Business discovery has expanded beyond the ten blue links. Alongside traditional search, buyers now use AI Overviews, AI Mode, assistants and other generative surfaces. The acronyms around this are industry terminology, not separate systems Google requires you to optimise for — Google's own position is that optimising for generative AI search is still SEO.
The acronyms, and what they actually describe
Each label describes a lens on the same discipline rather than a distinct technical requirement. They overlap heavily and share identical foundations.
- SEO — organic search on Google and Bing; the foundation for everything below
- AEO — answer engine optimisation, a label for wanting concise, directly useful answers
- AIO — a label for visibility on AI-powered result surfaces such as AI Overviews
- GEO — generative engine optimisation, a term the industry uses; Google treats this as SEO
- SXO — a framing that folds page experience and usability into search work
- LLMO — a label for clear entity information and unambiguous, well-structured pages
What actually drives visibility
Across all of these, the same fundamentals repeat: crawlability and indexability, clear technical structure, helpful non-commodity content, first-hand expertise, descriptive internal linking, useful media, good page experience and structured data that accurately reflects the page. There is no special schema type required for generative AI search.
It is reasonable to expect overlap between pages that perform well in classic search and pages surfaced in AI answers, since both draw on the open web and similar quality signals. That is an observation about shared foundations, not a deterministic rule — no one outside Google can predict which pages appear in an AI answer, and inclusion cannot be guaranteed.
A note on llms.txt
Google Search does not need an llms.txt file and has said it neither helps nor hurts Google visibility or rankings. Publishing one for other systems is optional; it is not a ranking requirement and should not displace work on crawlability, structure and content quality.
Common mistakes
Chasing every acronym as though it were a separate project. Rewriting pages for machines rather than readers. Spinning up keyword-variation pages or mechanically chunked content. Pursuing inauthentic mentions. Adding schema that does not match visible content. Hiding content behind interactions crawlers cannot execute. Making claims a business cannot back up.
A practical implementation checklist
A simple starting list for most businesses:
- One unique title and description per page
- One clear H1 per page, logical H2/H3 structure
- Canonical URLs
- Semantic landmarks and accessible interactions
- Structured data that matches visible content
- Consistent business entity information
- Original content that reflects real expertise
- Descriptive internal links
- Clean sitemap, robots and crawlability
A note on measurement
No technique guarantees rankings or AI citations. Treat visibility as an outcome of doing many correct things consistently, not a lever any single change controls.
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