SEO wins a blue link. AEO wins a direct answer. GEO wins a named mention inside AI-generated text. In 2026 a Canadian company needs all three, but they are funded, measured, and staffed differently — and confusing them is the most common reason budgets underperform.
The three disciplines, defined without jargon
- SEO (search engine optimization): earn a position in a ranked list of links. Measured by rank, clicks, and organic sessions.
- AEO (answer engine optimization): be the source an engine quotes when it answers a question outright — featured snippets, People Also Ask, Google AI Overviews. Measured by answer ownership.
- GEO (generative engine optimization): be named inside generated prose from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, or Perplexity. Measured by brand-named citation rate per engine.
What overlaps, and what does not
Roughly 70% of the technical work overlaps: clean crawlability, fast pages, correct headings, accurate structured data. The remaining 30% is where results are actually won.
Unique to AEO/GEO:
- Entity graph work — one canonical description of your company, reinforced consistently across the open web.
- Answer-first page structure: one H2 per question, one paragraph per answer.
- Third-party corroboration, because a generative engine will not name a company it cannot verify from a second source.
llms.txt/llms-full.txtfor AI crawlers.- Per-engine, per-prompt citation logs instead of rank trackers.
Canadian specifics that change the work
- Entity signals need to be Canadian. A
.cadomain, a real Canadian address, CAD pricing, and Canadian directory listings materially improve whether the engines name you for "in Canada" prompts. - Bilingual prompt sets in Quebec. Monitoring English only loses half the Montreal market. French prompts return a different shortlist.
- Regional saturation varies enormously. Toronto is dense and source-driven. Calgary and Edmonton frequently return national answers because local entity data is thin — which makes them cheap to win.
- Privacy framing matters. For regulated sectors, PIPEDA-aware handling is a claim buyers ask about, and it belongs in your entity facts.
How to split a budget
For most Canadian mid-market companies: keep classic SEO maintenance running at a maintenance level, then put net-new budget into AEO/GEO, because that is where the answer surface is growing and the competitive set is still thin. A practical split is roughly 40% technical and entity work, 40% answer content production, 20% third-party source building.
What good reporting looks like
One table, monthly: prompt, engine, were you named, in what position, who was named instead. Add AI referral sessions from Search Console and GA4 next to it. If a report cannot answer "did we get named, on which questions, by which engine," it is not measuring GEO.
DoodleWeb Canada runs this as a fixed-price program — see AI citation services for scope and prices.
Related reading
- How to get cited in AI search (fixed-price guide)
- Zero-click search in 2026
- What is generative engine optimization?
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