Why it matters to a buyer
Several labels, LLMO, GEO, AEO and AI SEO, are sold for overlapping work, and it is easy to buy the same deliverables twice. The useful distinction LLMO draws is between two routes into an answer: retrieval, where the model searches the web at the moment of the question, and memory, where the model already knows your brand from training. Retrieval can be influenced within weeks; memory changes only when models are retrained, so any promise about it should be read carefully.
How it is measured or applied
For the retrieval route, LLMO uses the same methods as GEO: crawler access for AI bots, extractable answers, consistent facts across third-party sources and clean structured data. For the memory route, the lever is being described accurately and often in widely read, reputable places, since that is what training data is drawn from. It is measured by asking each model a fixed set of questions about your category and your brand, with web search on and off where the product allows, and recording accuracy, mentions and sentiment over time.
Sources
- GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, arXiv (Aggarwal et al.)
