Three acronyms, one piece of work.
The letters keep changing. What somebody has to do to your site does not.
What each one stands for
AIO is AI optimisation. AEO is answer engine optimisation. GEO is generative engine optimisation. All three describe getting named when somebody asks an assistant for a business like yours.
No standards body handed those out. They were coined separately, mostly by people who needed a word for a service they had started selling, and all three stuck.
What the three have in common
Everything that matters. A page that answers the question under the heading that asks it, details about the business that agree wherever a machine finds them, and other sites that back up what yours claims.
Nobody has yet described a technique that helps under one of these labels and not the others, because underneath they are pointed at the same handful of systems.
Why the naming keeps moving
A new word is easier to sell than a crowded one. SEO carries twenty years of arguments about what it costs and whether it worked. A fresh acronym carries none of that yet, which is convenient for whoever prints it first.
Nothing unusual in that, and nothing to resent. It just means the label on a quote tells you when somebody started offering the service, not how well they do it.
What to do when one turns up on a quote
Ask what changes on the site, in order, and what the first month looks like. A real answer names pages and sentences. A thin one names the acronym again and moves on.
Then ask what an assistant says about the business today, before any work starts. Whoever cannot tell you that is not measuring the thing the label refers to.
Questions worth asking
Is AIO different work from GEO?
Not in any way anybody has been able to describe. Treat a quote that separates them, and prices them separately, as one to ask about.
Which of the three should I use?
Whichever your customers and your accountant understand. We write AI search on this site because a shop owner reads it once and knows what it means, and we put the acronyms next to it so the two meet.
Will a new acronym replace these?
Probably, and it will describe the same work again. The test that survives every rename is simple: open an assistant and see whether it names you.
Send us the address and the town, and we will tell you which of the three your site is already ready for. It is usually the same answer for all three. Get a free audit.
Updated