The difference between SEO, AEO and GEO, explained for studios

In short. SEO is the work that puts your studio in Google's search results and the map pack. AEO (answer engine optimization) is the work that gets your own words used as the answer shown above those results, in featured snippets, People Also Ask and AI Overviews. GEO (generative engine optimization) is the work that gets your studio named when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for a studio recommendation. Three labels, one foundation: a fast page, the answer near the top, a complete Google Business Profile, and other sites repeating the same facts about you.

Last month an owner in Rotterdam forwarded us an agency email. It offered a "GEO readiness audit" for 1.450 euro, with a second package for AEO on top. She teaches five classes a day and has a website her cousin built in 2021. Her question was fair: are these different things, and does she need both.

The short answer is that the labels describe different places your answer can appear, not three separate trades. Understanding which is which takes about ten minutes, and it is worth the ten minutes, because it tells you when someone is selling you a rename of work you already paid for.

What is SEO, in studio terms?

SEO is search engine optimization: getting your pages and your Google Business Profile to show up when someone searches. For a boutique studio that means two surfaces, the map pack (the three businesses with pins) and the blue links underneath.

The studio example. It is 21:40, someone in Kralingen has just quit their gym, and they type "pilates kralingen" on their phone. Google shows three studios on a map, with ratings, distance and an open now label. SEO decides whether you are one of those three, and it is mostly about your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your categories and a page on your site that actually says Kralingen.

This is still where nearly all the demand is. We wrote the long version in local SEO for boutique fitness studios in the Netherlands, and the settings-level detail in Google Business Profile for gyms.

What is AEO (answer engine optimization)?

AEO is optimizing to be the answer, not the link. When Google shows a featured snippet, a People Also Ask accordion or an AI Overview at the top of the page, it is lifting text from somewhere. AEO is making sure that text can be lifted from you.

The studio example. Someone searches "hoeveel kost een proefles pilates rotterdam". Google wants a short, liftable answer with a price and a condition. If your trial price lives inside a booking widget, a PDF or a pretty image, there is nothing to lift, so a competitor's plain sentence gets used instead.

What AEO actually asks of you is unglamorous. Answer the question in the first two sentences under the heading, in the same words people use. Give the number, the price, the duration, the address. Keep one question per page or per clearly titled section. Add FAQ markup so the question and answer are machine readable.

The uncomfortable part of AEO is that winning it can cost you a click. If Google answers "how much is a trial class" on its own page, the searcher may never visit your site. That is a real trade-off, and it is why we push studios to own the queries where a click is required anyway, like booking, schedule and location.

What is GEO (generative engine optimization)?

GEO is optimizing to be named and cited inside an assistant's answer. There is no ranked list of ten results to climb. The model writes a paragraph, mentions two or three studios, and sometimes links its sources.

The studio example. A woman who just moved to Utrecht types into ChatGPT: "ik zoek een kleine pilatesstudio in Lombok met reformer-lessen op zaterdagochtend". The answer names three studios and says why. Whether you are one of them depends on what the model can read about you across the web, not only on your own site.

As Ittica puts it in their explainer, SEO decides how well a page scores in a list of results, while GEO decides whether a model uses or cites your information when someone asks a question. That difference matters for what you work on: consistency and credibility off your own site do more of the lifting.

We should be honest here. Nobody outside OpenAI, Google and Anthropic can prove which factors decide a mention, and the answers change week to week. What we see repeatedly is that studios named in third-party pages get mentioned more often: local listicles, Eversports and Momence listings, Reddit threads about Amsterdam gyms, neighbourhood blogs. The full walkthrough is in how a fitness studio gets recommended by ChatGPT.

So what is the real difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?

Three practical differences, and then the overlap.

Where the answer appears. SEO puts a link and a pin in front of someone. AEO puts your sentence at the top of a Google results page. GEO puts your studio name inside a chat reply.

How you measure it. SEO you can see in Search Console and in Google Business Profile insights. AEO shows up as rising impressions with flat clicks, which reads like failure until you notice the snippet is yours. GEO has almost no dashboard, so you test by hand: ask the assistants your five most commercial questions every month and log which studios get named. Check your analytics for referrals from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai too, though for a single studio the volume will be small.

What you change. SEO leans on profile completeness, reviews, local pages and speed. AEO leans on page structure, plain answers and markup. GEO leans on your facts being identical everywhere and other people writing about you. Notice that a fast, well-structured site with correct facts serves all three. Launchmind's rundown of Dutch AI search lists the same pattern of what gets cited: a direct answer in the opening paragraph, real data, clear author and date, tight headings and FAQ sections. That is not a new discipline. It is good writing with tags on it.

How many people in the Netherlands actually search with AI?

Enough to matter, not enough to reorganise your month around. Research by Newcom, reported by Emerce, found that the number of Dutch people using AI in daily life grew from around 5 million to 7.2 million in a year, with 2.5 million using it almost daily. The survey ran in March 2026 among 2.504 people aged 18 to 65.

Using AI is not the same as searching with it. Ittica cites Ruigrok NetPanel's What's Happening Online research finding that only 6 percent of Dutch people search via an AI tool rather than a classic search engine, and 13 percent among Gen Z. So Google remains the starting point for the overwhelming majority of people looking for a studio near them.

Our reading: keep your SEO budget where it is, and treat AEO and GEO as habits you add to work you were doing anyway. If an agency proposes a GEO package that costs more than your local search work, ask them which Dutch queries it targets and how they will report on it.

What we would do first this month

1. Ask ChatGPT and Gemini five questions a new client would ask, in Dutch and in English, including your neighbourhood and your class type. Save the answers in a note. That is your baseline.
2. Write your trial-class page so the first two sentences give the price, the length and how to book. No preamble about your philosophy above it.
3. Check that your name, address, opening hours and trial price are identical on your website, Google Business Profile, Eversports or Momence, and your Instagram bio. Fix the oldest one first.
4. Add LocalBusiness and FAQPage structured data. If your site is on Wix, Squarespace or WordPress, this is a settings-and-plugin job, not a rebuild.
5. Publish one page per real question you get asked at the desk: parking, what to bring, pregnancy, beginners, Saturday schedule. Keep each under 400 words.
6. Get two mentions off your own site: a neighbourhood newsletter, a local listicle, a partner physio, a Reddit reply where it is genuinely relevant.

None of that is exotic, and you can do most of it yourself in a week of evenings. If the honest blocker is that your current site cannot be structured properly, we design the first version free of charge and you only continue if you like it: get your free website, or read what the two programs cover before you decide.