What the two words mean
GEO stands for generative engine optimisation. AEO stands for answer engine optimisation. Both describe work aimed at being visible when someone asks an AI assistant or an AI search feature a question and gets a written answer instead of a list of links.
Google's guide for site owners names both terms and says you may see them used for this kind of work. It also says that, from its point of view, optimising for generative AI search is optimising for the search experience, and so it is still SEO.
What Google says you do not need
The same guide has a list of things to ignore for Google Search:
- New machine-readable files, AI text files such as llms.txt, or special markup. Google Search ignores them.
- Chopping your content into tiny pieces for AI to read.
- Rewriting your pages in a special way just for AI systems.
- Hunting for fake mentions of your business across the web. Google says this is not as helpful as it might seem.
- Special schema.org markup. Structured data is still useful for other reasons, but it is not required for AI search.
It also warns that making a separate page for every possible way people might ask, mainly to game the results, breaks its spam policy on scaled content.
What Google says does matter
A page can only be shown as a supporting link if it is indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet. Google lists no additional technical requirements for its AI features, and it says indexing and serving are never promised.
Beyond that, the guide points to the basics: content that is helpful, reliable and written for people, with a point of view that comes from real experience; pages that can be crawled; and a good experience on phones. It adds that answers about local businesses can draw on Google Business Profile information, so that profile should be complete and current.
What this means for a shop, salon or clinic in India
This part is our advice, not a Google rule.
- Verify your Business Profile and fill it in fully: address, hours, category, services, photos. Google says complete and accurate profiles are more likely to appear in local results.
- Put the same facts on a plain page of your own website: what you do, where you are, what it costs, how to book. Make sure that page is indexed.
- Answer your reviews in the language the customer used.
- Write about what only you know: the questions customers really ask you, how you work, what happens at the first visit. Pages that only repeat what every other site says give an AI system no reason to pick yours.
What nobody can promise
Nobody outside Google can promise you a place in its AI answers, and Google itself says it does not promise that a page is indexed or shown. Other assistants do not publish how they choose, so anything said about them is a guess.
Google also warns site owners to be wary of third-party tools that promise ranking success or claim to use its internal metrics, because no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems. Use such tools if they help you, but judge their advice against Google's own guidance.
How to see whether it is working
If your website is verified in Search Console, Google says its Generative AI performance report shows how people find your content through these features. It costs nothing.
You can also ask your customers' questions on a few AI assistants, write down which businesses each one names, and repeat on another day. Answers differ between assistants and between days, so one look proves little. Repeating the check every few weeks shows whether your fixes changed anything.
Check your Business Profile is complete today, or ask for the free AI visibility snapshot.
How this post was made: an AI drafted it from the official pages listed under Sources, every figure was checked against those pages, and the Reveaxa team approved it before it was published. Our own advice is marked as such. If a source changes, we update the post and its date.
Reveaxa guide reference: RVX-B-what-are-geo-and-aeo-for-local-business