Model routing, answer engine optimization, payment economics, operations automation and the governance questions nobody wants to ask until an audit. Written for operators, not for a search engine.
Most companies are optimizing for one surface and losing on the other two. Here is the distinction in the plainest terms we can put it.
Search engine optimization. Getting your pages to rank when someone types a query into a search box. Still the largest single source of intent-driven traffic, and still worth doing properly — technical health, structure, speed, links and content depth.
Measured by: rankings, impressions, organic sessions.
Answer engine optimization. Getting cited when an AI assistant answers a question in your category. This depends on structured data, clear entity definition, extractable claims and being the kind of source a model can safely quote.
Measured by: citation rate, inclusion in AI answers, brand mentions.
Generative engine optimization. Making sure that when a model writes about your category from memory, it describes you accurately. This is reputation work at the training-data level — consistency of description across every place your company appears.
Measured by: description accuracy, category association, competitive framing.
| Surface | The question it answers | What moves the needle | Time to signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | Where do we rank? | Technical health, content depth, internal linking, authority | Weeks to months |
| AEO | Do AI answers cite us? | Schema markup, extractable claims, FAQ structure, source credibility | Days to weeks |
| GEO | Do models describe us correctly? | Consistent entity description everywhere you appear, third-party corroboration | Months |
| Local / geo | Do we show up in this city? | Location entities, local citations, service-area content, reviews | Weeks |
Apex Ignite does exactly this, continuously, across all three surfaces — with a human reviewing every recommendation before it ships.