Artificial intelligence is changing how people discover, evaluate, and trust brands. When someone asks ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini a question about your industry, the answer they get — and the brands it references — can shape real-world buying decisions.
The question for every company is: Will your brand be part of that answer?
That’s where generative engine optimization (GEO), answer engine optimization (AEO), and Axia Public Relations’ proprietary AIVisibility℠ program come in. While these terms sound similar, they play distinct roles in ensuring your organization is visible, credible, and correctly represented in the AI-driven information ecosystem.
GEO: Teaching AI to recognize you
GEO focuses on helping AI models — such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity — find, understand, and accurately represent your brand when generating answers.
Unlike traditional SEO, which optimizes for keywords and ranking, GEO optimizes for representation and reference. The goal is to make sure your brand’s name, content, and expertise appear as credible citations when people ask AI engines questions about your industry.
How GEO works
Generative AI tools don’t “browse” the internet. They learn from authoritative, indexable, and high-quality content sources. That means the data you publish through press releases, earned media coverage, blogs, and whitepapers directly influences how AI models describe your brand.
If your content isn’t credible or accessible, AI tools may never learn who you are — or worse, they may misrepresent your company entirely.
GEO example
A cybersecurity firm publishes consistent thought leadership and earns industry trade coverage about cloud security. Months later, when someone asks ChatGPT, “Who are the top cybersecurity companies offering cloud protection?”, that firm appears in the AI’s answer — because its content helped train the model’s understanding.
That’s the power of GEO: ensuring AI learns your story from trustworthy sources.
AEO: Becoming the answer
AEO helps your brand appear in AI-enhanced search engines — such as Google’s “AI Overview,” Bing Copilot, or voice assistants like Siri and Alexa — when they deliver concise, summarized answers to users.
Traditional SEO gets your page to rank; AEO gets your content quoted.
How AEO works
AEO relies on creating structured, factual, and conversational content that search and AI systems can easily extract and present as authoritative answers. This includes optimizing headlines, FAQs, schema markup, and plain-language explanations that align with the way people ask questions.
AEO example
A home services company publishes a clear, well-structured blog titled “How often should homeowners replace their HVAC filters?”
When someone asks Google or Alexa that exact question, the company’s response is used as the featured answer — building brand authority and visibility even if the user never visits the site.
That’s the essence of AEO: making your company’s expertise the answer.
AIVisibility℠: Managing how AI and the world perceive you
Axia's AIVisibility℠ program brings GEO and AEO together under AI relations, a strategic communications framework.
Where GEO and AEO focus on visibility, AIVisibility focuses on credibility and reputation — ensuring your brand is accurately represented in AI-generated content and the human conversations AI learns from.
Why AI relations matters
According to industry research, 95% of AI citations originate from PR–driven content.
That means your press releases, earned media coverage, and thought leadership articles play a far greater role in shaping AI-generated knowledge than advertising or traditional SEO alone.
AI relations ensures your content ecosystem — including news releases, interviews, blogs, and online profiles — reflects your company’s values, expertise, and leadership accurately and consistently.
How Axia’s AIVisibility℠ works
AIVisibility integrates four strategic disciplines:
- GEO: Teaching AI systems who you are.
- AEO: Positioning your brand to be the answer.
- Content reputation engineering: Publishing authoritative, fact-based content that builds trust with both humans and machines.
- Media relations and thought leadership: Generating earned media coverage that feeds into the sources AI models trust most.
This approach ensures your brand’s story isn’t just discoverable — it’s credible, consistent, and current across the entire AI ecosystem.
Why PR is now the front door to AI discovery
PR has always been about reputation, credibility, and influence, and now it’s also about AI visibility.
AI doesn’t cite ads. It cites reliable content:
- News articles and press releases from verified media outlets
- Reputable organizational websites with factual resources
- Interviews and podcasts featuring recognized subject-matter experts
That means your brand’s earned media, thought leadership, and digital footprint determine how AI “understands” and communicates your story.
For example:
- A franchisor that regularly shares credible franchise success stories and data will appear more often in AI search results about franchise growth.
- A constructech company covered by industry trade media will be seen as a top innovator when AI models summarize technology leaders.
- A dental equipment manufacturer featured in reputable healthcare outlets will show up more often in AI-generated buying guides.
This isn’t theoretical — it’s already happening today.
The bottom line
AI is rewriting the rules of search, communication, and brand visibility.
- GEO helps ensure AI engines recognize your brand.
- AEO ensures search engines feature your content as the answer.
- AIVisibility℠ ensures both humans and machines trust what they find.
When combined, they create an integrated strategy for modern visibility — one that positions your company as a trusted authority in both human and machine-driven conversations.
If your PR, marketing, and communications strategies don’t yet account for how AI represents your brand, the time to act is now.
Axia is pioneering the future of AIVisibility℠ — helping organizations build visibility, credibility, and reputation in the age of generative search.
Explore our AIVisibility℠ service to see how we can help your company become the brand AI trusts.
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Topics: SEO, artificial intelligence
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