As of May 2026, GEO, AEO, and LLMO have no unified definitions within the industry. After researching all three, I chose the word "GEO" — because it comes closest to the concept of "organizing the information bridge between brands and AI." I believe that rather than getting caught up in differences in terminology, the essence is creating a state in which your company correctly appears in AI responses.
My Company's Relationship With AI
I spent 20 years in the mail-order industry, and now I serve as CMO of a company called FID Inc. FID originally developed and sold CRM (customer management) and EC cart systems, and there has always been a team doing AI research in-house. So AI has always been a relatively familiar presence for me.
Personally, I started with ChatGPT, and gradually began using Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity based on the task at hand. Claude is strong for organizing long texts, Perplexity suits information gathering, and Gemini has good compatibility with document work — that sort of thing. Having built the habit of using AI for work, I thought I had an intuitive sense of "what AI is doing."
When I Got Interested in GEO, I Couldn't Figure Out the Terminology
I first came across the term GEO when I started becoming conscious of "whether my company appears in AI responses." I had been doing SEO in practice for a long time, so I understood the difference between GEO and SEO intuitively. The problem came when I researched all three: GEO, AEO, and LLMO.
Different articles said different things. Some wrote "AEO is the predecessor of GEO," while others organized them as "GEO and AEO are separate practices." As for LLMO, there was a mix of people using it synonymously with GEO and people explaining it as a concept specifically for optimization of LLM (Large Language Model) training data. I was quite confused at first. "So what exactly is it that we're doing?" I couldn't even answer that myself.
As of May 2026, I Realized the Definitions Are Simply Not Aligned
As I continued researching, what became clear was that this isn't a matter of "one of them being wrong" — the definitions simply haven't solidified.
A Search Engine Land article (October 2025) stated: "Whether you call it AI SEO, GEO, AEO, or LLMO — the name is a secondary issue." Ahrefs also explained that "GEO is used synonymously with AEO and LLMO" (September 2025).
The situation is similar in Japanese-language articles, with a mix of those using GEO and AEO to mean the same thing, and those explaining them as clearly distinct. Rather than one being correct, I think the concept itself is still evolving.
At Genview, our team has been digging through overseas materials to organize the differences between each concept. Also see Differences Between GEO and SEO and Differences Between GEO and AEO for additional reference.
Why I Chose the Word GEO
After comparing all three terms, I chose "GEO" as our word. The reason is that GEO comes closest to the concept of "organizing the information bridge between brands and AI."
AEO leans more toward content section-level optimization (FAQs and featured snippets), while LLMO is heavy on the context of impact on LLM (Large Language Model) training data — on a span of months to years. In contrast, GEO has the breadth of "optimization for generative AI in general," which aligns with the direction of "getting AI to correctly recognize your brand." There is less of a gap between what I am aiming for and what the word means. That is why I chose GEO.
How to Approach It
Drawing on 20 years of marketing experience in the mail-order industry, I believe that even as the tools change — advertising, email, social media, AI — the essence remains the same. The question "is our company's information correctly reaching our customers and the general public?" is the same across every channel.
Rather than focusing on differences in terminology between GEO, AEO, and LLMO, I feel the two things marketers should be looking at are: "Is our company's information being accurately conveyed to AI?" and "Is our company's information correctly reaching our customers and the general public through AI?"
If you're confused about terminology, start by asking AI "Tell me about your company." Whether that response aligns with what you truly want to convey — that is the starting point for GEO strategy. And if the answer is off, that is "what needs to be organized." Check Genview's glossary to confirm each concept in detail.