AEO, AISEO, LLMO, SXO, GEO, and the SEO Industry

The Great Acronym Fog: SEO, GEO, and the Industry That Accidentally Ate the Alphabet

There are moments in every profession when it collectively stops, looks around, and realises it has been arguing with itself in public for an entire year. For SEO, that moment arrived somewhere between its seventeenth rebrand and its fifth existential crisis, when a group of highly credentialled adults began earnestly debating whether they still do “SEO,” or whether they now do “GEO,” “AEO,” “AISEO,” “LLMO,” “SXO,” or something whispered at conferences like a password to a members-only club.

This is not a story about search engines. This is a story about identity. About people who built careers on ranking things suddenly discovering that they themselves are unrankable, undefinable, and deeply upset about vowels—which, let’s be honest, have always been overrated anyway.

When Everyone Is a Thought Leader, No One Knows Where the Thoughts Are

The research politely describes 75 “SEO thought leaders.” That phrase alone deserves a moment’s silence, possibly accompanied by a mournful clarinet. Thought leader implies direction, confidence, and a sense of where the road is going. What the data actually shows is more like a group of ramblers standing in fog, each pointing in a different direction, all insisting the compass is knackered.

These leaders posted confidently about the future whilst disagreeing with themselves quarter to quarter. In January, GEO is the future. In March, GEO is misunderstood. In June, GEO is dead. In August, GEO is actually just SEO wearing a hat. By December, everyone agrees the real answer is “it depends,” which is the industry’s equivalent of a white flag sewn from analytics dashboards.

Experts interviewed for this piece confirmed the phenomenon. One veteran consultant, who asked not to be named because he had already changed his LinkedIn headline twice that week, explained it this way: “We are very certain something is happening. We’re just unclear what, why, or what to call it.”

SEO: The Comfortable Old Sofa No One Will Throw Away

Traditional SEO refuses to die, mostly because it still works and nobody has found a polite way to tell clients it’s boring now. SEO is the industry’s old sofa. The springs poke you. It smells faintly of 2014 content audits. But it’s familiar, and throwing it away feels irresponsible.

This explains why nearly half of professionals still cling to “SEO” in their titles like a childhood blanket. GEO sounds exciting, but SEO pays the mortgage. GEO sounds futuristic, but SEO still answers emails. GEO promises tomorrow. SEO delivers traffic today, which in business time is worth roughly three philosophical revolutions.

One agency owner admitted over coffee, “I tell clients we’re doing GEO, but internally we still do SEO. GEO is what we say out loud. SEO is what we do quietly, like eating biscuits alone in the kitchen at 2 AM whilst pretending to care about calories.”

GEO: Schrödinger’s Discipline

GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation, exists in a quantum state. It is simultaneously revolutionary and completely undefined. Ask ten people what GEO means and you’ll get twelve answers, one of which involves vibes, one of which involves prompts, and one of which is just SEO with better posture.

According to sentiment analysis, GEO is viewed positively. This makes sense. People are optimistic about things they don’t yet understand. Babies smile at ceiling fans. Marketers smile at new acronyms. Both assume something magical is happening.

But positivity does not equal clarity. One survey respondent described GEO as “optimising content for answers that may or may not exist, delivered by systems we don’t control, to users who might not click anything.” When asked how that differs from SEO, he paused for a long time and said, “Brand?”

Acronym Inflation and the Collapse of Meaning

The industry’s real problem is not AI. It is acronym inflation. Every shift demands a new name, and every name demands a conference slide. Over time, the letters lose meaning, like currency printed too fast during a hyperinflation crisis.

AEO becomes AISEO becomes LLMO becomes SXO. Somewhere, a junior marketer is quietly Googling all of them whilst nodding confidently on a Zoom call, their camera strategically angled to hide the panic. Acronyms are no longer tools for clarity. They are social signals. Saying the right one at the right time is how you prove you belong.

A leaked internal memo from a mid-sized agency revealed the strategy plainly: “Use GEO publicly, SEO internally, AI in sales decks, and AEO when confused. Rotate quarterly.”

Volatility: The Only Stable Metric Left

The research notes volatility in posting behaviour, sentiment, and language. This is framed as an insight, but it’s actually the industry’s most consistent feature. SEO has always thrived on instability. Algorithms change. Best practices shift. Certainty is punished. Anxiety is monetised.

The difference now is that the volatility has turned inward. Instead of reacting to Google, the industry is reacting to itself. Professionals are optimising not for algorithms, but for relevance amongst peers. The real ranking system is LinkedIn engagement, and the algorithm is vibes.

One anonymous strategist put it bluntly: “We don’t know what’s coming, so we’re hedging with vocabulary.”

Data, Charts, and the Art of Looking Busy

The charts in the research are beautiful in the way modern art is beautiful. They communicate effort. They signal rigour. They do not answer the question they appear to ask.

Sentiment graphs spike and dip like heart monitors during a caffeine study. Lines cross. Colours overlap. Somewhere in the legend is the phrase “AI-related terminology,” which feels like a filing cabinet labelled “Misc.”

A data scientist consulted for this article confirmed that sentiment analysis is excellent at detecting feelings and terrible at detecting meaning. “We can tell they’re excited,” she said. “We just don’t know about what.”

Build Real Value: The Sentence Everyone Agrees With and Immediately Ignores

Every debate eventually lands on the same conclusion: build real value. This phrase is repeated with reverence, like a mantra. It is also immediately followed by another acronym.

Real value, in theory, means helpful content, expertise, clarity, and trust. In practice, it means whatever aligns with the current narrative without requiring a full strategy rewrite. Real value is the north star everyone points to whilst walking in circles.

A small business owner interviewed for this piece offered a refreshing perspective: “I don’t care what you call it. I just want people to find my website.” This quote was immediately ignored by everyone involved.

The User, Quietly Uninvited

The most remarkable aspect of the entire debate is how little users feature in it. Users are invoked constantly but rarely described. They are abstract creatures who ask questions, receive answers, and apparently never click anything again.

In this vision of the future, users are passive recipients of synthesised wisdom. They do not browse. They do not compare. They do not scroll angrily at midnight. They simply accept the answer and move on, satisfied and monetisable in spirit.

Sociologists suggest this imaginary user is comforting because it removes uncertainty. Real users are messy. They search weird things. They don’t read. They mistrust authority. Imaginary users behave perfectly and validate strategy decks.

Expert Opinions That Sound Convincing Until You Listen Closely

Experts quoted across the debate speak with absolute confidence, often using sentences that sound profound until you examine them. Phrases like “search is shifting from retrieval to resolution” and “optimisation is now about influence, not visibility” float through the discourse like incense at a thought leadership seminar.

These statements are not wrong. They are also not actionable. They are industry poetry, designed to inspire agreement without demanding change.

One long-time consultant admitted privately, “Half of thought leadership is saying things that are true enough no one can argue, and vague enough no one can test.”

The LinkedIn Title Arms Race

Nothing reveals confusion faster than a LinkedIn headline. Titles now stretch across screens, featuring slashes, pipes, and parentheticals like legal disclaimers. SEO Strategist | GEO Adviser | AI Search Evangelist | Human (Probably).

This is less about role clarity and more about future-proofing. If everything is in the title, nothing can go obsolete. The headline becomes a bunker stocked with acronyms in case one survives the winter.

Recruiters, meanwhile, quietly admit they still search for “SEO” because it’s the only keyword that reliably returns humans.

A Fake Poll That Feels Uncomfortably Accurate

An informal poll conducted amongst marketers attending a virtual conference revealed the following results:

• A majority believe GEO is important.
• A slightly larger majority cannot define it.
• Nearly everyone is using it anyway.
• Most agree the debate will be replaced by a new acronym within twelve months.
• Everyone plans to write about it before that happens.

The margin of error was described as “the entire industry.”

Cause, Effect, and the Fear of Being Left Behind

Why is this happening? Because search is changing, yes. But also because no one wants to be the person still saying SEO when everyone else is saying something shinier. The fear is not being wrong. It is being late.

In technology cultures, being early is forgiven. Being wrong is rebranded. Being late is fatal. Acronyms are survival tools.

The Quiet Truth No One Puts on a Slide

Here is the uncomfortable deduction drawn from all available evidence, expert testimony, polls, charts, vibes, and coffee shop confessions: SEO is not dying. GEO is not replacing it. AI is not abolishing search. What is changing is how people talk about their work, not the work itself.

People are still creating content. Systems are still ranking or selecting it. Users are still searching, even if the interface looks different. The machinery evolves. The labels panic.

Conclusion: Welcome to the Era of Confident Uncertainty

The SEO versus GEO debate is not a battle for the future of search. It is a mirror held up to an industry that has always lived on the edge of certainty and now finds itself narrating that uncertainty in public.

The acronyms will keep coming. The charts will get prettier. The confidence will remain absolute. And somewhere beneath it all, someone will quietly optimise a page, test a result, and move on without renaming the universe.

Disclaimer

This story is presented as entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world’s oldest tenured professor, who remembers when AltaVista was a verb, and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer who believes all acronyms are a moral failure. Any resemblance to actual industry debates is not coincidental but structurally inevitable.

Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!