Most legal tech marketing leaders have now been pitched all three: SEO, AEO, and GEO. The assumption behind most of those conversations is that they are three names for one thing, and that choosing a vendor is mostly a matter of choosing a label. That assumption is where a lot of wasted budget starts. The acronyms are not the problem. The problem is that nobody in the room says which AI tool the work is actually supposed to move.
Where the words came from
Only one of the three has a clear origin. GEO — generative engine optimization — was introduced in a 2023 research paper out of Princeton, which defined it as the work of showing up in AI-generated answers. AEO has no traceable starting point at all. It spread through agency marketing, picked up momentum on LinkedIn, and today the two words get used interchangeably by the people selling them. EMARKETER put it plainly this spring: there is still no common vocabulary for this category.
So a buyer comparing two proposals usually is not comparing two methods. They are comparing two vocabularies — and paying for whichever one sounds more confident on the call.
The distinction that actually matters
The useful line is not between acronyms. It is between the AI tools themselves, because they do not find or choose sources the same way.
| Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode | ChatGPT | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it finds sources | Google's regular search index | Its own web search, when it decides to run one |
| What gets you in | Being indexed and eligible to show a snippet | Showing up in the sources it pulls when it does search |
| Is it new work? | Mostly no — it is SEO | Yes — different mechanics, slower feedback |
Google’s own documentation is unusually direct about its side: “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.” No special files, no new markup, no separate discipline to buy. If a legal tech company’s SEO is sound, a good share of its Google AI visibility is already handled.
ChatGPT is a different machine. It often does not search at all. Semrush’s analysis of US clickstream data puts it at a web search on only about a third of queries early this year. On the rest, the answer comes from what the model already knows — and no amount of on-page work reaches a system that never went looking.
The question isn’t which acronym. It’s which AI tool.
A five-minute check on any proposal
Pull up the last AEO or GEO proposal you received and look for three things. Does it name the specific AI tools the work covers? Does it say what changes on each one? Does it say how each will be tracked separately, month over month? If those answers are there, you are looking at a plan. If the proposal answers in acronyms, the work has not been defined yet — and you would be paying someone to define it on your time.
Watch the headline numbers too. The “up to 40% more visibility” figure that shows up in a lot of pitch decks comes from that 2023 paper, and as a Sciences Po review of the research points out, it reflects a gain inside a controlled research setup. It is not a promise about ChatGPT, and it is not a promise about your category.
So the useful conversation isn’t about what to call the work. It’s about where the work happens. Ask a partner to name the tools, the buyer questions, and how they will track each one. The partners who can answer clearly are selling a plan. The rest are selling a word.
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