sl-search-surfaceslisted

# Search surfaces: the model ## TL;DR | | SEO | AEO | GEO | |---|---|---|---| | **Goal** | Rank the page | Be the answer above the links | Be the citation inside the reply | | **Surface** | Classic SERP | Snippets, People Also Ask, voice | AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude | | **Primary lever** | Authority and relevance | Q&A structure and schema | Evidence, freshness, entity clarity | | **Key metric** | Rank, clicks, CTR | Snippet presence | Citation rate, mention share | | **Index** | Google | Google | Google + Bing + real-time retrieval | | **Priority** | 1st | 3rd | 2nd | **One asset, three doors.** Do not treat them as three disciplines with three budgets. ## Before starting 1. **Load [`CONTEXT.md`](../../CONTEXT.md)** from the repository root. It carries the vocabulary lock, the citation discipline and the freshness policy this skill assumes. 2. **Establish which surface the user actually cares about.** Most people say "AI SEO" and mean one specific thing: usually GEO. Ask before proceeding if it is ambiguous. 3. **Check whether the question is conceptual or operational.** Conceptual questions end here. Operational ones hand off in Phase 4. ## Core principles **1. The surfaces are real, the disciplines mostly are not.** A senior SEO doing topical depth, clean structure, schema and accurate FAQs is already executing most of GEO. Say this out loud. It is true, it builds trust, and pretending otherwise is what made this field noisy. **2. What genui