AEO Vs SEO: What Actually Changes?
Category
AEO & SEO
Published by
Tom Emmanuel
Read Time
6 Minutes
AEO vs SEO is the question every ecommerce brand is now being sold an answer to. The short version: answer engine optimisation is mostly SEO done properly, aimed at ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity and Amazon's Rufus as well as the blue links. Google itself says no special optimisation is needed. What does change is where buyers get their answer, how often they click, and how you measure whether you are in it.
Tom Emmanuel
Founder, Furnace Commerce
AEO vs SEO: what is the same and what is different
What AEO actually means
SEO is getting your pages ranked and clicked in search results. AEO, answer engine optimisation, is getting your brand, products and pages used inside the answer itself: the AI Overview at the top of Google, a ChatGPT reply, a Perplexity summary or Rufus on an Amazon product page. You will also see GEO, generative engine optimisation. It means the same thing. Google's own guide to generative AI search names both terms, then says that optimising for generative AI search "is still SEO". For an ecommerce brand the answer engines that matter are the ones shoppers use before they buy. Google's AI Overviews launched in the UK in August 2024 and AI Mode started rolling out here in July 2025. ChatGPT search has been open to everyone since February 2025. Rufus has been available to all UK Amazon customers since August 2025.
What Google says you need to do
Less than the AEO industry would like. Google's guidance for site owners says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimisations necessary. To be eligible, a page must be indexed and able to show in Search with a snippet. It also says there is no special schema.org markup to add for AI features, and that you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or Markdown versions of your pages. That includes llms.txt, which Google says will neither help nor harm your visibility in Search. Structured data is still worth having as part of normal SEO, and Google asks that it matches the visible text on the page. For a shop that means accurate product, price and availability markup, which Shopify themes add for products by default. So the first job is not new. Pages that can be crawled and indexed, product data that is complete and correct, and content that answers the question clearly. Most stores we look at still have gaps in all three.
What changes: clicks, citations and product data
The big change is clicks. Pew Research Center tracked the Google searches of 900 US adults in March 2025. When an AI summary appeared, people clicked a result on 8% of visits, against 15% when there was none, and only 1% clicked a link inside the summary. Ahrefs' February 2026 study found AI Overviews cut the click-through rate of the top organic result by 58%. Being cited still matters. Seer Interactive's analysis of 3,119 queries found organic click-through of 0.70% when a brand was cited in the AI Overview, against 0.52% when it was not. Seer is clear that this is correlation, not proof, but the direction is what you would expect. Product data matters more than it did. OpenAI says ChatGPT's shopping results are not ads and are ranked on factors including availability, price and quality. Shopify product data reaches ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog, and on Amazon, Rufus answers from your listing, reviews and customer questions. In each case a thin or inconsistent product record is what gets left out. Crawler access matters too. ChatGPT search uses OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot crawler, and OpenAI says sites that block it will not appear in ChatGPT search answers. It is separate from GPTBot, which is used for training, so you can allow one and block the other.
What to do this quarter
Start with the basics that serve both. Check Search Console for pages that are not indexed, fix titles and meta descriptions on your top collections, and make sure your product structured data and Merchant Center feed agree on price and stock. Check your robots.txt. Make sure you are not blocking OAI-SearchBot, Googlebot or Bingbot by accident, which happens more than you would think after a migration. Write the pages buyers ask questions about. Comparison pages, buying guides, sizing and ingredient explainers, and honest FAQs are what answer engines quote. Put the answer in the first paragraph, then the detail. Fix your Amazon listings so the title, bullets, A+ Content and backend attributes say the same thing. Rufus answers from what is on the page. Do not rip up what already works to chase a new acronym. If a page ranks and converts today, improve it rather than rewriting it for AI. The pages that earn citations are usually the same pages that already earn rankings, just with clearer answers higher up. Then measure it differently. Search Console still shows Google clicks. Bing Webmaster Tools now has an AI Performance report, in public preview, showing citations in Copilot and Bing's AI answers. ChatGPT referrals carry utm_source=chatgpt.com, so they show up in analytics. An AI visibility tool can track which prompts mention you and which name a competitor. Our comparison of those tools is linked at the end of this post.
AEO is not a new channel to buy. It is the same search work, judged by whether you are in the answer rather than just on the page.
Questions brands ask about AEO and SEO
Is AEO replacing SEO?
No. Google says optimising for its AI features is still SEO, and its AI answers are built from pages it has indexed. If your SEO is weak, your AEO will be too. What is shrinking is the share of searches that end in a click, which is why being cited in the answer now matters as much as ranking below it.
Do I need an llms.txt file?
Not for Google. Google's guide says llms.txt files will neither harm nor help your visibility in Search, and that you do not need special AI files or markup to appear. It is a community proposal rather than an official standard. If you want to add one, it does no harm, but it should not come before indexing, product data and content.
How do I know if my brand appears in ChatGPT?
Ask it the questions your buyers ask and see who comes up, then track it properly. ChatGPT referrals show in analytics with utm_source=chatgpt.com. For regular tracking across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode and Perplexity, tools such as Peec AI, Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit, Ahrefs Brand Radar and Profound run a fixed set of prompts and record who is mentioned and cited.
Does AEO matter for Amazon sellers?
Yes. Rufus is now on Amazon UK's app and desktop site, and Amazon says it answers from product listings, customer reviews and community Q&As. Amazon has not published a Rufus optimisation guide, so the practical work is making every field on the listing complete, accurate and consistent. Our post on optimising listings for Rufus goes through it.
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