Where do GEO and AEO sit once Machine Relations is the name of the discipline?

Generative engine optimization talks about being included in an answer an engine writes. Answer engine optimization talks about being the source an answer engine selects. Both describe a real task. Neither describes the whole job. The whole job is earning a source that a buyer and an engine can both use, then knowing whether that source was actually retrieved. That is Machine Relations: making a brand legible, retrievable, and credible inside AI-driven discovery.

I do not ask a team to pick a side in the naming fight. I ask which question the buyer is asking. A question about whether something is worth paying for does not pull the same sources as a question that compares two options, and neither pulls the same sources as a how-to. A tactic aimed at one question shape will look like failure on another, and the failure will be blamed on the tactic when the miss was the question. The Index keeps those shapes apart. That is why a generative-engine program and an answer-engine program are not interchangeable line items.

The definition stays on machinerelations.ai. I am not restating it here as if this page were the glossary. The glossary is the maintained term. The AuthorityTech page on where GEO, AEO, SEO, and PR fit is the execution map for a team that has to staff the work. This page is the position: do not let either acronym become the strategy. Let them name a practice, and let Machine Relations name the discipline those practices serve.

That also decides what I will not publish on this site. A comparison of vendors, a price, or a procurement checklist belongs with the operator, not with the person who named the discipline. If the question is which firm to hire, the execution page is the place to read. If the question is what the words mean, the glossary is the place to read. If the question is how I hold the words so they stop competing, it is this one.

The practical test I use is short. Can you point to the source you want an answer to use? Can you say which buyer question that source is for? Can you name the release that showed whether sources of that kind are cited for that question? If any of the three is missing, you do not yet have a GEO plan or an AEO plan. You have a label. Labels can be useful inside a team. They are not a strategy a founder should fund on their own.

I keep the origin essay as the account of why the name exists. I keep the who-coined page as the account of the fact and the adoption record. This answer does not replace either. It only places the two narrower terms underneath the name, so a reader who arrives with GEO or AEO in the query can see where I put them and where the longer documents live.

The definition is the Machine Relations definition. The execution page is AuthorityTech's map of where GEO, AEO, SEO, and PR fit.