What is the difference between AEO and SEO for a charter operator?
Short answer: For a charter operator, AEO (answer engine optimization) is mostly SEO with a few added controls and reports. Google says optimizing for generative AI search is "still SEO". What changes is crawler access, how you measure, and how carefully you keep facts accurate. No one can guarantee a ranking or an AI mention.
Sightline Aviation sells SEO and AEO, so weigh this post with that in mind. We built it from the platforms' own documentation and marked the places where the documentation stops and opinion starts.
Are AEO and SEO the same thing?
They share one foundation. Google's guide to generative AI features defines AEO and GEO (generative engine optimization) as terms for work focused on visibility in AI search, and says the best practices for SEO continue to be relevant. Google's AI features documentation adds that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page still has to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, and indexing and serving are not guaranteed.
That foundation is the same work an operator should already be doing. Google's SEO Starter Guide covers pages that crawlers can find and understand, clear titles and descriptions, and content that readers find helpful. It also says there are no secrets that will automatically rank a site first. Google's guidance on people-first content asks that visitors can tell who wrote a page, and that it is created primarily to help people. For a charter operator that means real fleet, base airport and safety pages written by people who know the operation.
If your site fails those basics, adding AEO work on top will not fix it. Start with aviation SEO and the charter operator website checklist.
What does Google say you do not need for AI answers?
Google's guide says you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files, special markup or Markdown to appear in Google Search. It says llms.txt will neither harm nor help visibility in Google Search, that structured data is not required for generative AI search, and that there is no ideal page length and no need to break content into tiny pieces or write in a special way (Google's generative AI guide).
That does not make structured data pointless. Valid markup still gives Google explicit clues about a page and can make it eligible for rich results when required properties are present (Google's structured data introduction). Keep it accurate and matching what visitors can read. Just do not buy it as an AI shortcut.
Two more points from the same guide: it says seeking inauthentic mentions is not as helpful as it might seem, and that creating separate content for each query variation, primarily to manipulate rankings or generative AI responses, violates its scaled content abuse spam policy. It also says no third-party tool has access to Google's internal ranking or AI systems, so be wary of tools that promise ranking success.
Where does AEO ask for something different?
Two differences are documented and a third is our inference. The rest you will hear is mostly practitioner opinion.
More crawlers, each with its own control. OpenAI's crawler documentation says OAI-SearchBot is for search, that sites opted out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and that each setting, including GPTBot for training, is independent. Perplexity's documentation says PerplexityBot surfaces and links sites in its results and recommends allowing it in robots.txt, and that Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt. Anthropic's help article describes ClaudeBot, Claude-User and Claude-SearchBot as three bots with three purposes, and says disabling Claude-SearchBot may reduce visibility in user search results. A robots.txt file or firewall rule written years ago can block these without anyone noticing.
Different reports. Google's Generative AI performance report counts impressions of your links in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and says it can be missing when a site has too few impressions. Bing's AI Performance preview reports citations across Copilot and Bing AI summaries, and says its average cited pages figure does not indicate ranking, authority or the role of any page. Neither is a rank. They count different things in different tools, so do not compare the numbers across them.
Accuracy matters more. Bing describes grounding as measuring strength of evidence and says an answer can abstain when support is missing, stale or conflicting. That is Bing describing its own system, not a rule for every engine. Our reading for operators is an inference: a wrong base airport or an aircraft that left the fleet gives an answer engine conflicting evidence. Sightline has seen operator listings that still show an old base airport or aircraft that left the fleet.
A side-by-side view
| Question | SEO | AEO |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Pages that crawlers can index and people choose | Being cited or linked inside an answer |
| Entry requirement | Indexed, snippet-eligible pages (Google) | The same, plus access for each engine's crawler |
| Measure | Search Console performance and rankings | Impressions and citations, reported separately by each vendor |
| Special files or markup | Valid structured data where it fits | None required by Google; check each engine's own documentation |
What should a charter operator do first?
This order is our advice, not a platform rule.
- Fix access and facts. Confirm your robots.txt and firewall allow the search crawlers you want, and that fleet, base, contact and service-area details agree across your site and directory listings.
- Write answer pages. Put a plain answer to one real customer question at the top of a page, then the detail. Google says you do not need a special style, so write for the person asking.
- Keep SEO basics healthy. Titles, descriptions, clean structure and working pages still carry the work.
- Measure with the vendors' reports. Use Google's report and Bing's preview, and keep a fixed list of customer questions to review by hand each month. See the AI visibility audit checklist and how operators show up in AI answers.
Sightline does not guarantee rankings or AI mentions. If you want a second pair of eyes, book a 20-minute call, or see aviation AEO.
Frequently asked questions
Is AEO different from SEO?
Mostly it builds on SEO. Google calls optimizing for generative AI search still SEO. The differences are crawler controls, reporting and keeping facts consistent.
Do I need llms.txt or special schema for AI answers?
Google says no new files or special markup are needed to appear in Google Search, and that llms.txt neither helps nor harms there (Google's guide). For other engines, check each one's own documentation.
Do charter operators still need SEO?
Yes. Google says the pages that appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode must be indexed and snippet-eligible, which is the SEO foundation (Google's AI features page).
Want to see how your operation shows up?
On a 20-minute call we'll run a few of your customers' questions and look at the results together.