LLMO: what it means, and how it relates to GEO, AEO and SEO

LLMO stands for large language model optimisation. It is the practice of getting your business named and cited inside the answers produced by large language model assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude, rather than ranked on a page of search results. It is the same work that other people call GEO, AEO or AI SEO. The four names describe one job, and the differences between them are mostly marketing rather than method.

Where the term comes from

LLMO is a marketing coinage. There is no founding paper or standards body behind it, and no single person is credited with it. It spread through agency and vendor writing as assistants became a place buyers asked questions.

GEO is the one term with a traceable origin. A 2023 research paper titled "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization" introduced the phrase and tested how content changes affected visibility in generative engines. That is why GEO tends to be the term used by people who read the research, and why it has more weight behind it than the alternatives.

AEO, answer engine optimisation, predates the current wave of assistants. It was used for featured snippets and voice answers before it was reused for AI answers.

The four names, and what each one emphasises

Term	Stands for	What it emphasises	Who tends to use it
LLMO	Large language model optimisation	The model as the thing you are writing for	Technical and product led teams
GEO	Generative engine optimisation	The engine, including its retrieval and citation behaviour	People following the research, and most agencies
AEO	Answer engine optimisation	The answer as the unit you are competing in	Teams who came from featured snippet work
AI SEO	No fixed expansion	Continuity with existing SEO practice	Buyers searching for it, and SEO teams selling it

Read across that table and notice what is missing. No row describes work the other rows exclude. They are four framings of the same problem.

Which name is winning

GEO is, by search demand. In Google Keyword Planner data we pulled on 8 October 2026, summed across the United States, United Kingdom, India, Canada and Australia, "generative engine optimization" showed roughly 8,100 monthly searches, "answer engine optimization" roughly 4,400, and "llmo" roughly 1,000. Anybody with a Keyword Planner account can re run those three queries and check.

That ordering is worth knowing for two practical reasons. If you are naming a service page, GEO is the term most buyers are typing. If you are reading about the field, GEO is where most of the serious writing sits.

It does not follow that LLMO is wrong or going away. It is the most literal of the four, because the thing reading your page really is a language model.

The one real distinction

There is one difference under the labels that does matter, and it is not which label you use. It is whether the assistant answered from training or from a live search.

Answering from training. The model replies from what it absorbed before its cutoff. Nothing you publish today affects that answer. What affects it is how widely and consistently your name appears across the public web over a long period.

Answering from a live search. The assistant searches, reads a handful of pages, and writes an answer citing them. Here what you published this month can appear this month, and your page being readable and specific decides whether it gets used.

Most assistants now do both, choosing per question. This split, rather than the choice between LLMO and GEO, is what actually changes your plan. A category answered from training needs patience and third party presence. A category answered live rewards publishing specific, checkable pages.

What the work is, under any of the names

The method does not change with the label. Three things do most of it.

• One page per buyer question, answer first. The title is the question, the first paragraph is the answer, and the body is the evidence. Set out in how to write a page an assistant will quote.
• Facts that can be checked while being read. Counts rather than "comprehensive", prices with dates, competitor figures with a source and the day you checked. One unsupportable number can cause a careful assistant to set aside the whole page, as in how to get recommended by Claude.
• Presence on sites you do not control. Directories, review platforms, trade press, comparison pages. A name seen only on its own site has one source behind it.

For how this sits against ordinary search work, see GEO versus SEO: what actually changes.

Why the distinctions mostly do not matter

Three reasons to stop worrying about the acronym.

The deliverables are identical. Ask an LLMO agency and a GEO agency what they will actually do and you get the same list: question research, pages written to be quoted, third party listings, and a measurement of whether you are named.

No engine knows which word you used. None of these assistants has a setting for LLMO or GEO. They read pages. The label exists for buyers and vendors, not for the systems.

The terms are not settled and may not settle. Arguing a definition that could be renamed next year is a poor use of a planning meeting. Pick the word your buyers search for, define it once on your site, and move on to the work.

What this page does not cover

This page defines terms. It does not review LLMO or GEO tools, it does not price agency services, and it is not a technical implementation guide. The Keyword Planner figures above are a single dated pull and search demand moves, so treat them as a snapshot rather than a trend. We also make no claim about how any specific assistant weighs sources, because none of these companies publish that.

What people ask about LLMO

Is LLMO the same as GEO?

In practice, yes. Both describe getting named and cited in AI generated answers, and the deliverables are the same. GEO is the more widely searched term and the one with a research paper behind it.

Is LLMO replacing SEO?

No. The technical work that makes a page crawlable still decides whether any of this is possible, and ranking still helps put your page in front of the retrieval step. What changes is the target: a list position versus a mention inside an answer.

Which term should I use on my own website?

Use the one your buyers type, which today is GEO, and mention the alternatives once so a reader searching for LLMO or AEO still lands correctly. Do not build separate service pages for each acronym; they would compete with each other for the same intent.

Does LLMO involve anything technical?

Some. Whether AI crawlers are allowed in your robots file, whether your content renders without JavaScript, and whether your pages are reachable without a login. These decide whether your content can be read at all, which is upstream of everything else.

How do I know if LLMO work is doing anything?

Ask a fixed set of buyer questions, in several assistants, on a schedule, and record how often your business is named and which sources were cited. Never name your own company in the question, because it primes the answer. Expect variation between runs, so compare ranges rather than single readings.

Where does AI Knows Us fit?

Whichever label sticks, the underlying job does not change: find out what the assistants say when a buyer asks, work out which sources that answer came from, and change those sources. The acronym is an argument; the measurement is not. AI Knows Us does the measurement on a fixed question set and the work behind it, which is the same job under any of the four names.

What to do first

• Pick one term for your own site and define it in a sentence on the page where you sell the work.
• Write down the ten questions your buyers ask before choosing. Those questions, not the acronym, are the plan.
• Ask them in two or three assistants without naming your company, and record who is named and what was cited.
• In the same conversation, ask the assistant whether it searched and which pages it read. That tells you whether you are in a training answer or a live one, which decides what to do next.