AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) describe the same practice: making sure your business is cited, and accurately described, in the answers of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google’s AI Overviews. Two names, one discipline, one method.
Two names for the same work
You read GEO on our site and AEO in your HubSpot account. You may wonder whether you have to pick one. You don’t: it is the same work, seen from two angles.
AEO focuses on what these engines do: they give an answer rather than a list of links. GEO focuses on how they produce it: they generate it. Either way, the question facing your brand is the same. When a future partner asks an AI “which agency should I choose” or “which supplier for my project”, does your name come up? And if it does, is it described accurately?
Where the two terms come from
AEO is the older of the two. It spread in the late 2010s, with Google’s featured snippets and voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa, when the goal was already to be the answer rather than one link among ten.
GEO comes from academic research. It was named in November 2023 by a team of researchers from Princeton and other institutions, in the paper “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, later presented at the KDD 2024 conference. Investors picked it up: Andreessen Horowitz adopted it in its May 2025 thesis.
No definition tells them apart today. People use one for the other, and that makes sense: they describe the same phenomenon.
Why AEO is taking hold
One term always ends up winning. SEO prevailed over all its rivals, and nobody remembers the others. We believe AEO will follow the same path, and we have a concrete reason to think so: HubSpot chose this term, in English and in French, and turned it into a product, HubSpot AEO. The best-known tracking tools also talk about AEO.
The vocabulary of the tool a partner uses every day ends up becoming theirs. That is why we now use AEO and GEO side by side. We are not changing trades. We are speaking your language.
What does not change: the method
A new name changes nothing in how we work. Our method rests on two separate measurements, and that is what makes it usable.
- Your site score. Eight weighted criteria, each scored out of 10, including structured data, ease of extraction, question-and-answer format, topical depth, authority signals, multi-source presence and E-E-A-T credibility. The three criteria that decide whether AI engines can access your content account for half of the score. This score tells you what your brand offers the engines. Learn more: our GEO score.
- Visibility tests. 100 strategic queries, put to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini, for 400 real tests, each scored from 0 to 3 points depending on your brand’s position in the answer. These tests tell you what the engines actually do with your brand. Learn more: our testing protocol.
The first tells you why. The second tells you where you stand. Together, they tell you what to do.
HubSpot AEO, operated by Sekoia
As a HubSpot Gold partner, we set up and operate HubSpot AEO for our partners. The tool tracks your brand’s presence in AI answers: mentions, citations, sentiment and share of voice against your competitors. It is an excellent dashboard, right inside your HubSpot.
We do three things with it: we configure it with the right queries, we read its indicators every month, and we turn them into an action plan. Learn more: our HubSpot services.
To learn how to interpret each of these metrics, read HubSpot AEO: how to read mentions, citations, sentiment and share of voice.
Going further with Klide
A dashboard tells you whether you are cited. It does not tell you why, or what to fix first. That is where Klide, our in-house tool, comes in.
Klide goes deeper: it analyses your site against the eight criteria of our score and ties every gap it finds to a concrete action, page by page. Where a dashboard stops at the finding, Klide delivers a method your team can apply.
Transparency. Depth. Results.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to choose between AEO and GEO?
No. Both terms describe the same practice: getting cited in AI engine answers. What matters is the method you apply and what you measure. Whether your team says AEO or GEO, the work on your site and on your presence elsewhere on the web is exactly the same.
Does AEO replace SEO?
No, it builds on it. AI engines draw on the web that SEO has structured: a slow, poorly tagged or poorly linked site is also poorly understood by an AI. SEO makes you findable, AEO makes you citable. We work on both together. Learn more: our SEO approach.
Do I need HubSpot to do AEO?
No. HubSpot AEO is a very good tracking tool for companies already on HubSpot, and we operate it for them. Without HubSpot, our method and Klide measure the same things: your site score and your visibility in the answers of four AI engines.
How do I know whether AI engines cite my business?
By asking the questions your customers ask, to the AI engines they use, in a repeatable way. That is what our protocol does: 100 queries, 4 platforms, 400 tests. To get started, our free AI visibility audit tests your brand live, in 30 minutes.
Will you rename your services to AEO?
Gradually. For now, we use both terms side by side. Our pages, our method and our deliverables stay the same: only the vocabulary will follow our partners’ usage.
Further reading
- AI search engine optimization
- Our GEO expertise
- The complete GEO guide 2026
- Our GEO methodology
- AEO explained
- SEO vs GEO
Further reading: the criterion that carries the most weight in our score, explained with a JSON-LD example, in Structured data: examples, testing, and why it carries 20% of our GEO score.
