SEO, AEO and GEO in plain words: technical files, structured data, FAQs, consistent information and IndexNow.
A business can be found on Google, on Bing and in the answers of AI assistants without spending a cent on advertising. It is not a trick and it is not quick: it is a matter of order. Well-written pages, consistent information, technical files that tell machines who you are and what you do. It is the method we use on the LUX LAB website and that our Laboratory applies to clients' websites.
In this article we explain it in plain words, with official sources from Google, Bing and the technical standards. At the end you will find the view of our founder, Alessandro Pintaldi, on why he thinks it pays to do it now.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the work of appearing in search engine results. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the same work seen from the side of direct answers: the box that answers a question before the links. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is about the answers written by artificial intelligence, such as Google's AI Overviews, Copilot or ChatGPT, which cite some sources and not others.
They look like three different trades, but the foundation is the same. Google says so: to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode there are no additional requirements or special optimizations, and its 2026 guide states that optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO.
Academic research does show how much the way you write matters: the study GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, presented at KDD 2024, measured that some writing strategies can increase visibility in generated answers by up to 40%, with results that vary from field to field.
Every website has a few files that people never see but search engines and AI read.
Structured data is a few lines of code, invisible to readers, that describe the page in a vocabulary search engines share (schema.org): this is a company, this is a service, these are questions with their answers. Google explains that it provides explicit clues about the meaning of a page, but it does not guarantee that a rich result will appear.
FAQs deserve an honest note. Since August 2023 Google shows expandable FAQ results only for well-known, authoritative government and health websites. So why do we still write them? Because a real question with a clear answer is exactly the kind of text an answer engine can pick up. On our pages the visible FAQs and the ones in the structured data are identical, word for word: we check them every time we publish.
An AI that reads your website, your Google profile, a directory and an old article, and finds four different addresses, does not know whom to believe. Google asks businesses to represent themselves as they are consistently recognised in the real world and says that complete and accurate profiles are more likely to show up in local results. In its content guidelines, among experience, expertise and authoritativeness, trust is the most important aspect.
That is why on our website the company name, VAT number, offices, emails and sales terms are written the same way on every page and in every language, and one page collects them all: LUX LAB in numbers.
When we publish or correct a page, we send a notice with IndexNow, a protocol created in 2021 by Microsoft Bing and Yandex. Instead of waiting for search engines to come back, we tell them which addresses have changed. Bing writes that IndexNow helps AI systems reference the most current version of a page when generating answers. Google is not among the search engines listed on indexnow.org: for Google, the sitemap and links are what count.
Nobody can guarantee first place on Google or a citation in an AI answer, and you should be wary of anyone who does. No agency has a fast lane with Google. What can be done is to remove every obstacle: clear pages, accurate data, technical files in order, updates notified straight away. The rest is up to the search engines.
Alessandro Pintaldi, founder of LUX LAB, sees it this way: today there is a window to get positioned for free, and it may not stay open. The facts he starts from are public: Google has brought ads into AI Overviews, first on mobile in the United States in 2024, then on desktop and in AI Mode in 2025, and in 2026 it announced new ad formats in AI Mode.
His reading, which is an opinion and not a certain forecast, is that the answers of Google and AI could become more and more paid, with less room for those who do not pay. Whoever builds solid pages and consistent information now starts ahead, whatever happens. Whoever waits risks finding the space already taken by ads.
The LUX LAB Laboratory (page in Italian) designs and develops custom websites, online stores and platforms, and applies to every site the same method we use on ours: page structure, copy, FAQs, structured data, sitemap, robots.txt, llms.txt, IndexNow and a check that the information is the same everywhere. If you want to know where your website stands, write to marketing@luxlab.it.
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