explains how to check whether a lead actually reached the CRM. This is an illustrative page-design example, not a performance claim.
The same source can serve a search visitor, a direct buyer question and a generated answer. A clear CTA then connects the information to a received enquiry. Publishing separate near-identical pages for each acronym adds little value.
What Google actually requires
Google says its existing SEO practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode. There are no additional special requirements or special schema needed for those features. Pages still need to be eligible for search and useful to people.
Use structured data to describe visible, accurate content. Do not add fabricated ratings, unsupported results or invisible answers to make a page appear more authoritative.
Measure each step separately
- Eligibility: can the source be reached and indexed?
- Inclusion: did the sampled product surface the source or name the brand?
- Citation: did the actual answer link to a specific page?
- Referral: did someone arrive from an identifiable answer source?
- Enquiry: did a valid request reach the business system?
- Qualification: did the sales team confirm fit and a next step?
Choose the first intervention
If important pages cannot be indexed, fix that before writing more content. If a page gets relevant visits but no enquiries, inspect the offer and contact path. If the content is accurate but weakly represented in AI answers, inspect the cited sources and missing evidence before increasing volume.
Explore JMI’s search system · Read the enquiry measurement guideSources and review
Updated 22 October 2026. Platform guidance and provider pages can change; confirm scope and current details before making a decision.
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