SEO, AEO, and GEO by industry

The mechanics of AI search are the same in every industry. Assistants find pages through search indexes, lean on third-party sources, and give answers that change from run to run, so the same SEO foundation and the same measurement apply everywhere. What changes by industry is what buyers ask, which third-party sources buyers and assistants trust, and which rules limit what a company may claim.

This hub collects AEO HQ's industry guides. Each one covers SEO, answer engine optimization (AEO), and generative engine optimization (GEO) together, as the single practice AEO HQ calls SEO+. Facts link to their sources, and recommendations are marked as ours.

What stays the same in every industry

• Search indexes are the gate. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode can only show pages that are indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet (opens in a new tab), and Google says that optimizing for generative AI search "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO" (opens in a new tab). Bing says that Bing and Copilot "rely on the same core crawling, indexing, and ranking foundation as traditional search" (opens in a new tab) (all official documentation). None of this depends on the industry.
• Assistants lean on third-party sources. In controlled comparisons across several verticals, languages, and query phrasings, AI search showed "a systematic and overwhelming bias towards Earned media," meaning third-party sources, compared with Google's more balanced mix (opens in a new tab) (preprint; mid-2025). An agency study of decision-stage prompts found that third-party sources supplied 80% to 95% of citations, depending on the industry (opens in a new tab). The direction holds across industries; the share varies.
• Answers vary from run to run. In a study in which 600 volunteers ran 12 prompts from several sectors, AI assistants returned the same list of brands less than once in 100 runs (opens in a new tab) (2,961 runs; industry study; a co-investigator works for a tracking vendor). Measurement therefore works the same way in every industry: repeated runs on each assistant, reported as rates with error ranges, as described in How to measure AI visibility.
• The same spam rules apply. Google's spam policies cover attempts to manipulate generative AI responses, and define scaled content abuse regardless of how the content is created (opens in a new tab) (official documentation).
• Buyers in many categories research with AI. In a U.S. survey of B2B professionals who use AI, the categories they researched with AI included agencies and service providers (51%), SaaS tools (46%), marketing tools (45%), and financial and legal services (25%) (opens in a new tab) (March–April 2026; the publisher sells search-marketing software).

What changes by industry

Industry guides

• SEO, AEO, and GEO for B2B SaaS companies. How software buyers use AI assistants, the sources they trust, pricing and comparison pages, and the rules on reviews; SaaS-related AEO queries total about 1,520 US searches a month.
• SEO, AEO, and GEO for law firms. How clients use AI assistants to find lawyers, the directories and review sites involved, and the lawyer advertising rules that limit claims; about 320 US searches a month across two queries: "answer engine optimization for law firms" (250) and "aeo for lawyers" (70).
• SEO, AEO, and GEO for healthcare companies. How people use AI for health questions, the HIPAA, FTC, and professional-body rules that limit health marketing, and what to measure. About 380 US searches a month, led by "ai search optimization for healthcare" (300).
• SEO, AEO, and GEO for professional services firms. How clients find accounting and advisory firms, the AICPA and state board rules on advertising, and what to measure. No AEO or GEO queries for this industry appeared in the keyword data.
• SEO, AEO, and GEO for fintech and financial services. How people use AI for money questions, which sources AI answers cite, and the SEC, FINRA, CFPB, and FDIC rules on financial marketing. No AEO or GEO queries for this industry appeared in the keyword data.
• SEO, AEO, and GEO for cybersecurity and IT services. What buyers are told to check, which sources AI cites, and the rules on security claims. No AEO or GEO queries for this industry appeared in the keyword data.
• SEO, AEO, and GEO for manufacturers and industrial companies (in preparation). About 30 US searches a month, for "aeo strategy for industrial".

The volumes are estimates from one keyword pull, seeded with AEO and GEO terms. An industry with no matching queries may still have demand that the pull did not capture.

How AEO HQ writes an industry page

AEO HQ writes one page per industry, and each page covers SEO, AEO, and GEO together rather than splitting them into three pages. A page is written only when there is evidence specific to that industry for four things:

1. The questions buyers in that industry ask, from keyword data and other query research.
2. The sources that rank and get cited for those questions.
3. The rules that apply to marketing claims in that industry. The law firms page covers lawyer advertising rules, the fintech page covers financial marketing rules, the cybersecurity page covers the rules on security claims, the healthcare page covers health-claim and patient-privacy rules, and the professional services page covers accounting advertising rules.
4. Checklist items that do not apply elsewhere.

Every fact on an industry page carries a source, and each page says where the evidence is missing. We do not produce industry pages from a template by swapping an industry name into the same text. Google says that creating "separate content for every possible variation" of how people search, primarily to manipulate rankings or generative AI responses, violates its scaled content abuse policy (opens in a new tab) (official documentation), and a templated page would tell readers nothing the general guides do not. The general method is in Answer engine optimization (AEO): the complete guide.

Change log

• September 27, 2026: First published, with the B2B SaaS guide.