AI Governance Architect
Regulatory Compliance & Generative Engine Risk Mitigation

GEO or AEO? Who is Full of Shit?

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                                    <img width="300" height="293" src="https://clintongallagher.com/wp-content/uploads/LinkedIn-Rennaissance-Man-1200x630-1-e1762130331239-300x293.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium wp-image-34458" alt="Clinton Gallagher: AI Educator - Generative Engine Optimization Knowledgebase Architect. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 414-243-8211 CST" srcset="https://clintongallagher.com/wp-content/uploads/LinkedIn-Rennaissance-Man-1200x630-1-e1762130331239-300x293.jpg 300w, https://clintongallagher.com/wp-content/uploads/LinkedIn-Rennaissance-Man-1200x630-1-e1762130331239.jpg 644w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />                                           <figcaption class="widget-image-caption wp-caption-text">Clinton Gallagher: AI Educator - Generative Engine Optimization Knowledgebase Architect. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 414-243-8211 CST</figcaption>
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Who is full of shit? This time its easy for me to say “Not me!” and try to make my case to prove it.

During 1603 the term polymath entered our lexicon. I describe myself as a Renaissance Man –a synonym– meaning a person with many talents, skills and areas of knowledge. Renaissance men –and– women don’t spend much time watching football or any sports, they prefer reading, listening, watching, learning and doing things they’ve learned. 

ChatGPT was released as a public prototype on November 30th, 2022. I can remember this date in November because I quit smoking cigarettes on November 21st, 1985 and I learned to use AI a few days later so to speak. That’s how polymath minds function using pattern recognition, markers, milestones and mnemonic devices. Just remembering how to spell that qualifies me as a smartass.

Now here’s the thing AFTER THREE YEARS OF STUDY AND APPLICATION most people do not know what GPT stands for:

G(enerative) P(retrained) T(ransformer)

Now as it pertains to GEO that acronym stands for:

G(enerative) E(ngine) (Optimization) 

SO TELL ME…

G(enerative) P(retrained) T(ransformer) = G(enerative) E(ngine) (Optimization) 

See the connection? Where does AEO come from:

A(nswer) E(ngine) O(ptimization) 

AEO was made up by a dude named Jason Barnard, a guy that was known to have some savvy with SEO Saying “made up” is the nice way of saying he pulled an idea out his ass, a hitherto unrecognized perception and started talking it up as a way to stay important after having been displaced by those with a higher intelligence. SEO needed marketing to save its bacon: a SEO SaaS business that AI and GEO has now made a Second Class citizen; SEO is still important mind you and they served us well but the cold hard truth is SEO takes a back seat to AI LLM chatbots and is now being done new ways with new techniques required to learn and master. Calling it all search is marketing bullshit.

Do you realize three years of studying AI chatbots is like a Bachelor’s Degree? My how time is flying. Even now editing for review as I work on a ‘Masters’ just before we hang out the Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving of 2026.

FACT: SEO is a must for AEO but GEO does everything and more than AEO and the use of AEO per se has only one use hereafter: MARKETING BULLSHIT.

FACT: GEO requires JSON-LD programatic source code in a web page to structure data in pursuit of a single source of truth. Whatever is said in the page is repeated in a source code data structure we refer to as a knowledge graph; therein from which the single source of truth may be computed. If the predicate logic concludes truthiness the model will continue to parse everything the index contains about the website being parsed to determine whether it can be trusted to T(ransform) so as to establish E(xperience) E(xpertise) A(uthority) and T(rust) the signals AI needs to avoid hallucinating. We’re not in marketing la-la land anymore Toto. SEO is a word-lookup algorhythm. AEO is a retrieval of a resource that contains the words that were looked up. GEO is a computational process devised to avoid hallucination and confabulation: its requires source code and higher order logical constructs those with advanced computer science knowledge and skills possess.

AI chatbots all work similarly but there really are some distinct differences. For the sake of this article hoping to help you understand, those talking about AEO are talking out of their asses and are the ones who must be full of shit. Their motivation? Sound important and try to stay relevant after being replaced by automation and those such as yours truly that had the skills and stepped right in to the next phase of providing them. Period. Marketers must take a shot at reskilling. Put another Period on that fact Jack. They’re causing a lot of shit on the way out the door.

Every AI chatbot UI functions as a search engine –every one of them– but not all the same way as we’ve learned since 2022. ChatGPT searches its training data, Perplexity goes out to the WWW. Gemini and Claude are hybrids. Grok does it all but is just now entering adolescence as of today.

EVERY AI LLM G(ENERATES) AND EVERY AI T(RANSFORMS) BUT NOT EVERY AI USES PRETRAINED DATA WHERE THE SEO KEYWORDS ARE RETRIEVED.

GET IT? THAT IS THE KEY TO UNDERSTAND AEO IS BULLSHIT AND THOSE THAT BABBLE ABOUT IT AS BEING IMPORTANT ARE TALKING OUT OF THEIR ASS MARKETING.

SIMPLIFIED:
* SEO/AEO looks up words using the same search process developed before Generative AI.
* GEO computes words logically to determine if the statement they form is true and can be trusted as such.

GEO INITIATES GENERATIVE TRANSFORMATION IF AND ONLY IF THE JSON-LD SOURCE CODE IS IN THE PAGE AS EXPLAINED ELSE THE LLM (ENGINE) KEEPS RUNNING AS A SEARCH ENGINES.

That is GEO and its how we get discovered and trusted by AI so we can be referred and cited in chat discussions. It is also how those with statutory licenses mandated by the state will be held accountable to ensure the license is used to protect the safety, health and welfare of the public lest they lose it.

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