SEO, AEO and GEO: what AI search changes for a contractor

1. What SEO, AEO and GEO mean for a home-service business
2. Why the labels hide more than they explain
3. What our recorded AI answers show about SEO and AEO
4. What to work on, whatever your provider calls it
5. Questions owners ask
6. How we got these numbers
7. Sources
8. See it on your own website

What SEO, AEO and GEO mean for a home-service business

If you run a plumbing, HVAC, electrical or roofing company, you have probably been pitched all three. One agency sells SEO. Another says SEO is dead and you need AEO. A third offers GEO. Here is what each word means, in plain terms, and which work actually changes when customers start asking AI for a contractor.

SEO and local SEO

SEO, search engine optimization, is work that helps your pages show up when someone searches Google or Bing. It covers how your site is built, what your pages say and whether search engines can read them.

Local SEO is the part aimed at the map results and your Google Business Profile, the listing with your hours, reviews and phone number. Google says local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence, which Google also calls popularity ¹. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search. Distance is how far you are from the customer. Prominence is how well known you are, including your reviews and the sites that link to you ¹.

What AI search is

AI search is when a tool writes an answer instead of handing you a list of links. When a homeowner asks ChatGPT, Claude or Google AI Mode for an electrician, the tool runs its own web searches, reads what comes back and writes a short answer that names businesses.

ChatGPT rewrites the question into one or more searches that it sends to partner search providers ². Claude runs a search tool and grounds its answer in content from the live web ³. Google says its AI features pull pages from its own search index and may run several related searches to build one answer ⁴.

AEO and GEO

AEO stands for answer engine optimization. GEO stands for generative engine optimization. Google describes both as terms for work focused on visibility in AI search experiences ⁴. AI search optimization is a third name for the same idea. The term GEO was introduced in a 2023 research paper on making web content more visible in AI-written answers ⁵.

None of these words has an official definition or a standards body behind it. Google's own answer is direct: from its point of view, optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO ⁴. Microsoft, which runs Bing and Copilot, opens its guidance in a similar way: whatever you call it, the goal is to be visible ⁶.

Is Google search AI now?

Yes, and it has been for years. Google lists AI systems among its ranking systems, such as RankBrain, which helps it understand how words relate to concepts ⁷. Google also says AI is built into Search and integral to how it works ⁸. AI Mode and AI Overviews, the written answers at the top of some results, run on Google's Gemini models ⁹. Google brought its Gemini 3 model to Search in November 2025, starting with AI Mode ⁹.

If you want a search engine without AI answers, DuckDuckGo offers a version that turns off its AI features ¹⁰. Your customers may use either kind, so the useful question isn't which label is right. It is which work makes your business easier to find, check and choose.

Why the labels hide more than they explain

The companies agree on the basics and differ on details

Google and Microsoft agree that clear, accurate, well-organized pages matter. They differ on how much special formatting helps. Microsoft says assistants like Copilot break content into smaller pieces and judge each piece for authority and relevance ⁶. Google says there is no need to break content into tiny pieces, add an llms.txt file or write in a special way for AI ⁴. Both companies describe their own systems, and neither describes how the other works.

The original GEO research tested something different from your business

The 2023 paper that named GEO found that adding citations, quotations and statistics to a page made it more likely to show up in AI answers in its tests ⁵. It also found that keyword stuffing, an old SEO habit, did little or nothing ⁵. Those tests used general questions and pages rewritten by an AI model. They didn't test a homeowner asking for a roofer in a particular town, so treat the findings as a clue, not a rule for contractors.

Ranking on Google is not the same as being named by AI

Good local SEO helps, but it doesn't settle what an assistant says. In an October 2026 test of home-service questions in two cities, fewer than a quarter of AI picks were in Google's top three map results ¹¹. That was one small test by one author, but it matches what we see: the assistants read many sources, not just the map.

Some AEO tactics can hurt you

A common pitch is to publish a page for every town and every way a customer might word a search. Google warns that making pages for every variation, mainly to manipulate rankings or AI answers, breaks its spam policy on scaled content ⁴. Its spam policies also name pages aimed at different cities that all funnel visitors to one page ¹². A real page for each job you do and each area you serve is fine. Near-copies with the town name swapped are the risk.

Nobody can buy or promise a place

Google says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking ¹. It tells owners to find someone else if a provider guarantees first place ¹³, and it says third-party tools have no access to its internal ranking data ¹⁴. The same caution applies to any AEO or GEO dashboard that claims to know how an assistant chooses. OpenAI, Anthropic and Google publish how their search tools reach websites. We found nothing from any of them on how they pick which businesses to name.

How much water does one AI search use?

Many owners ask this, and the honest answer is that estimates differ widely. No company we found publishes a figure for one AI search on its own. Google measured the median text prompt in its Gemini app at about five drops of water, counting water used to cool its data centers ¹⁵. OpenAI's chief executive wrote that an average ChatGPT query uses about one fifteenth of a teaspoon ¹⁶.

An earlier academic study estimated much more: about a 500 ml bottle for every 10 to 50 responses from an older OpenAI model, GPT-3 ¹⁷. It also counts water used by power plants to make the electricity, which Google's cooling figure does not include. The company figures are self-reported, and the methods differ, so compare them with care.

What our recorded AI answers show about SEO and AEO

Between September 2 and October 14, 2026, we asked ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI Mode to recommend a local contractor 47,209 times: ChatGPT 19,577, Claude 16,358 and Google AI Mode 11,274. The questions covered HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing jobs in towns around Tampa Bay, Florida, each asked in a fresh conversation with web search on. These are observations of answers, not experiments. They show what the assistants used, not what causes a recommendation.

The assistants read ordinary websites and listings

Of the 31,742 ChatGPT and Claude answers about a specific job, 98% linked to at least one contractor's own website and 53% linked to a directory or review site. Google AI Mode leaned on Google's own listings: in 74% of its 9,819 job answers, a link opened a business's Google listing rather than a website.

So the two things local SEO has always worked on, your website and your Google Business Profile, are the main things these assistants read and linked about you.

They linked to specific pages, not just home pages

We looked at every contractor web address that ChatGPT and Claude wrote into their job answers, 118,280 in all. Of those, 82% pointed to a page other than the home page, such as a service page, a town page or a contact page. In 97% of the answers that linked a contractor's site, at least one link went to one of these inner pages.

At least 67% of the inner-page addresses named the job asked about or a town, like a page for water heater repair in a named city. In 30% of answers with a contractor link, one of the addresses named the exact job. We matched words in the web address only and checked a random sample by hand: 20 of 20 of the addresses we counted really did name the job or a town. Many service pages use other words in their address, so the real shares are higher.

This is the clearest link between SEO and AI answers in our data. The service and service-area pages that good SEO has recommended for years are the pages the assistants opened and sent customers to.

Their site doesn't list toilet installation specifically, though reviews mention toilet replacements.

Reviews and listing details showed up in the answers

Google AI Mode showed Google's listing card, with a star rating and review count, in 81% of its job answers. Claude gave a star rating or review count in 54% of its job answers and mentioned Google reviews or a Google rating in 22%. ChatGPT did so less often: a rating or review count in 14% of its job answers, and a mention of Google reviews in 3.5%.

Reviews are part of what Google calls prominence in its local ranking ¹. The same ratings and review counts also turn up, cited, inside the AI answers.

What Claude said it couldn't confirm

Claude often tells the customer what it couldn't check, and ChatGPT and Google AI Mode seldom do. So these counts describe Claude only. In its 14,467 job answers, Claude said it couldn't find or confirm a phone number or other contact in 3,820, reviews in 1,559 and whether a company served the customer's town in 754. Each of these is a local SEO basic: the same phone and service area everywhere, and reviews people can check.

I didn't find phone numbers in the results, so you'll need to get those from each company's website or Google listing.

Why assistants named or left out businesses in our earlier study

Before this research, we studied assistant conversations from late July to August 2026 across eight trades. For each business an assistant weighed, we recorded the reasons it gave for naming it or leaving it out. Many reasons line up with Google's three local ranking factors ¹:

• Relevance: whether the business clearly does the specific job came up in 440 conversations and cost a business its place in 184.
• Distance: whether the business serves the area asked about came up in 554 conversations and cost a business its place in 350. How physically close it was came up in 456 and cost a place in 92.
• Prominence: how many reviews a business had came up in 569 conversations and cost a place in 139. Its star rating came up in 569 and cost a place in 77. Its position in a directory listing came up in 159 and cost a place in 88.
• Its own website being informative, current and credible came up in 116 conversations and cost a business its place in 64.

A few recorded reasons were about SEO tricks. Of the 1,251 reasons we recorded, 12 described a page that looked built to rank rather than to inform, such as near-identical city pages or a page template repeated across towns. Each came up once, and 11 of them cost a business its place. That is too few to measure, but it matches Google's warning about pages made for every variation.

One conversation can involve several reasons, so these counts overlap and should never be added together. They show what the assistants said they weighed. They don't prove that fixing one item would change who gets named.

What to work on, whatever your provider calls it

For a local contractor, SEO, local SEO, AEO and GEO mostly point at the same work. Here it is in order, with the questions to ask anyone you pay to do it.

1. Start from your customers' questions

Write down ten questions a homeowner would ask for the jobs you want more of, each with a town or ZIP code. For example: who can replace a water heater in Largo this week? Every step below should make your answer to those questions easier to find and check.

2. Give each job its own clear page

Have one page for each job you want calls for, named the way customers say it, in the page title and first paragraph. Say what the job includes, what it doesn't and which towns you cover. Keep important facts in plain text on the page, which Google lists among the basics for its AI features ⁸. Skip near-identical copies of one page with the town swapped ¹².

3. Keep your Google Business Profile complete and current

Google lists an up-to-date Business Profile among the basics for its AI features ⁸. It also warns that a profile with inaccurate details may not show up for relevant local searches ¹. Check your categories, services, hours, phone number and service area every few months.

4. Let the assistants read your site

• For Google, a page has to be indexed and allowed to show a text snippet in Search to appear as a link in AI Mode or AI Overviews ⁸.
• OpenAI says sites that block its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers ¹⁸.
• Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot may reduce your site's visibility in Claude's search results ¹⁹.
• Ask your web host whether a firewall or bot blocker turns these tools away even when your robots.txt file, the file that tells crawlers what they may read, allows them.

5. Make your phone, area and reviews easy to check

Use the same business name, phone number and service area on your site, your Business Profile and the directories you use. Show the phone number as text on every page. Ask happy customers for reviews where people already look, and link to those review pages from your site.

6. Ask any provider to name the work, not the acronym

Google says a small local business can probably do much of this work itself ¹³. If you hire help, ask these questions whatever the service is called:

• Which pages and listings will you change, and can I see each change?
• Which customer questions are you working on, and for which jobs and towns?
• Does your advice match Google's official guidance, and can you show me where ¹³?
• How will you separate the work you did, how often we were seen and the calls we got?
• What do you do if you can't show any change after a few months?

Be wary of anyone who promises a ranking or a recommendation, or claims a special relationship with Google ¹³. Google adds that outside tools have no access to its internal ranking data ¹⁴.

7. Measure what matters to your business

Google counts visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode in your normal Search Console traffic ⁸, and it offers a report on how your content performs in its AI features ⁴. For ChatGPT and Claude, ask your customer questions on several different days and note how often you're named across all of them, not in one answer. Above all, track calls and form requests, and note the date each change went live. Whether it is called SEO, AEO or GEO, that record shows whether the work paid off.

Questions owners ask

What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?

SEO is work that helps your pages show up in search engines. AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) are newer names for work aimed at AI answers from tools like ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. Google says optimizing for its AI search is still SEO. For a contractor, the work largely overlaps.

What is answer engine optimization?

Answer engine optimization, or AEO, means making your business easy for AI tools to find, understand and cite when they write an answer. For a contractor that mostly means clear pages for each job, the towns you serve, a working phone number and accurate listings. There is no official definition or certification behind the term.

Does Google search use AI?

Yes. Google has used AI systems such as RankBrain to understand searches for years, and it says AI is now integral to how Search works. AI Overviews and AI Mode write answers using Google's Gemini models and link to pages from Google's search index. DuckDuckGo offers a version of its search with AI features turned off.

What is the difference between SEO and local SEO?

SEO covers your website's visibility in search results in general. Local SEO focuses on the map results and your Google Business Profile. Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, which includes your reviews. A contractor needs both, and AI answers draw on both.

Do I need a special file like llms.txt for AI search?

Not for Google. Google says its AI features need no special AI text file, markup or schema, and that it ignores llms.txt. What matters more is that your pages are readable, indexed and say clearly what you do and where. Don't block the search crawlers that ChatGPT and Claude use.

How much water does an AI search use?

Estimates differ. Google measured about five drops of water for the median text prompt in its Gemini app, counting data center cooling. OpenAI's chief executive put an average ChatGPT query at about one fifteenth of a teaspoon. An earlier academic study, which also counted power plant water, estimated far more for an older model.

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