AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) targets the AI overview boxes inside Google, Perplexity, You.com, and SearchGPT. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) targets the conversational answers your buyers get from ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. They are not the same as SEO. AdMax runs them as two distinct disciplines inside one engagement.
The work spans on-site structure, off-site presence, and weekly measurement. None of these are optional — skipping any one leaves visible holes in answer-engine coverage.
Organization, Service, FAQPage, HowTo, Article, BreadcrumbList, Product where it fits. AEO crawlers (Google AI Overviews, Perplexity) parse structured data first; their citation graph rewards sites that hand them clean facts. AdMax adds, validates, and refreshes JSON-LD across every page worth ranking.
An llms.txt file at root, a sitemap pointed at every cornerstone page, an answer-shaped FAQ on every service page, and an About page that an LLM can summarize without inventing facts. We treat the site as a knowledge artifact LLMs ingest, not a brochure humans skim.
Every cornerstone page covers a question buyers actually type into AI: "What is...", "How does...", "Why use... vs ...", "Best ... for ...". The answer leads with a one-paragraph definition (citable verbatim by Perplexity), then a deeper explainer, then proof.
GEO is won off-site. AdMax places founder bylines in trade press, produces podcast appearances with public transcripts, contributes to open-source repos, and seeds Wikipedia-adjacent sources. These are what LLMs ingest at training time — without them, you do not show up in ChatGPT recommendations.
We track which AI overviews mention you, which Perplexity answers cite you, and which ChatGPT recommendations include you. The metrics for AEO and GEO are not Google rankings — they are mention rate, citation rate, and recommendation rate inside the answer engines. AdMax reports those weekly.
Concrete, dated, owned by a named member of the AAAT or your senior strategist. Each deliverable links to a metric we report on weekly.
The same questions buyers ask answer engines about answer engines. Every answer here is written to be cited verbatim.
AEO is the practice of making your brand the source AI overviews, Perplexity, You.com, and SearchGPT cite when users ask question-shaped queries. AEO is distinct from SEO because the surface is different (an AI-generated answer box, not a list of blue links), the ranking signal is different (structured data and citable claims, not backlinks alone), and the citation model is different (direct attribution to source URLs).
GEO is the practice of making your brand show up inside conversational answers from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other large language models. GEO rewards being present on the web in places LLMs ingest at training time — trade press, podcast transcripts, public repos, Wikipedia-adjacent sources — not just on-site optimization. GEO success is measured by recommendation rate inside LLM answers, not by Google rankings.
SEO ranks pages in a list of blue links. AEO inserts your brand inside an AI-generated answer, with citation. SEO is dominated by backlinks and on-page keywords. AEO is dominated by structured data (schema), citable facts, and a clean answer surface — short, definitive, hand-off-ready. A site can be top-3 in Google and invisible to AI overviews if its structure is wrong for AEO.
SEO targets crawlers that index the web every few days. GEO targets LLMs that train on a snapshot of the web. Once an LLM is trained, on-site changes do not influence it until the next training cycle. The signals that move GEO are off-site: press coverage, podcast transcripts, GitHub READMEs, public talks. SEO can move in a week; GEO moves in quarters.
If your buyers use Google AI Overviews or Perplexity, you need AEO. If your buyers ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for recommendations, you need GEO. Most B2B and high-consideration B2C brands need both. AdMax runs them as separate workstreams inside the same engagement, with distinct deliverables and distinct metrics.
On-page AEO work — schema, FAQ pages, llms.txt — can lift mention rates inside two to four weeks once Google AI Overviews and Perplexity recrawl. The lift is most visible on question-shaped queries where your competitors have not done the structural work.
GEO is measured in quarters, not weeks. LLM training cycles are slow, and recommendations are influenced by the volume and quality of web mentions over time. AdMax sets a 90- to 180-day horizon for GEO and reports leading indicators (press placements, podcast appearances, public-repo activity) monthly.
Yes. The AAAT and the senior strategist run press outreach, podcast booking, contributed-byline pitches, and open-source releases as part of the engagement. Off-site work is where most marketing agencies stop and most LLMs start ranking.
Want to see how AdMax is doing it for our own brand? This page itself is the tactic: schema, llms.txt, answer-shaped content, and citation tracking — all live. Book a thirty-minute call to map your AEO and GEO surface.