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SEO earns rankings in search results, AEO (answer engine optimization) earns a place in the direct answers search engines and assistants give, and GEO (generative engine optimization) earns mentions and citations inside AI-generated answers from tools such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. Google's own guide says that, from its side, optimizing for generative AI search “is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO” (Google). So for a healthcare marketer the new work is less about new tricks and more about measuring how AI answers name your practice, which is what Curve Compliance's AI Visibility does. AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service.

Want to know how AI assistants answer your patients today? AI Visibility shows how often AI assistants, including ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini, name and cite your practice for the questions your patients ask. Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.

AEO, GEO and SEO side by side

The three terms overlap, but each puts the focus somewhere different. Here are common working definitions:

TermWhat it aims forWhere it shows upHow you measure it
SEO (search engine optimization)Pages that rank in classic search resultsGoogle and Bing results pagesClicks, impressions and position in Search Console
AEO (answer engine optimization)Being the answer to a direct questionAnswer boxes, AI Overviews and assistant answersWhether your page is the cited answer, plus Google's Generative AI performance report
GEO (generative engine optimization)Being named and cited inside AI-generated answersChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude and GeminiMention rate, citation rate and share of voice, followed across assistants over time

Google treats AEO and GEO as close cousins: “These are both terms you may see used to describe work specifically focused on improving visibility in AI search experiences.” (Google) GEO has a clearer origin. A research paper first submitted to arXiv on November 16, 2023, and accepted to KDD 2024, introduced GEO as “the first novel paradigm to aid content creators in improving their content visibility in generative engine responses” (arXiv). For one-line definitions of these and related terms, see the Curve glossary.

What Google says about AEO and GEO

Google answers the question most marketers ask, whether SEO still matters, with “In short, yes!” and explains: “The best practices for SEO continue to be relevant because our generative AI features on Google Search are rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems.” (Google) Its AI features page adds: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.” To be shown as a supporting link, “a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet” (Google).

Google's guide also lists things you can skip for Google Search (Google):

  • llms.txt and other AI files. Google says keeping one is fine for other services. “Doing so will neither harm nor help your site's visibility or rankings in Google Search, as Google Search ignores them.”
  • Chunking content. “There's no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it.”
  • Rewriting for AI. “You don't need to write in a specific way just for generative AI search.”
  • Chasing mentions. Google says “seeking inauthentic "mentions" across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem.”
  • Special schema. “Structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup you need to add.” Google still recommends it as part of SEO, for rich results.

The practical reading for a clinic: the same accurate, well organized, indexable pages that earn rankings are the pages Google's AI features draw on. See generative engine optimization for healthcare for the GEO side in more depth, and answer engine optimization for healthcare for the AEO side.

Outside Google: ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude

The other assistants run their own search crawlers, and each company documents what blocking them does. OpenAI says: “Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links.” (OpenAI) Perplexity says “PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity.” (Perplexity) Anthropic says: “Disabling Claude-SearchBot on your site prevents our system from indexing your content for search optimization, which may reduce your site's visibility and accuracy in user search results.” (Anthropic)

So the first GEO check outside Google is technical: can these search crawlers read your site? See which AI crawlers a healthcare site should allow. As for llms.txt, its own site calls it “A proposal to standardise on using an /llms.txt file to provide information to help agents use a website.” (llmstxt.org) See llms.txt for healthcare websites.

What changes for healthcare

Patients already use AI for health questions. OpenAI reported in January 2026: “Of our more than 800 million regular users, one in four submits a prompt about healthcare every week.” (OpenAI) KFF found in March 2026 that “About six in ten (58%) adults who used AI for physical health advice in the past year say they later followed up with a doctor or health care provider after consulting an AI tool” (KFF). Those follow-ups are the appointments a practice wants. Four things make AEO and GEO different in healthcare:

  • Accuracy carries more weight. An answer that gets your services, hours or insurance wrong sends patients to the wrong place. Curve's AI Visibility catches what AI gets wrong about your practice, so you can correct it on the pages AI reads.
  • Medical pages need a clinician. Pages on medical topics need clinical review before they publish. Curve's AI Visibility turns what it finds into a weekly roadmap sized to what your clinicians can publish, with medical topics flagged for clinical review.
  • Questions are local. Patients ask for care near them, so many of the questions that matter name a city. Write the places you serve into your pages.
  • Measurement must keep patients out. In Curve's AI Visibility, only the marketing question you track is sent to AI assistants, screened for PHI first, and never anything about a patient.

How to measure SEO, AEO and GEO

  • SEO. Search Console shows clicks, impressions and average position for your pages in classic results.
  • AEO and GEO in Google's AI features. Google says to “use the Generative AI performance report in Search Console” (Google). Google's AI features page adds that traffic from AI features is included in your overall Search Console traffic (Google).
  • GEO across assistants. Track mention rate (how often AI answers name you), citation rate (how often they cite your site) and share of voice (your share of the mentions among the brands you compete with), for the questions your patients ask, across several assistants and over time.
  • After the click. The number that pays is what AI answers lead to: the visits from people who click a link in an AI answer, and the bookings those visits bring.

One caution from Google applies to every measurement tool: “No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems.” (Google) Curve's AI Visibility shows how often AI answers name and cite your practice, and it ties AI answers to the visits and bookings they bring you. Read more on AI share of voice and what AI visibility is.

What This Looks Like in Practice

In one AI Visibility program we've run, for a HIPAA-focused healthcare software brand, Curve's team tracked the questions buyers ask AI assistants, found where competitors were named and the brand wasn't, and published pages to close those gaps. About five weeks in:

  • AI assistants named or cited the brand in 53% of their answers to its 40 core buyer questions (104 of 196), across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Claude.
  • Across 184 real buyer questions and 912 AI answers, its site was cited in 236 answers, more than any competitor's and more than 2.5 times as many as the nearest one (89).
  • 47 of the new pages were already cited by AI assistants within six days of going live.
  • One new page brought in more than half of the brand's unpaid ChatGPT visits in its first week.

How Curve Compliance helps

AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service. It ties AI answers to the visits and bookings they bring you. It turns what it finds into a weekly roadmap sized to what your clinicians can publish, with medical topics flagged for clinical review. It shows where competitors are named and you aren't, who leads each topic, and which sources AI cites. It checks whether AI search can read your site, and what to fix. See AI Visibility in Curve.

With the managed service, Curve's team sets up your questions, competitors and topics, writes the pages on your roadmap, and makes the technical fixes that help AI assistants read your site. Your clinicians review and approve anything medical before it goes live. If your developer manages your site, Curve's team hands them the exact fixes. Each month, Curve's team walks you through your results on a call and sends a one-page report. AI Visibility is available on request: book a call to get started.

Beyond AI Visibility, Curve Compliance replaces browser ad pixels with one script, sends conversions server-side to Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, Microsoft Advertising and LinkedIn, and strips PHI before data reaches an ad platform. Curve is SOC 2 Type II and signs a BAA on every plan (Directory entry).

Sources, checked November 2, 2026: Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search; Google Search Central, AI features and your website; Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (arXiv 2311.09735); llmstxt.org; OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers; Perplexity Crawlers; Anthropic, Does Anthropic crawl data from the web; OpenAI, AI as a Healthcare Ally (January 2026); KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust: Use of AI (March 25, 2026).

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between AEO, GEO and SEO?

SEO earns rankings in search results, AEO earns a place in direct answers, and GEO earns mentions and citations inside AI-generated answers. Google treats all three as rooted in the same SEO best practices, so the new work is measuring how AI answers name you, which Curve Compliance's AI Visibility does.

Is GEO replacing SEO?

No. Google says SEO best practices “continue to be relevant” for its AI features, which are rooted in its core ranking and quality systems (Google). GEO adds a new measurement layer on top: how often assistants name and cite you, which Curve Compliance's AI Visibility shows across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini.

Is AEO the same as GEO?

They overlap. Google describes both as terms for work “specifically focused on improving visibility in AI search experiences” (Google). In practice AEO is often used for direct answers and GEO for mentions and citations inside generated answers, and Curve Compliance measures both through mention and citation rates.

Not for Google, which says such files will neither harm nor help your visibility in Google Search (Google). Other systems may read one (llmstxt.org), so keeping one does no harm.

How do I measure GEO?

Track mention rate (how often AI answers name you), citation rate (how often they cite your site) and share of voice (your share of the mentions among the brands you compete with) for the questions your patients ask, across several assistants and over time, and follow AI visits through to bookings. Curve Compliance's AI Visibility does this for you.

Who coined the term GEO?

Pranjal Aggarwal and five co-authors introduced Generative Engine Optimization in a paper first submitted to arXiv in November 2023 and accepted to KDD 2024 (arXiv).

Do healthcare websites need special markup for AI answers?

No. Google says there is “no special schema.org markup you need to add” for its generative AI features, though structured data still helps with rich results (Google). What matters more in healthcare is accurate, clinician-reviewed pages that AI search can read.

Can Curve run AI Visibility for us?

Yes. Curve's team can run it for you as a managed service. AI Visibility is available on request: book a call to get started.

Talk to Curve Compliance

Want to see how ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini answer your patients, and what those answers lead to in booked appointments? Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.