--- title: SEO, AEO, GEO, AIO and SXO explained | GetPreferred description: What AI visibility means, and how SEO, AEO, GEO, AIO and SXO differ, in plain English for consumer health brand teams. canonical: https://getpreferred.impactplus.co.in/ai-visibility-explained/ last_updated: 2026-10-26 --- # AI visibility explained: SEO, AEO, GEO, AIO and SXO AI visibility is how often AI assistants name, recommend or cite your brand when buyers ask about your category. SEO helps search engines rank your pages. AEO and GEO help AI assistants read, trust and cite them. AIO keeps your facts consistent for AI systems. SXO helps a visitor find what they need. Last reviewed: 26 October 2026 ## Eight terms in plain English ### AI visibility AI visibility is how often AI assistants name, recommend or cite your brand when buyers ask about your category. It is measured by putting real buyer questions to each assistant and counting the answers. For a consumer health brand: It shows whether an assistant names your product when a buyer asks which one to buy. ### Search engine optimisation (SEO) SEO helps search engines such as Google and Bing find, read and rank your pages. It is still the base for every other term on this page. For a consumer health brand: Your product and question pages must be found before any AI assistant can use them. ### Answer engine optimisation (AEO) AEO helps AI assistants and search features find a clear answer on your page and quote it. Each page answers one question near the top, in plain words. For a consumer health brand: A question such as 'what is in this product' gets a short answer your team has checked. ### Generative engine optimisation (GEO) GEO helps AI assistants read, trust and cite your pages when they write an answer. It adds a focus on facts that other trusted sources repeat. For a consumer health brand: Facts your team has confirmed read the same on your site, your listings and your profiles. ### AI optimisation (AIO) AIO keeps your brand facts, site structure and profiles consistent for AI systems. Some people also use AIO as short for Google AI Overviews, so check which meaning is meant. For a consumer health brand: One confirmed facts sheet keeps each product description the same wherever it appears. ### Search experience optimisation (SXO) SXO makes sure a visitor who arrives can find what they need and buy. For a consumer health brand: a buyer who reaches your product page finds what is in it and where to buy it. ### Share of voice in AI answers Share of voice is your brand's mentions as a share of all brand mentions in AI answers. We report it as counts first, with the percentage beside the count. For a consumer health brand: if the answers contain twenty brand mentions in all and five of them are your brand, your share of voice is five of twenty (25%). ### Mentions and backlinks Mentions are other websites naming your brand, with or without a link. Backlinks are links on other websites that take a reader to yours. For a consumer health brand: a pharmacy chain's page that names your product, with or without a link, is a mention AI assistants can read. ## How AI assistants find brands AI assistants answer in two ways. Some answers come from a web search made at the moment of the question. Others come from what the model learned during training. ## Where AI assistants look for pages | Assistant | Where it finds pages | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | ChatGPT search | OpenAI's own crawler, OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI: crawlers and user agents, https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots | | Google Gemini and Google AI Overviews | Google's search index | Google Search Central: guide to optimizing for generative AI features, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide | | Claude | Anthropic's own crawlers, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User | Anthropic: crawlers and user agents, https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler | | Perplexity | Its own crawler | Perplexity: crawlers, https://docs.perplexity.ai/docs/resources/perplexity-crawlers | Search sources change over time, so check the date at the top of this page. ## Questions about AI visibility ### Is GEO just SEO with a new name? SEO, AEO and GEO share most of their groundwork: pages that load fast, can be read by crawlers and answer real questions. GEO adds a focus on how AI assistants pick sources to quote, such as clear facts and third-party sources that repeat them. ### Why do some changes show up sooner than others? Answers from a live search can change fairly soon after your pages change. What a model remembers changes only when a newer model is trained, which is much slower. ### What can AI assistants not see? Only public web pages that let AI crawlers in can be read by AI assistants. ### What if an AI assistant gets our facts wrong? Assistants repeat what they read. If a website states a wrong fact about your brand, ask the publisher to correct it. Invite genuine customers to leave honest reviews, with no reward offered. ### Can we pay to be named in ChatGPT's answers? OpenAI says ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives. Ads, where shown, appear apart from the answer. What makes a brand more likely to be named is facts AI assistants can read, check and find repeated elsewhere. ### Does an llms.txt file help? Google says its AI features need no special markup, and that it does not use llms.txt. We still publish a short llms.txt on our own sites because it costs nothing. We do not sell it as a way to be named. ### Does AI visibility matter for a pharma company's business buyers? It can. When a buyer asks an AI assistant for a contract manufacturer, an API supplier or a licensing partner, the answer names a few companies. AI visibility shows whether yours is one of them and whether the facts are correct. ### How soon can AI assistants name a new product? No one can say for certain. AI assistants decide what they name, and they can take weeks or months to read new pages. Correct facts on readable pages from launch day give them something accurate to find. Source: OpenAI: our approach to advertising, https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-expanding-access/ Source: Google Search Central: guide to optimizing for generative AI features, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide Find out which brands AI assistants name in your category. A thirty-minute call with the founder, then a written baseline: the buyer questions for your category put to five AI assistants, and which brands they name. Free, with no obligation. Get your free baseline assessment: https://getpreferred.impactplus.co.in/baseline-assessment/