GEO (generative engine optimization), AEO (answer engine optimization) and AI SEO are three names for one job: getting a business named and cited inside the answers AI tools give. In the UAE, buyers search for "AI SEO". In our Google Trends pull, "generative engine optimization" and "answer engine optimization" barely registered at all.
The label tells you nothing about an agency. What tells you is whether it can show a fixed question list, a day-one score with real screenshots and re-checks on a schedule.
The terms, in plain English
| Term | Stands for | The goal | Good to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | Search engine optimization | Rank your pages high in Google's list of links | Still the base layer. Google's AI answers are built from its search index |
| AEO | Answer engine optimization | Be the direct answer, not one link among ten | Used for AI answers, voice assistants and answer boxes |
| GEO | Generative engine optimization | Be included and cited in answers an AI writes | Introduced in a 2023 research paper (Aggarwal and others, published at KDD 2024), which reported visibility gains "by up to 40%" in its tests |
| AI SEO | The everyday name for all of the above | Get recommended when people ask AI who to choose | The words UAE buyers actually type into Google |
| LLMO, AIO | Large language model optimization, AI optimization | Same as GEO | Mostly vendor and agency labels |
Google's own guide for site owners says terms like AEO and GEO "are common online", but "many suggested 'hacks' aren't effective or supported by how Google Search actually works." It says SEO best practices are the foundation for its AI features.
We agree with Google on the foundation. But three things are new. ChatGPT runs its own crawler and works with other search providers, so ranking in Google is not the whole picture. AI answers name a few businesses instead of listing ten pages. And what the rest of the web says about you now gets summarised straight into the answer. So a GEO job is SEO plus three additions: measuring answers, writing for buyer situations, and shaping what outside sites say.
What is actually different in the work
| Area | Classic SEO | GEO / AI SEO |
|---|---|---|
| What you track | Keyword positions in Google | Whether you are named in answers to a fixed list of buyer questions, who is named instead, which sites were cited |
| How you check | A rank tracker, daily | Repeated checks with saved screenshots, because "answers can vary across runs, prompts, and time" (arXiv, 2026) |
| Research unit | Keywords | Buyer situations, in the buyer's own words, in English and Arabic |
| Content | A page per keyword group | A page per real question, carrying the facts AI quotes: price, timing, area, who it is for |
| Off-site work | Backlinks | Mentions on pages the AI reads: lists, directories, review sites, forums. Seer found page-1 Google rankings correlated strongly with brand mentions in ChatGPT answers, while backlinks "had little to no impact" |
| Crawlers | Googlebot and bingbot | Also OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and Google-Extended, plus firewall and CDN bot settings |
| Arabic | Often a translation plugin | Separate Arabic pages. Google detects language from visible content and recommends one URL per language |
| Reviews | Star rating as a local ranking factor | Review text, because AI summarises it: "most say X, but some say Y" |
| Monthly report | Traffic and rankings | Answers won, leads from AI, and what did not move |
Example: one clinic, planned two ways
Take a dental clinic in Dubai Marina (an illustration, not a client). An SEO plan starts from keywords such as "dentist dubai marina", "teeth whitening dubai" and "dental implants cost dubai". A GEO plan starts from the questions people type or say to an AI:
- "Which dentist in Dubai Marina can see me today for a broken tooth?"
- "How much is teeth whitening in Dubai Marina, and how long does it last?"
- "Is Invisalign cheaper than braces in Dubai for an adult?"
- "Which dental clinics near JBR take my insurance?"
- ما هي أفضل عيادة أسنان للأطفال في دبي مارينا؟ (Which is the best children's dental clinic in Dubai Marina?)
- كم تكلفة زراعة الأسنان في دبي؟ (How much do dental implants cost in Dubai?)
Each question needs a plain answer somewhere the AI can find it: same-day emergency hours, a whitening price range, an honest Invisalign versus braces comparison, the insurers the clinic accepts, an Arabic page for parents. The keywords overlap with the questions, but the pages you need are different, and only the question list tells you whether you are winning.
What stays the same
Google says that to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, and that there are "no additional requirements" and no special markup to add. Indexing, speed, clear titles, helpful content and a current Google Business Profile still matter most. An agency that skips them to sell AI tricks has it backwards. That is why traditional SEO is included in every Adjoltz plan.
The UAE market, from our scan
On 20 October 2026 we mapped who sells this work in the UAE and how they price it. We read agencies' own websites, public price lists and directory listings. We did not contact anyone. These are our research numbers, not an official census.
| Band | Published monthly price, AED | Where Adjoltz sits |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | 900 to 4,500 | Foundation, 4,500 |
| Mid | 6,000 to 9,000 | Growth, 8,500 (English and Arabic) |
| Top | 12,000 to 15,000 | Authority, 16,000 |
Where an agency publishes both, its AI tiers cost 1.8 to 2.7 times its SEO tiers at the same level. One agency in our scan listed AI tiers at AED 4,000, 7,500 and 12,000 next to SEO tiers at 1,500, 3,500 and 6,500. For a global comparison, First Page Sage, a US agency that sells GEO, puts the median GEO retainer at USD 6,850 a month and 45% above its SEO median of USD 4,740 (1,146 price quotes from 214 agencies, self-published).
Other patterns from the scan:
- Prices are mostly hidden. The best-known agencies ask for your budget or send a custom proposal. Published price lists are mostly from smaller shops.
- Free AI audits are request-and-wait, usually 24 hours to 3 business days.
- Nobody guarantees AI citations. The only guarantee we found in the scan covered Google rankings, not AI answers.
- Almost everyone claims Arabic. Very few show dated Arabic results for a named UAE client.
- "Best agency" lists are mostly written by agencies. In a web search we ran on 21 October 2026 for "best AI SEO agency in Dubai", 7 of the first 10 results were "best" or "Top 10" lists. The three we opened each ranked their own publisher first or second. When an AI runs the same search, lists like these are likely what it finds.
The search terms tell the same story. In Google Trends for the UAE, from October 2024 to October 2026, "AI SEO" averaged 13 and "SEO agency" 27 on Google's relative scale, while "generative engine optimization" and "answer engine optimization" averaged 0. "AI SEO" peaked in the second quarter of 2026 at 31.0, close to "SEO agency" at 35.5, then cooled to 15.6 in the third quarter. Demand is real, but it is early and uneven.
How to tell real GEO work from renamed SEO
Ask these in the first call. A real GEO agency answers every one with something it can show you.
| Ask | A real answer | A red flag |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Which questions would you track for my business? | 20 to 60 buyer questions per language, in your buyers' words, that you approve | A keyword list |
| 2. Show me a day-one score from a real client. | Raw answers, screenshots, dates and which AI tool | A branded "visibility score" with no answers behind it |
| 3. Which websites does AI cite for my category? | Named lists, directories and review sites, with a plan to get you on them | "We'll build backlinks" |
| 4. What changes on my site in month one? | Crawler access, plain facts, named pages for named questions | "llms.txt and schema" as the headline |
| 5. How will you count leads from AI? | The utm_source=chatgpt.com tag, GA4's AI Assistant channel, tagged WhatsApp links, asking every lead | Traffic charts only |
| 6. Who writes the Arabic pages? | Arabic writers, on separate URLs | A translation plugin |
| 7. What do you not promise? | A written list | "Guaranteed #1 on ChatGPT" |
| 8. What happens on day 90? | A review against day one, with the option to stop | A 12-month lock-in |
| 9. What does ChatGPT say about you? | Ask it yourself, in a fresh chat, before the call | Invisible in their own category, with no explanation |
A word on question 4. llms.txt is a proposal from September 2024 for a plain-text file that summarises a site for AI tools. Google says Google Search does not use it and it "won't negatively or positively impact" rankings. We found no OpenAI documentation saying ChatGPT reads it. Google also says structured data "isn't required for generative AI search." Both are fine to have. Selling them as the core of GEO is the tell.
What a GEO engagement should produce every month
| Deliverable | How you check it |
|---|---|
| Re-check results on the approved list | Full answers and screenshots, dated, for every question |
| Score against day one and named competitors | Same questions, same AI tools, side by side |
| Pages shipped | A list of live URLs, new and refreshed, each tied to a question |
| Site fixes | A dated log: robots.txt, titles, structured data, speed, indexing |
| Outside mentions | A live link to every listing, list or article |
| Reviews | New reviews, replies posted, repeat complaints fixed |
| Leads from AI | A count by source: ChatGPT tag, AI Assistant channel, WhatsApp tag, "how did you find us?" |
| What did not move | The questions with no change, and what comes next for each |
| Next month's plan | The 3 to 5 most important actions, in order |
If a monthly report does not let you click through to the proof, it is not a GEO report.
What Adjoltz does differently
- AI SEO is our core service, not one line on a long menu, with traditional SEO included so you don't pay two agencies.
- English and Arabic as separate, real pages, from the Growth plan up.
- Published prices, and a free AI check on WhatsApp with a result in about 10 minutes, not days.
- A money-back guarantee tied to a question list you approve: if you don't rank for at least 3 commercial questions within 30 days, you get 100% back.
- WhatsApp lead counting, because that is where most UAE buyers start the conversation.
The full method, plans and timeline are on our AI SEO agency in Dubai page.