AEO and GEO fundamentals
How ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI answers choose the sources they cite, and what you can do about it.
- lessons
- 8
- total reading time
- 60 min
- level
- Beginner
- no sign-up needed
- Free
What you'll be able to do
- Explain how AI engines find and cite sources
- Tell SEO, AEO and GEO apart, and see where they overlap
- Separate mentions, citations, AI crawlers and AI-referred visitors
- Know what structured data and llms.txt can and cannot do
- Run the measure → fix → publish → re-measure loop
Who it's for
Marketers, founders and SEOs new to AI search. No tool needed.
How the lessons work
Each lesson is a short written walkthrough with diagrams, the credit cost of every action, a link to open the tool and a three-question check at the end. Screenshots, videos and audio versions are added as they are produced.
Lessons
- How AI engines pick the sources they cite9 min
Retrieval, query fan-out and why some pages get quoted while others are ignored.
- SEO, AEO and GEO: what each one means7 min
Three overlapping disciplines, what each optimises for and how to prioritise them.
- Mentions, citations and share of voice7 min
The three numbers that describe your presence in AI answers, and how to read them.
- AI crawlers vs AI-referred visitors7 min
Why bots that read your site and people sent by AI answers are measured differently.
- Structured data and llms.txt: what they do and don't do8 min
Schema, FAQ markup and llms.txt explained honestly, without the myths.
- Writing pages AI engines cite9 min
Answer-first structure, specific facts, sources and entity clarity.
- Measuring AI visibility honestly7 min
Prompts, engines, sample sizes and why one run is not a trend.
- The AI visibility loop6 min
Measure, diagnose, create, publish, re-measure: the workflow the rest of the Academy teaches.
Learn it on your own site
Paste your site and get a free SEO, AEO and GEO audit. Then follow the lessons with your own data.