AEO vs GEO vs SEO: what’s the difference for an online store?
SEO gets your pages ranked in search results so shoppers click through. AEO (answer engine optimisation) shapes content so search engines and assistants can lift it as a direct answer, like a featured snippet or a voice reply. GEO (generative engine optimisation) gets your brand mentioned and cited inside AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. For an online store, all three share one foundation, so run them as one plan.
- SEO earns clicks, AEO earns answers, GEO earns mentions and citations in AI-generated responses.
- All three rest on the same foundation: pages that are crawlable, clearly structured and trusted by other sites.
- AI traffic to retail sites is still small but growing fast, and it converts well.
- Collections and buying guides do the heaviest lifting for all three on an online store.
- Measure separately: rankings and clicks for SEO, answer features for AEO, prompt-level mentions for GEO.
What are SEO, AEO and GEO?
They’re three goals on the same search journey. The labels overlap, and agencies use them loosely, but this is the distinction that matters for an online store:
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stands for | Search engine optimisation | Answer engine optimisation | Generative engine optimisation |
| Goal | Rank pages and earn clicks | Be the direct answer | Be mentioned and cited in AI answers |
| Where it shows | Google and Bing results | Featured snippets, People Also Ask, voice | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews |
| Success looks like | Rankings, organic visits, sales | Your answer shown, often with a link | Your brand named for buying prompts |
| Leans on | Your own pages | Your own pages | Your pages and what others say about you |
Why do AEO and GEO matter for eCommerce now?
Because shoppers now ask assistants what to buy, and the numbers grew quickly through 2025:
Adobe also found AI-referred shoppers converted 31% more than visitors from other sources over the 2025 holidays. At the same time, AI answers take clicks away from ordinary results: Pew Research found people clicked a regular result on 8% of searches with an AI summary, against 15% without one.
So the job has changed. Ranking still matters, but being the brand the answer names matters more each year.
How do SEO, AEO and GEO overlap?
Mostly, they share one foundation. An AI engine can’t cite a page it can’t crawl, and it won’t quote a page that buries the answer. Google’s AI Overviews draw on Google’s own index, so weak SEO usually means weak AI visibility too.
Where they differ is emphasis. AEO is about formatting answers so they can be lifted cleanly. GEO adds a third-party layer: AI engines weigh reviews, comparisons and niche publications heavily, so what other sites say about you matters as much as your own pages.
Which store pages matter most for SEO, AEO and GEO?
On a Shopify or WooCommerce store, a few page types carry almost all of the work:
| Page | SEO role | AEO role | GEO role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collections and categories | Rank for category searches | Answer-first intro and FAQs | Clear range facts AI can repeat |
| Product pages | Rank for model searches | Specs in plain sentences | Consistent price, stock and reviews |
| Buying guides | Rank for “best X” searches | Direct picks and reasons | The pages AI cites for recommendations |
| Comparison pages | Rank for “X vs Y” | A one-line verdict | Often quoted word for word |
| FAQ and help pages | Long-tail questions | One question, one answer | Supporting facts |
Start with your top collections. They’re where the three overlap most, which is why our Shopify collection page SEO guide covers AI answers too.
How do you run SEO, AEO and GEO as one plan?
Don’t split them into three projects. Work in this order, because each step makes the next one count for more:
- Foundations (SEO): crawlable URLs, one URL per product, fast templates, clean indexing.
- Structure (AEO): answer-first intros, one question per heading, FAQs and comparison tables.
- Facts (AEO + GEO): Product, Offer, Review and FAQ structured data; consistent names and prices everywhere.
- Reputation (GEO): mentions and reviews on the niche sites AI engines already cite in your category.
- Measurement (all three): rankings, answer features and a fixed set of buying prompts, checked monthly.
Those are our clients’ own results after we started combined AEO and GEO work. See AI search optimisation for how we run it.
How do you measure AEO and GEO?
Each needs its own scoreboard:
| Discipline | What to track | Where |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Rankings, clicks, organic revenue | Search Console, GA4 |
| AEO | Featured snippets and People Also Ask you own | Search Console queries, rank trackers |
| GEO | Mentions and citations for a fixed set of buying prompts | Monthly prompt checks across engines, AI visibility tools |
| All | Visits from AI assistants | A custom GA4 channel |
For the last row, our guide to tracking ChatGPT and Perplexity traffic in GA4 walks through the setup.