SEO vs GEO vs AEO in 2026: Why They Need Different Strategies
One maketocreate.com post earned 86 AI citations in three months and only 5 Google clicks in the same window. Same URL. Same article. Same author. That is the SEO vs GEO problem in 2026, and it proves that AI citations, answer boxes, and Google rankings don't reward the same content shape.
I pulled this from Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance and Google Search Console for 32 published posts, covering March through May 2026. The site earned 266 AI citations in three months, but those citations didn't map neatly to Google clicks.
cross-border payment gateway comparison that earned 86 AI citations
Key Takeaways
- One post earned 86 AI citations but only 5 Google clicks, based on maketocreate.com first-party data from March-May 2026.
- SEO, GEO, and AEO share a 70% overlap zone, but the remaining 30% changes what you write, refresh, and measure.
- Use 60% of effort on Google SEO, 30% on AI citation maintenance, and 10% on cleanup until your data says otherwise.
- Don't merge Google and AI metrics into one score. They answer different questions.
The 86 vs 5 Problem
Bing Webmaster Tools recorded 86 AI citations for my international payment gateway guide, while Google Search Console showed 5 clicks and 1,300 impressions for the same URL in March-May 2026. The answer is simple: AI systems cited the page as a useful source, while Google still treated it as a low-ranking organic result.
That single gap changed how I think about SEO vs GEO. Before seeing the data, I assumed AI search would mostly mirror Google. Strong Google pages would get cited. Weak Google pages would disappear. The first-party data said otherwise.
The payment gateway article ranked between positions 50 and 80 for many Google queries. That is usually dead traffic. But Bing AI surfaced it for grounding queries like "leading APIs for cross-border payments 2026," where one query family produced 16 citations.
Citation capsule: From March-May 2026, maketocreate.com earned 266 AI citations across 32 posts. The top post, an international payment gateway comparison, earned 86 AI citations but only 5 Google clicks, according to Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance and Google Search Console.
Why did that happen? The post had traits AI systems like: a dated comparison, vendor categories, concrete selection criteria, and answer-shaped sections. Google still cared about domain strength, backlinks, historical authority, and SERP competition. Both systems saw the same page. They valued different signals.
What Do SEO, GEO, and AEO Actually Mean?
The 32-post dataset produced 266 AI citations in three months, which is enough to separate the terms without turning this into a glossary. SEO earns rankings and clicks from search engines. GEO earns citations inside generative answers. AEO earns placement in direct answer surfaces where the user may never click.
SEO is the slow compounding channel: crawlability, topical authority, intent match, links, and click-worthy snippets. GEO asks whether an AI system can understand, trust, extract, and cite your passage. AEO sits at the answer layer: AI Overviews, featured snippets, voice assistants, and chatbot-style search.
JavaScript vs TypeScript 2026 comparison
Citation capsule: SEO optimizes for ranked results and clicks. GEO optimizes for citations inside generated answers. AEO optimizes for direct answer extraction. In maketocreate.com's March-May 2026 data, these surfaces diverged enough that one URL produced 86 AI citations and only 5 Google clicks.
The overlap is real, but the goals aren't identical. Treat GEO as "SEO with AI sprinkled on top" and you'll miss pages that AI systems cite before Google rewards them.
How Do SEO, GEO, and AEO Differ?
Ahrefs analyzed 300,000 keywords and found that AI Overviews correlated with a 34.5% lower click-through rate for top-ranking pages (Ahrefs, 2025). That matters because the SEO vs GEO split isn't only about visibility. It's about whether visibility turns into traffic, citations, or answers.
| Dimension | Google SEO | AI Citations (ChatGPT/Copilot/Perplexity) |
|---|---|---|
| What it rewards | Topical authority, intent match, backlinks, helpful content, page quality | Clear extractable answers, named entities, fresh data, comparison structure, quotable claims |
| Authority signal | Links, brand, domain history, author signals, topical clusters | Source clarity, factual density, citations, recency, repeated entity confidence |
| Recency | Helpful, but not always decisive outside news and fast-changing topics | Often decisive, especially when the query includes current-year intent |
| Competition | SERP competitors with indexed pages and link profiles | Any source the model can retrieve, summarize, or ground against |
| Winners | Durable pillar pages, clusters, tools, original research | Fresh comparisons, lists, benchmarks, direct definitions, statistics pages |
| Click value | High when the user clicks, browses, and converts | Indirect: brand mention, cited authority, assisted discovery |
| Time to results | Slow, often 3-12 months on a young domain | Faster for highly structured fresh posts, but less predictable |
| Defensibility | Strong if you build authority and clusters | Weaker unless you keep pages current and citation-worthy |
The mistake is assuming "AI search" is one surface. It isn't. Google AI Overviews may still borrow from Google's index. ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Copilot behave more like answer assemblers. AEO cares about answer shape. GEO cares about citation usefulness. SEO cares about rankings and clicks.
Citation capsule: Ahrefs found that AI Overviews correlated with a 34.5% lower CTR for top-ranking pages across 300,000 keywords. That makes AI visibility a separate measurement problem, because being present in an answer can reduce clicks while still increasing brand exposure.
So when someone asks for aeo vs seo vs geo, the clean answer is this: SEO gets ranked results, GEO gets generated citations, and AEO gets answer extraction.
How Does Answer Engine Optimization Differ From Traditional SEO?
Pew Research Center analyzed 68,879 Google searches from 900 U.S. adults and found users clicked a result on 8% of pages with AI summaries versus 15% without them (Pew Research Center, 2025). Answer engine optimization vs traditional SEO starts with that behavior change.
Traditional SEO assumes the page is the destination. AEO assumes the answer may be the destination. That changes the writing pattern: the first 40-60 words under a heading should answer the question without needing the rest of the article.
For answer engine optimization best practices, I now write each major section like a source card. The heading asks the question. The first paragraph answers it. The next paragraph adds evidence. Then I include a comparison, checklist, or table so the answer has structure.
Citation capsule: Pew Research Center found that Google users clicked a traditional result on 8% of pages with AI summaries, compared with 15% on pages without summaries. AEO responds to that shift by optimizing for answer extraction, not only for post-click reading.
This doesn't mean AEO replaces SEO. It means answer engine optimization techniques in 2026 need a different unit of work: the reusable passage.
Real Data: 86 AI Citations, 5 Google Clicks
Across 32 maketocreate.com posts, Bing Webmaster Tools recorded 266 AI citations in March-May 2026, while Google Search Console showed that the highest-cited post got only 5 Google clicks. This is the clearest evidence I have that seo vs aeo vs geo isn't a naming debate. It's a measurement split.
The top two AI-cited posts produced 133 of the site's 266 citations, or 51% of the total. One was a payment gateway guide. The other was a JavaScript vs TypeScript comparison. Both were current-year, comparison-heavy, and easy to quote.
Supabase vs Firebase comparison
The pattern repeated in smaller numbers. Supabase vs Firebase earned 8 citations. Replit vs Bolt vs Lovable earned 8 citations. Comparison posts gave AI systems clean pairs and categories to cite.
Citation capsule: In maketocreate.com's first-party data, two posts generated 51% of all AI citations. Both used comparison formats and 2026 framing, suggesting that fresh decision-support content can outperform broader essays in generative answer systems.
The 70% Overlap Zone: Tactics That Serve Both
Google says AI Overviews are available in more than 200 countries and territories and more than 40 languages, and drive over 10% more usage for query types that show them in major markets (Google, 2025). That scale makes overlap valuable. You don't want two completely separate content machines.
| Tactic | Helps Google | Helps AI |
|---|---|---|
| Direct answer in first 50 words | Improves intent match and snippet eligibility | Gives models a clean passage to extract |
| Comparison tables | Increases dwell time and SERP usefulness | Creates structured facts for citation |
| FAQ schema | Clarifies question coverage | Maps questions to concise answers |
| Sourced statistics | Builds trust and E-E-A-T | Gives models verifiable claims |
| Clear H2/H3 hierarchy | Helps crawlers and readers parse depth | Helps retrieval systems segment answers |
| Long-form depth | Builds topical coverage | Supplies enough context for grounding |
| Internal links in cluster | Passes authority and context | Reinforces entity relationships |
This 70% overlap zone is where most founders should start. If a tactic helps Google and AI at the same time, do it by default. Direct answers, tables, citations, FAQs, and internal links are good publishing hygiene.
When I refreshed older posts, I rewrote headings as questions, added answer-first openings, cleaned up tables, and marked stronger internal links. The same edits made the pages easier for humans to scan.
Citation capsule: Google reports that AI Overviews now span 200+ countries and 40+ languages, with over 10% usage growth for query types where they appear in major markets. That makes overlap tactics valuable because one well-structured article can serve search engines, AI answers, and human readers.
I don't split SEO vs GEO into two teams of work. I split it into shared work first, then divergence work second.
The 30% Divergence Zone: Where You Have to Choose
Pew also found that only 1% of visits to Google pages with AI summaries resulted in clicks on links cited inside the summary (Pew Research Center, 2025, cited above). That is where the 30% divergence starts. A tactic can help AI citations without sending meaningful traffic.
| AI-only optimization | Google-only optimization |
|---|---|
| "2026" stuffed into titles | Backlink outreach |
| Listicle format | Long-tail keyword targeting |
| Bullet-point claims | E-E-A-T author bio |
| Quote-ready summary boxes | Page experience |
| Freshness updates | Topic cluster architecture |
| Distribution to Dev.to+Reddit | Domain authority building |
The AI-only column moves faster. A current-year comparison post can get cited before it ranks. The Google-only column is slower, but more defensible. Backlinks, clusters, author trust, and domain authority still compound.
Citation capsule: The divergence zone is where SEO and GEO incentives conflict. AI citations reward freshness, concise claims, and easy extraction. Google SEO still rewards authority, clusters, backlinks, and durable page quality. A 2026 content plan needs both, but not in equal amounts.
How Does AI Change the Future of SEO in 2026?
ChatGPT reached 800 million weekly active users in October 2025, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (TechCrunch, 2025). AI and the future of SEO is no longer about whether people use AI. They do. The question is which surfaces create business value.
Google is not going away. For SaaS founders and technical bloggers, it still owns high-intent discovery, product comparisons, documentation queries, and bottom-funnel searches. But AI surfaces now sit beside it, sometimes before it, and sometimes on top of it.
At Google I/O 2026 on May 19, Google made Gemini 3.5 Flash the global default model for AI Mode, confirmed AI Mode had crossed one billion monthly users, and rolled ads directly into AI Overview responses (Google, 2026). Classic blue links still appear below AI summaries, but the default search experience for over a billion users is now AI-first. The 86-vs-5 gap I tracked on maketocreate.com is no longer an edge case — it's the shape of the new front page.
AI search doesn't kill SEO. It splits SEO into jobs: ranked traffic, cited authority, and answer extraction. If your strategy treats them as one job, your dashboard will lie.
Citation capsule: At Google I/O 2026, Google made Gemini 3.5 Flash the default model powering AI Mode globally, with AI Mode crossing one billion monthly users and ads appearing inside AI Overview responses. Combined with ChatGPT's 800 million weekly active users in 2025, that means SEO strategy in 2026 has to account for ranked results, generative citations, and answer extraction as three separate surfaces.
The practical shift is not "publish more." It is publish with clearer intent. Is the article meant to rank, get cited, answer a definition, or support a cluster?
The 60/30/10 Framework: How to Allocate Effort
In my 32-post sample, 51% of AI citations came from two posts, while Google traffic remained thin across the same young site. That concentration is why my default allocation is 60% Google SEO, 30% AI citation maintenance, and 10% cleanup. Google compounds slowly. AI citations spike around winners.
The 60% bucket is cluster-based Google SEO: durable pages, internal links, topic hubs, and authority. The 30% bucket is AI citation maintenance: refresh winners, update comparisons, and tighten answer-first sections. The 10% bucket is cleanup: stale claims, thin sections, and off-topic drafts.
Citation capsule: The 60/30/10 framework allocates 60% of effort to Google SEO, 30% to AI citation maintenance, and 10% to cleanup. It fits young sites because Google authority compounds slowly while AI citations often concentrate around a small number of fresh comparison winners.
How Do You Measure SEO, GEO, and AEO Success Separately?
Google Search Console showed 5 clicks and 1,300 impressions for the post that Bing AI Performance credited with 86 AI citations. That is why how to measure success of generative engine optimization needs its own scorecard. A single "search performance" dashboard hides the signal.
For Google SEO, use clicks, impressions, average position, query growth, page CTR, and indexed pages. For GEO, use AI citations, cited pages, cited queries, grounding queries, and citation concentration by URL. For AEO, track snippets, People Also Ask coverage, AI Overview presence, and brand mentions in answer engines.
Citation capsule: One maketocreate.com URL produced 86 AI citations and 5 Google clicks in the same three-month window. That gap makes GEO success impossible to measure with Google Search Console alone. AI citations, cited pages, and grounding queries need separate tracking.
What Are the AEO Best Practices for 2026?
Ahrefs found that 99.2% of keywords triggering AI Overviews were informational in its dataset (Ahrefs, 2025). That makes AEO best practices for 2026 fairly concrete: answer informational questions with short, sourced, reusable sections before you ask the reader to follow your argument.
Here are the practices I now use:
- Open every major H2 with a direct answer in 40-60 words.
- Put a named source and date near each important claim.
- Use tables for comparisons, not long prose.
- Add FAQ questions that match real search wording.
- Keep definitions brief unless the query is definitional.
- Refresh current-year posts when the data changes.
- Write summary boxes that can stand alone.
These are not tricks. They're packaging decisions. If an answer engine has to choose between a vague paragraph and a clear sourced answer, the clear sourced answer wins more often.
Citation capsule: Because Ahrefs found that 99.2% of AI Overview-triggering keywords were informational, AEO best practices should prioritize direct answers, sourced statistics, FAQ coverage, and tables. These formats help answer engines extract a clean response without losing attribution.
Which GEO Strategies Actually Work?
Maketocreate.com's "vs" posts repeatedly earned AI citations: JavaScript vs TypeScript got 47, Supabase vs Firebase got 8, and Replit vs Bolt vs Lovable got 8 in March-May 2026. The GEO strategies that actually work are the ones that make citation easier than summarization from scratch.
Start with comparison content because AI systems answer "which one should I use?" questions constantly. Use current-year framing when the topic changes fast. Write quotable claims like "Top 2 posts produced 51% of all AI citations." Distribute selectively through Dev.to, Reddit, Hacker News, and niche communities.
Citation capsule: In maketocreate.com's data, comparison posts outperformed as AI citation sources. JavaScript vs TypeScript earned 47 citations, while Supabase vs Firebase and Replit vs Bolt vs Lovable each earned 8. GEO strategy should prioritize fresh comparisons, quotable claims, and structured tradeoff tables.
What I Do Each Week
The site earned 266 AI citations across 32 posts in three months, but 51% came from two URLs. My weekly routine follows that concentration. I don't optimize every page equally. I protect the winners, build the cluster, and clean up anything that weakens topical focus.
On Monday, I check Google Search Console for rising impressions with low CTR. On Tuesday, I check Bing AI Performance for cited pages and grounding queries. If a page is cited, I update that section with fresher stats and clearer tables.
On Wednesday, I publish or outline cluster content. For the Claude Code cluster, that means linking new tutorials and comparisons back to stronger pillar pages.
On Thursday, I refresh one winner. I update dated claims, sharpen answer-first openings, and add one or two citation capsules. On Friday, I clean broken links, thin sections, stale claims, and off-topic drafts.
Citation capsule: A practical SEO, GEO, and AEO routine separates weekly checks by surface: GSC for clicks and impressions, Bing AI Performance for citations and grounding queries, and editorial cleanup for stale or off-topic content. This prevents one metric from hiding another.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is generative engine optimization?
Generative engine optimization is the practice of making content easy for AI systems to retrieve, trust, summarize, and cite. In my maketocreate.com data, 32 posts earned 266 AI citations in three months, which gave me a separate signal from Google clicks.
What is answer engine optimization?
Answer engine optimization is the practice of formatting content so answer surfaces can extract it cleanly. Pew found users clicked traditional links on 8% of Google pages with AI summaries versus 15% without them, so the answer itself now carries more value.
Is GEO different from SEO?
Yes. GEO and SEO overlap, but they optimize for different outcomes. My payment gateway post earned 86 AI citations and only 5 Google clicks in the same three-month window, which shows citation value can appear before search traffic.
Does AI Overviews use SEO?
Partly. Google AI Overviews still draw from web content, and Google says the feature is available in 200+ countries and 40+ languages. But AI Overview visibility doesn't equal organic ranking visibility, and Google Search Console doesn't isolate AI Overview clicks cleanly.
How does AI choose what to cite?
AI systems tend to cite content that is clear, current, well-structured, and useful for grounding an answer. In my dataset, the top two posts produced 51% of all AI citations, and both were fresh comparison-style articles with concrete decision criteria.
Does ChatGPT replace SEO?
No. ChatGPT reached 800 million weekly active users in 2025, but Google still drives high-intent discovery and conversion traffic. The better framing is not replacement. It is separate surfaces: SEO for ranked clicks, GEO for citations, and AEO for direct answers.
Do This Next
The 86-vs-5 gap in my May 2026 data points to the next action: don't rename your SEO strategy as GEO. Pull two reports: Google Search Console pages by clicks, and Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance pages by citations. Put them side by side.
If a page gets Google clicks, strengthen its cluster and conversion path. If a page gets AI citations, refresh its data and make its best passages easier to quote.
That is the operating model: 60% compounding SEO, 30% citation maintenance, 10% cleanup. The split isn't perfect. It's honest about what the data now shows.
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