The acronyms GEO and AEO are used interchangeably across vendor sites, and the ecommerce buyer ends up stuck on a label instead of a decision. The two terms do have different origins, and that history is worth stating correctly. They now describe overlapping work, and the word on a vendor's homepage will not narrow your shortlist. Four other questions will.
- GEO and AEO started on different answer surfaces. Answer Engine Optimization grew up around extractive surfaces such as featured snippets, People Also Ask and voice answers. Generative Engine Optimization names the same ambition on generative engines.
- The acronym is not a buying axis today. Tools sold under either label send buyer-style prompts to assistants and read what comes back. The word on the homepage rarely predicts what the product does.
- Four questions do change the shortlist. Engine coverage at your tier, report-only versus report-and-fix, mention counting versus mention quality, and whether any score arrives with its coverage.
Quick verdict
What Arenza gives you at each purchasable tier.
| Dimension | Free — $0 | Starter — $49/month | Pro — $299/month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assistants measured | ✅ ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity | ✅ Same three, scanned daily | ✅ All three, scanned daily |
| Scan frequency | ✅ Weekly | ✅ Daily | ✅ Daily |
| Markets | ✅ 1 market | ✅ 1 market | ✅ 3 markets |
| Verbatim AI answers | ✅ Included | ✅ Included | ✅ Included |
| Brand accuracy diagnostics | ✅ Included | ✅ Included | ✅ Included |
| Tracked competitors | ❌ Not included on Free | ✅ Unlimited, head-to-head | ✅ Unlimited, head-to-head |
| Articles | ❌ Not included on Free | ✅ 5 per month to your CMS or Shopify blog | ✅ 100 per month, hosted on your own domain |
| On-site technical fixes deployed | ❌ Not included on Free | ❌ Not included on Starter | ✅ llms.txt, schema, JSON-LD |
| Credit card to start | ✅ None | — | — |
Arenza list prices are USD per month, cancel anytime. Performance is outcome-based and sales-led.
1. GEO and AEO started on different answer surfaces, and those surfaces have converged
Answer Engine Optimization is the older practice, and it did not begin with generative AI. It grew up around extractive answer surfaces: featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, knowledge panels and voice answers. Those surfaces lift a passage out of one page and present it as the answer. The optimization job was to make your page the passage worth lifting.
Generative Engine Optimization names the same ambition on a different mechanism. A generative engine does not lift one passage. It composes a new paragraph across many sources. Your brand appears only if the model has material to build the description from. Extraction rewards one strong page. Synthesis rewards a consistent corpus.
That distinction is real, and a long-time AEO practitioner is right to defend it. It is also converging fast. Extractive answer boxes now sit inside generative results, the prompts a buyer types look identical either way, and the tools that measure both are largely one list. So the honest position is this. State the lineage accurately, then shop on mechanics rather than on vocabulary.
One fair objection deserves an answer here. Sceptics argue that AI visibility is ordinary SEO with new packaging, sold to carve out a budget line. Much of it genuinely is SEO. Assistants still crawl pages, so structure, clean product data and crawlability still carry the work. The thing SEO cannot measure is what an assistant said about you when it never sent a click. A rank tracker has no field for a paraphrase that recommended a competitor by name.
That gap is the layer Arenza works on. It measures and improves how ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity describe a brand to its customers. Coverage is per tier, not per platform. Free and Starter measure one market, and Pro measures three, drawn from US, UK, DE and JP.
2. Engine coverage at the tier you can actually afford is the first real question
Coverage is not one number, because coverage moves with price. A vendor can accurately publish a long engine list while the tier you would buy carries fewer.
Profound publishes Starter at $99/month billed yearly, described on its page as ChatGPT tracking only. That tier is published with 50 prompts tracked, 1,500 responses monthly, 1 language and 1 region. Growth is $399/month billed yearly and covers three answer engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Enterprise is custom, published as up to nine.
Otterly.AI publishes Lite at $29/month for 15 search prompts. Standard is $189/month for 100 prompts, and Premium is $489/month for 400 prompts. Enterprise is custom from $1,000/month. Its core engines are ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and MS Copilot, with Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode as paid add-ons.
Ahrefs Brand Radar publishes Custom Prompts from $50/month, included in Ahrefs paid plans Lite and above. That figure sits on top of a paid Ahrefs base plan, so it is not a standalone total. Its AI Visibility Index is $199/month. Coverage is published as AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Copilot and AI Mode, with Claude as an add-on.
All of the above are list prices from each vendor, and vendors change them. Verify current pricing on their own pages before you budget.
Arenza's Free tier is $0 with no credit card. It scans your brand across all three AI assistants weekly, in one market. Daily scans on those three assistants arrive at Starter, $49/month. Pro at $299/month scans all three daily across three markets.
3. A tool that stops at a chart leaves the entire job with your team
The second question is where each vendor's job ends. Ask it directly during the trial. Reporting can tell you that an assistant recommended someone else. Closing the gap still needs a page written, published and indexed.
Arenza is designed to close that loop rather than describe it. Starter includes 5 articles per month, published to your own CMS or Shopify blog, plus API, MCP, Slack and Lark. Pro raises that to 100 articles per month and hosts them on your own domain at brand.com/blogs/... . Pro also deploys on-site technical work for you and adds off-site analysis of where to publish next, Arenza Agents and white-label.
Be precise about what that technical work does. Schema and JSON-LD change how a page is parsed by crawlers, which is well established. An llms.txt file is an emerging convention rather than a confirmed ranking input, and Arenza ships it because it is cheap and forward-looking. ARC — Answer, Reach, Convert — is the shape of the loop. For teams that would rather buy the outcome than operate the tool, Performance is outcome-based and sales-led at hello@arenza.ai. Each success-fee structure is agreed per customer. The multi-brand portfolio view, one screen for 10 to 200 client brands, belongs to agency and Performance engagements; Pro covers three brands.
4. Counting mentions is not the same as scoring whether the mention sold you
The third question separates tools more sharply than any acronym does. A mention count treats every appearance as equal. A grudging aside and a wholehearted recommendation land in the same bucket.
Arenza splits that into two scores. AVS, the Agentic Visibility Score, asks whether you were found. ACS, the Agentic Conversion Score, asks whether the answer that found you actually sells you. ACS is scored only where the business appeared. The headline ACS is an equal-weighted roll-up from prompt to intent to business, and the full method is published on https://arenza.ai/methodology . When a brand is absent, AVS is 0 and ACS is not scored at all. A 0 would falsely claim an assistant discussed you and failed to sell you. Alongside those two, Arenza reports AI-attributed revenue.
Accuracy sits beside them as a diagnostic surface. Arenza detects outdated specs, false claims, brand-attribution errors and category miscategorization in AI answers. Each one is reported with severity, frequency and the verbatim quote. That is what turns a score into something a merchandiser can act on this week.
5. Any score without its coverage is unreadable
The fourth question is the quietest one. Suppose a conversion-style score of 95 is measured over three percent of a brand's answers. The same 95 measured over ninety percent of answers rests on far broader evidence. Printed bare, the two numbers look identical, and only one of them is worth acting on. Coverage describes how much was measured. It is not a statement about the brand's standing.
Arenza always shows ACS with its coverage, so the denominator travels with the number. When you evaluate any tool, ask to see a score and its coverage on the same screen. If the coverage is missing, you cannot tell whether you are reading a business or a rounding error.
What this costs to answer for yourself
Start at zero. Arenza Free is $0 with no credit card. It covers AVS and ACS across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity, with all buyer intents included. You get weekly scans in one market, verbatim AI answers, brand accuracy, and the brands AI cites shown as evidence. Free does not include tracked competitors, articles or API.
Add competitor comparison and publishing at Starter, $49/month, cancel anytime. Move to Pro at $299/month when you need three markets, three brands, 100 articles per month, own-domain hosting and deployed technical fixes. Published competitor list prices, for comparison:
- Profound: Starter $99/month billed yearly, Growth $399/month billed yearly.
- Otterly.AI: Lite $29/month, Standard $189/month, Premium $489/month.
- Ahrefs Brand Radar: Custom Prompts from $50/month on top of a paid Ahrefs plan, AI Visibility Index $199/month.
Verify every figure on the vendor's own page before you commit.
Arenza meters tracked prompts too, and the number belongs next to everyone else's. Arenza tracks 10 prompts on Free, 30 on Starter and 120 on Pro. Buyer intents are uncapped on every tier, but tracked prompts are not, so compare prompt counts against prompt counts.
The choice comes down to this
If you are only trying to settle GEO versus AEO, note the lineage and move on; the word will not change your shortlist.
If you have never seen how assistants describe your brand, start with Arenza Free at $0 and read the verbatim answers before you spend anything.
If you need competitor comparison and want articles published to your CMS or Shopify blog, start with Arenza Starter at $49/month.
If you sell into three markets, want articles on your own domain, and want on-site technical fixes deployed for you, start with Arenza Pro at $299/month.
If you would rather buy the outcome than operate a tool, contact hello@arenza.ai about Performance.
FAQ
Is there a real difference between GEO and AEO?
Yes, and it is a difference of origin. Answer Engine Optimization grew up around extractive answer surfaces such as featured snippets, People Also Ask and voice answers, where one passage is lifted from one page. Generative Engine Optimization names the same job on generative engines, which compose a new answer across many sources. Those surfaces have converged, so the day-to-day work and the tool shortlist now overlap almost completely.
Does GEO replace SEO for an ecommerce store?
No, it sits on top of it. Assistants still read pages, so crawlability, structure and clear product information continue to matter. What SEO cannot measure is how an assistant described you in an answer that never sent a click. That is the gap this category is designed to close.
Should I pick a tool based on which acronym it uses?
No. Tools marketed under either acronym query assistants with buyer-style prompts and read what comes back. Judge them on engine coverage at the tier you would actually buy. Judge them on whether they fix as well as report. Judge them on whether they score the quality of a mention rather than only counting it, and on whether every score arrives with its coverage.
Why does coverage matter so much when reading a score?
Because a score without a denominator cannot be interpreted. A high conversion-style score over a tiny slice of answers rests on thin evidence. The same score over most answers rests on broad evidence. Arenza always shows its Agentic Conversion Score together with the coverage it was measured over.
Can I evaluate this without a budget?
Yes. Arenza's Free tier is $0 with no credit card. It scans your own brand across all three AI assistants, covering all buyer intents. You get weekly scans in one market, verbatim AI answers and brand accuracy. Sign up at https://app.arenza.ai/sign-up.