GEO and AEO are the disciplines behind AI search visibility. They replace traditional SEO for AI-generated answers — and most UK businesses have never heard of them, let alone applied them.
Get your free score — and the files that fix it →Generative Engine Optimisation. Optimising your business to appear in answers generated by AI engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overview.
Answer Engine Optimisation. Optimising specifically to be the answer AI gives when someone asks a question — rather than just appearing in a list.
AI Optimisation. The broader discipline of making your entire digital presence — website, files, citations — readable and trustworthy for AI systems.
Optimising for Google's ten-result ranked list. Still relevant — but a completely different system from GEO, AEO and AIO. You need both.
The bottom line: SEO gets you into Google's list. GEO and AEO get you into AI's answer. These are not the same thing and they don't use the same signals.
The way people search is changing fast. Voice assistants, AI chatbots and AI-generated search overviews are now part of how customers find local services. When someone says "find me a plumber in Northampton" to their phone, or asks ChatGPT to recommend a solicitor in Birmingham, they're not getting a list of links. They're getting one answer.
That answer comes from structured data signals — not from traditional SEO. A business with a page-one Google ranking but no Schema markup, no llms.txt and no AI crawler permissions is invisible to AI systems. The business that appears in the AI's answer is the one that gets the enquiry.
Right now, most UK local businesses have no GEO or AEO infrastructure at all. That creates a significant early-mover advantage for those who act first. Once AI systems have indexed and trusted a business, that trust compounds over time.
GEO and AEO are not about writing more content or adding more keywords. They're about structured identity signals — specific technical files and data formats that AI systems are designed to read.
Unlike traditional SEO — which can take months to show results — GEO and AEO work faster. AI crawlers re-index regularly. Once your Schema markup, llms.txt and robots.txt AI permissions are in place, AI engines can pick them up within days to weeks, depending on when they next crawl your domain.
This is one of the reasons to act now. The structural work is quick. The indexing time is relatively short. And the competitive landscape for AI search visibility is still wide open for most local UK business categories.
Plumbers, electricians, builders, roofers, landscapers — anyone who gets found through local search. AI search is becoming the first point of contact for "emergency X in Y" queries. Schema markup with LocalBusiness type, service area data and FAQ schema are the priority signals.
Solicitors, accountants, architects, surveyors — where trust and authority matter. Companies House verification in schema, sameAs links to professional body registrations, and Review schema are especially important for this category.
Dentists, physiotherapists, private clinics — where AI is increasingly used to find local providers. MedicalBusiness schema type, FAQ schema covering common patient questions, and consistent citation data across NHS directories and health platforms.
Aenima runs nine real checks across your domain — scoring every GEO and AEO signal that affects AI visibility. The free check takes 60 seconds and tells you exactly what's missing and why it matters. The Starter subscription generates the files that fix it. The Pro subscription keeps them updated automatically every month.
Nine checks. Score out of 100. Plain English. 60 seconds. No account needed.
Get your free score — and the files that fix it →