AEO vs SEO in 2025: Your Google Rankings Mean Nothing if ChatGPT Has Never Heard of You
A dental clinic in Toronto spent $2,400 on SEO last year. They hit page 1 for "dentist Toronto." Their website scores 8 out of 100 on AEO. When a patient asks ChatGPT for a dentist recommendation, they are not mentioned once.
For fifteen years, the SEO playbook was simple: rank on Google, get found, get customers. That playbook is not dead — but it is incomplete in a way that is costing businesses real money right now.
In 2025, a growing share of your potential customers are not typing into Google at all. They are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude for recommendations. These AI engines do not use Google's ranking algorithm. They have their own criteria — and most websites are failing them completely.
SEO vs AEO: What Each One Actually Does
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Helps your website appear in Google, Bing, and Yahoo search results when someone types a keyword.
→Targets keyword rankings
→Optimises for click-through from results page
→Measured in impressions, clicks, and position
→Works on: Google, Bing, Yahoo
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)
Helps your website get cited inside AI-generated answers when someone asks a conversational question.
→Targets AI citations and recommendations
→Optimises for being named in the AI's answer
→Measured in citation rate and AI mention frequency
→Works on: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok
The Shift That Is Already Happening
According to data from Semrush and SparkToro published in early 2025, approximately 40% of informational search queries in the US are now handled by AI engines rather than traditional search. For local service queries — "recommend a good accountant," "who is the best dentist near me" — the share is estimated to be even higher because conversational AI is naturally suited to recommendation requests.
Google itself has responded by launching AI Overviews (formerly Search Generative Experience), which places an AI-generated summary above all organic results. A website that ranks number 1 on Google but is not cited in the AI Overview is now effectively in position 2 — below an AI answer it did not contribute to.
REAL EXAMPLE — Google AI Overview
A user searches "best accountant for small business Toronto." Google's AI Overview generates a 200-word answer citing three accounting firms. The firm that ranks #1 organically is not mentioned. The three firms cited all have FAQ schema, LocalBusiness markup, and conversational H2 headings. The #1 organic result has none of these.
What AEO Checks That SEO Does Not
| Signal | SEO checks it | AEO checks it |
|---|---|---|
| Page speed | ✓ | — |
| Meta title & description | ✓ | — |
| Mobile responsiveness | ✓ | — |
| Backlinks | ✓ | — |
| FAQ schema markup | — | ✓ |
| LocalBusiness schema | — | ✓ |
| Conversational H2 headings | — | ✓ |
| E-E-A-T signals (About page, author) | Partial | ✓ |
| Live AI visibility test (ChatGPT, Gemini) | — | ✓ |
| Revenue opportunity estimate | — | ✓ |
Do You Need Both? Yes — But AEO First
SEO is not going away. Google still processes over 8 billion searches per day and traditional search results still drive enormous traffic. You need both SEO and AEO.
But here is the strategic reality: most businesses already have some SEO in place — a title tag, a meta description, maybe some blog posts. Almost no small businesses have done any AEO work because the concept is new and the tools to check it barely existed six months ago.
That means AEO is the bigger opportunity right now. The businesses that optimise for AI engines in 2025 will have a 12–18 month head start over competitors who wait. The fixes are not expensive or technically complex. They just require knowing what to do — which is exactly what our audit tells you.
How to Know Where You Stand Right Now
The fastest way to understand your AEO position is to run a free audit. Our tool checks 12 AEO signals, runs a live test on Gemini and ChatGPT using real queries about your business, and shows you a side-by-side score for both AEO and SEO. The full report arrives in your inbox shortly after the audit completes.
The average score for a small business website that has never done AEO work is 22 out of 100. The average score after applying the fixes in our guide is 71 out of 100. That gap is the difference between being invisible and being recommended.