GEO, AEO or AI SEO — what’s it actually called? We measured 24 names across the Nordics

27 Nordic searches aimed at being found by AI, measured on the same day: 59 different domains across 72 positions in the top three. In Norwegian and Swedish, no Nordic domain appears in more than one of the searches. Here are the figures — and which word you should use yourself.

On 2 August 2026, we analysed 27 Nordic search queries, all of which revolved around the same theme: being found by AI. Across the 24 searches that returned any results at all, there were 59 different domains occupying the 72 positions in the top three — 82 per cent of the positions went to a site that did not feature in the top three for any of the other searches. In Norway and Sweden, not a single Nordic domain appears in more than one of the searches. There isn’t a single word for this in the Nordic region, and so there isn’t a single place to find the answer either.

If you’ve tried to work out how your business is mentioned in ChatGPT, you’ve probably experienced this: you search for one word, get one set of pages; search for a slightly different word — and get a whole new set of pages saying almost the same thing but using different names. It’s not that you’re searching incorrectly. The market simply hasn’t decided what to call this discipline.

A quick background: the abbreviation GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation and originates from the research paper “GEO: Generative Engine Optimisation’ (arXiv:2311.09735), which was accepted at the KDD 2024 conference. The concept is therefore less than two years old. This goes a long way towards explaining why the market has not yet agreed on a single name.

We track a fixed list of search terms every week to measure our own visibility. When we looked at the figures from the latest measurement, it became clear that the list reveals something different and more interesting than our own rankings.

What does the analysis show?

We measured 33 search terms in Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and English on 2 August 2026 via DataForSEO’s SERP API, which retrieves Google’s results page for a given search in a given country. For each keyword, we recorded three pieces of information: whether an AI Overview was displayed, which three domains ranked highest organically, and whether we ourselves appeared anywhere in the results.

Here are the Danish searches, listed in the order in which they were measured:

Search	AI Overview?	Top 3 organic
geo optimering	Yes	mediapoint.dk, concept-i.dk, vaekst.com
aeo optimering	Yes	kh-online.dk, diviso.dk, amplify.dk
ai søgeoptimering	Yes	larsbachmann.dk, danskindustri.dk, diviso.dk
chatgpt seo	Yes	reddit.com, seo.com, forgeandsmith.com
ai synlighed	Yes	danskindustri.dk, soroeerhverv.nemtilmeld.dk, webworq.dk
bliv fundet af ai	Yes	danskindustri.dk, wayfab.dk, somejuan.dk
generative engine optimization	Yes	developers.google.com, en.wikipedia.org, semrush.com
geo bureau	Yes	raneyconsulting.dk, advanta.dk, nspire.dk
hvad er geo marketing	Yes	mediapoint.dk, side-walk.dk, vaekst.com
gratis geo test	Yes	geogames.io, apps.apple.com, quizmig.dk
geo værktøj	No	stark.dk, geo-shop.dk, staypro.dk

Eleven Danish searches, 33 top-three rankings — and 28 different domains. Only four domains appear in more than one search: Dansk Industri in three, and mediapoint.dk, vaekst.com and diviso.dk in two each. No Danish provider owns more than two of the eleven entries.

Note also that ten of the eleven searches triggered an AI Overview — Google’s AI-generated answer at the top of the page. This is worth bearing in mind, as it changes the value of a ranking position. We have calculated the implications in our analysis of AI Overviews and click-through rates.

Is the market just as fragmented in Norway and Sweden?

No — it’s worse. In Danish, after all, there are four domains that appear repeatedly. In Norwegian and Swedish, there are none.

Market	Searches measured	Top-3 positions	Unique domains	Domains with more than one search
Denmark	11	33	28	4
Norway	6	18	18	0
Sweden	7	21	21	0
Total	24	72	59	8

Consider the two markets separately. In Norway, the top three looked like this:

• ai synlighet → synlig.ai, knowit.no, synlighet.no
• bli funnet av ai → veridion.no, feed.leadify.no, no.linkedin.com

And in Sweden:

• ai synlighet → spotlightcom.se, klota.se, inka.se
• ai sökoptimering → blogg.knowit.se, topdog.nu, smarkify.se

Two searches describing exactly the same query, and not a single shared domain — neither in Norway nor in Sweden. A Norwegian company searching for an answer will therefore end up in a completely different place, depending on which of the two words it happened to type.

Eight of the 59 domains appear in more than one search. Four of these are not Nordic: the English Wikipedia, Google’s developer documentation and Semrush feature in the top three results for the English technical term itself in all three countries. The formal term therefore does not return any pages in Nordic languages at all — if you search for it, you’ll get English-language source material.

Why does ‘geo’ return geography pages?

Because the word was already taken. GEO is a two-year-old technical abbreviation used within a very small circle. For everyone else, ‘geo’ means geography — and it has done so for centuries.

You can see this directly in the figures. The fourth domain to appear three times in our survey is geogames.io — a geography quiz site. It was in the top three when we searched for a free geography test, and it appeared in all three Nordic languages. The company has nothing to do with AI visibility; it’s there because the search for Google is about countries and capital cities.

The same pattern applies when searching for a tool:

• geo værktøj → stark.dk, geo-shop.dk, staypro.dk
• geo verktyg → constructit.se, buildahome.se, awave.se

DIY stores and tool retailers, all the way. We’re actually ranked 8th and 9th for those two searches, but it’s a dubious victory: the people who find us there are looking for a screwdriver.

That’s precisely why we’ve chosen not to try to ‘own’ the term GEO. We’re competing against map, geology and construction sites with enormous authority on a term where the vast majority of searchers are looking for something completely different. The aim is to own the question — “how can my business gain visibility in ChatGPT?” — and not the abbreviation.

Which word should you use yourself?

Short answer: use the word your reader uses, and explain the others just once. Here are the five terms you’ll come across, and what they cover.

Name	Stands for	Covers	Use it when
GEO	Generative Engine Optimisation	To be quoted and mentioned in generative AI responses	You’re talking to someone who knows the field
AEO	Answer Engine Optimisation	More broadly: all answer surfaces, including answer boxes in traditional search	You’re talking about answer boxes as well as chatbots
AI SEO	—	Collective term; used both in this context and to refer to the use of AI for traditional SEO	Your reader is already familiar with SEO
LLM SEO	—	Same as GEO, with an emphasis on the language models themselves	You are writing for a technical audience
AI visibility	—	The result, not the discipline: how often you’re mentioned	You’re speaking to a non-technical decision-maker

Note the key distinction that none of the names capture: being cited as a source and being recommended as a company are two different outcomes with two different causes. Our own analysis of 576 AI responses showed that technology and structure strongly predict the former, but not the latter at all. We’ve set this out in our analysis of what determines whether AI mentions your company. Whichever term you choose, it is this distinction that determines whether you are measuring the right thing.

What do you do in practice?

This distinction is a problem when you’re searching for answers. It’s an opportunity when you’re writing.

1. Choose one main keyword for your own content. Write for the people you’re selling to. If you’re selling to marketing professionals, ‘GEO’ works; if you’re selling to a master craftsman, ‘being found by AI’ works.
2. Mention the other names once on the page. A sentence such as “GEO — also known as AEO, AI SEO or LLM SEO” makes your page the one that can answer all the variations. This isn’t keyword stuffing; it’s a translation between words that effectively mean the same thing.
3. Write the answer, not just the topic. Ten out of the eleven Danish searches triggered an AI Overview. If the question is answered above the blue links, only the sources within the answer are viewed. This requires short, direct, quotable paragraphs — we’ve described how to do this in the guide to content that AI quotes.
4. Avoid the ‘contaminated’ words in your SEO. Chasing those geo-searches where the top three results are DIY stores and quiz sites is a waste of time — see the lists above. The few who find you there aren’t customers.
5. Target questions, not abbreviations. Keep an eye on what you’re appearing for in your own Search Console — and remember to filter out bot traffic first, as described in the overview of impressions without clicks.

If you’d like to understand the background to these two concepts, they’re covered separately in ‘What is GEO? and What is AEO?, whilst the relationship to traditional search engine optimisation is covered in GEO vs SEO.

What does this not show?

These are 33 search terms measured over a single day. It is a snapshot of a list of search terms we have selected ourselves, because it covers our own market — not a representative sample of what Nordic companies are searching for.

We do not know exactly how many people search for each of these terms. The Google Keyword Planner reports zero or no data for most of them because the category is too new, so we cannot say which term is the most popular — only that they exist side by side and lead to their own respective sets of pages.

Nor do we know who the AI Overview cites. Our measurement records whether there was an AI Overview and whether it mentioned us — not which other sources it used. The domains we show in the tables are the top three organic results, i.e. the classic blue links below the AI response.

Finally, three of the 27 Nordic searches returned no organic results at all in the measurement:

• synlig i chatgpt (Norwegian)
• ai søkeoptimalisering (Norwegian)
• bli hittad av ai (Swedish)

We cannot determine whether this is due to the searches themselves or our own measurement, so these three are not included in the domain count.

And for the record: of the 33 searches, we ourselves appeared in the top 10 for two — both of which were where ‘geo’ refers to a tool. In 30 of them, we didn’t appear in the results at all. None of the 27 AI Overviews mentioned us. We’re not here to tell you how to win a market we’ve already won. We’re showing you what it looks like whilst no one has won it yet.

We repeat the analysis every week and’ll post an update when the picture changes.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between GEO, AEO and AI SEO?
In practice, they are used to mean the same thing: being mentioned and quoted in AI-generated responses. GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation and targets generative engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity. AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimisation and is used more broadly to refer to all answer interfaces, including answer boxes in traditional search. AI SEO is a broader umbrella term that is also used to refer to the use of AI tools for general SEO. Choose one word for your own content, and mention the others once on the page.

Which word do Danes, Norwegians and Swedes actually search for?
All of them, side by side. In our analysis of 27 Nordic searches on 2 August 2026, there were 59 different domains occupying the 72 positions in the top three. In Norwegian and Swedish, no Nordic domain appeared in the top three for more than one of the searches. No provider dominates the field in any of the three languages.

Why does a search for ‘geo’ return geography websites?
Because the abbreviation was taken first. For most people, ‘geo’ means geography. In the survey, the geography quiz site geogames.io featured in the top three when we searched for a free geo test, and this was the case in all three Nordic languages; a search for a geo tool returned DIY stores such as Stark. It’s therefore a waste of time to chase those words in your own SEO.

How often does an AI Overview appear for these searches?
For 27 of the 33 search terms measured on 2 August 2026 — that is, four out of five. In Danish, it was ten out of eleven. This means that the question is often answered via the blue links, and that it is the sources within the answer that are viewed.

Does having lots of names mean it’s hard to get started?
No, quite the opposite. A fragmented field means that no one has built the site that brings it all together. If you write one clear answer and mention the common names just once, your page can cover all the variations — whereas a mature market would require you to outrank an established player for every single term.

May I quote the figures?
Yes. Please cite “Geoa, August 2026, SERP measurement of 33 keywords in DK/NO/SE/US, measured on 2 August 2026” and feel free to link to this page. We note the date of each update, so older citations can be traced back to the version from which they were taken.