Plain answers about AI search.
One question per page, answered the way we would want an engine to answer it: the short version first, the reasoning after, and a source on every number.
GEO, generative engine optimization, is the work of earning citations inside the answers that AI assistants generate, so that when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, or Google's AI where to find something, the answer names you. It is the same discipline as AEO (answer engine optimization); the two terms are used interchangeably, with GEO more common in research writing and AEO more common in marketing teams.
SEO earns rankings on a page of links; AEO (answer engine optimization) earns citations inside the single answer an AI assistant writes. The disciplines overlap in foundations, but they differ in what is measured, what gets fixed, and who you are competing with, because a generated answer names only two or three providers where a results page listed ten.
AI assistants assemble banking recommendations from what they can read and verify: the institution's own pages, the web's records about it, and the comparison pages and local sources they trust for the category. They name institutions whose facts are easy to quote, so clear rate pages, consistent entity records, and presence in the sources engines cite decide who appears far more than size or advertising spend.