Marketing is so full of acronyms that most marketers just look them up on their second monitor when they come up in meetings and webinars. They’re often used to make people who use them seem a lot smarter than they actually are, but in reality, the concepts are probably something you already know.

Truth be told, acronyms are (mostly) fake.

They don’t exist; they’re made up, but at a certain point, they become adopted by a wider audience, and then they stick. But for every stuck acronym- SEO, ETA, TL;DR- there are hundreds of splotches of paint littering the baseboards of slang.

We’re currently witnessing the birth of a new acronym, but digital marketers are unsure which one will stick. That acronym is for the burgeoning field of optimizing content so AI references it in responses.

Take a look at these two emails I got on the same day:

In this article, we’re going to pit the various acronyms for optimizing for AI search against each other, and see who comes out on top!

I did a quick round-up of every acronym I could find. The contenders are:

Like any good sport, we need some rules. So I made a rubric.

Here are the criteria that each contender will be graded by:

I will be grading each acronym on a scale of 1-5 for each of these, tallying them all up, and naming the acronym that everyone in the industry has to use until someone slightly changes their approach and decides to call it something like 3D-AEO cause they want to be considered the founder of it.

I haven’t seen this one used as much as some other acronyms, but it was definitely present in the early days of the technology. Consider this the OG; it should be respected, but didn’t age very well … Let’s see how it does on the rubric.

AI SEO doesn’t score very well on the understandability portion. I have seen this be used to explain techniques for optimizing for AI search, but it’s moreso used when talking about AI-driven tactics for SEO.

“Old McDonald had a farm

A I S E O”

Bad mouth feel.

I don’t think anyone is interested in just slapping AI in front of SEO and calling it a day. It’s lazy, uninspired, and currently, no one uses it.

One letter off from our last contestant. I kind of had to dig to find this one, but I did find a couple of instances of people using this. Importantly, I couldn’t find what each letter in the acronym actually meant.

ASEO, from a vibes perspective, works. It says, we’re doing the SEO thing, but for AI. That won’t work; we need more than vibes, we need an acronym so understandable that even a green content marketer won’t have to look it up on their second screen. 

The big issue with this one is: what does the A stand for? Does it stand for AI? Answer? Or Artificial? We don’t know!

It’s a bit long for my taste, but it may be confused for a real word during meetings.

I had to dig to find this one, so it’s safe to say it doesn’t meet the criteria for spreadability.

Now we’re getting into the big hitters. GEO is used very regularly by industry heavyweights.

I want you to sit with this for a second.

Generative is the important word here.

There’s a really specific difference between generative AI and AI-AI. Stick with me here.

When I think about generative AI, I think about someone generating a video of Jeff Goldbloom hitting a sick kickflip. I don’t usually think about generating an answer to a home repair question.

Another thing to consider is the SEO of this acronym. It’s not good. If you look up “GEO meaning”, you’re going to find the definition of geo, which is relating to the earth. (as it should be).

There is also the consideration of GEO vs geomarketing. I may be the only one thinking about these things, but someone has to do it.

G-E-O is easy to say. I like how it starts with a harsh consonant, making it that much easier to understand each letter in the acronym. However, I often catch myself about to pronounce it as ‘geo’.

Because this new form of optimization is so closely tied to SEO, I think having the same skeleton, “E O”, makes this acronym easier for digital marketers to adopt.

This acronym is used just as often as GEO, and has been around for a little longer.

“Answer engine” as a term makes total sense to me. It’s not about generating, but finding answers. 

When we optimize for AI search, we’re thinking about what kind of questions someone might ask about a given topic, so using an answer engine makes sense to me.

This acronym has a similar issue with AI SEO. It’s a bit of an Old MacDonald situation. When I hear people say AEO, it often melds together in a way that makes it sound like one word.

I don’t hate saying AEO, but I also don’t like it.

Similar to GEO, AEO has the benefit of fitting into the same structure as SEO. It’s really easy for it to exist alongside the SEO acronym.

Thanks to science, we now know that AEO is the best acronym to use when referring to the important work of optimizing online content to be picked up by AI models.

So, everyone can now rest easy knowing that there is only 1 (one) acronym, and that is AEO.

Congratulations to AEO and the Webflow team for being the main organization I see using this acronym. Your work of making acronyms that actually make sense is always an inspiration.