Still obsessing over ranking #1 on Google? That’s yesterday’s game. AI bots now answer questions themselves. It's your content or no one’s. Meet the AEO/GEO playbook.
The way people search for information has slightly changed. Traditional SEO strategies that once brought organic traffic are becoming less effective as search engines increasingly provide direct answers on their results pages.
According to recent estimates, 60% of Google searches now end with zero clicks, users are getting answers without visiting any site
Whether you are a Founder or C-suite or Expert, this shift threatens visibility, engagement and revenue systems.
You're not alone if you’ve noticed a decline in website traffic despite strong SEO efforts. Various businesses struggle to adapt to AI-driven search behaviours, where ranking #1 is insufficient. It’s frustrating to invest in content creation only to have search engines display your answers without driving visitors to your site.
But instead of seeing this as a loss, there is an opportunity to evolve with the changing search landscape. Need help building AI‑optimised content systems and schema? Our AEO Playbook template lives here [link]. Or this blog on our AI SEO & AEO Services could be useful
That’s where Ask Engine Optimisation comes into play. It is a strategy for helping content thrive in an AI-powered search environment. AEO ensures your content is found and effectively surfaced in responses, voice searches and featured snippets. But by adopting the AEO principle, you can manage visibility, engage users in new ways, and future-proof your digital presence in an era where AI is rewriting the rules of search,
This article will cover everything you need to know when preparing to scale with an AEO strategy.
Note: You may also hear the term Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). While AEO focuses specifically on optimising for AI assistants and question-based search, GEO is the broader strategy of making content discoverable by any generative AI model including voice search, image-based search, and AI-powered recommendations. In many cases, the two terms are used interchangeably, but GEO reflects the wider landscape of AI search technologies.
Let’s get started!
AEO/GEO optimizes content for AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, SGE so your brand gets featured instead of buried. This isn’t SEO 2.0; it’s a whole new playing field.
AEO is optimising your digital content to make it more visible and appealing to AI-driven search engines. These engines, like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, use large language models to understand user questions, scan the web and generate direct conversational answers. Unlike traditional engines that list links, these AI tools summarise and cite sources in their responses.
When optimising for AEO/GEO, you’re not just aiming for a high ranking on a search result page, but to be the go-to source that AI quotes in its answers.
You can use AEO/GEO to position yourself for high-ticket services, for example
If you are an accountant in San Diego who also offers CFO Fractional services and someone asks, “Who are the best Fractional Finance CFO's in San Diego?” your AEO/GEO-optimised content could be the one ChatGPT mentions with the name. Of course, you have to be optimised.
Isn’t it powerful?
In short, AEO/GEO is all about:
Creating content that AI engines can easily understand and summarise.
Positioning your brand as a trusted authority in AI-generated responses.
Adapting to a world where users want instant answers, not endless link-clicking.
Before diving deep into why AEO/GEO matters, let's try and understand the similarities between SEO and AEO/GEO. This blog on What Part AEO/GEO Plays in Digital Marketing for Accountants goes a long way to explaining the difference between AEO and SEO too.
Search engines index publicly accessible online material. LLMs create neural networks using data from books, the Internet, and other sources.
Both search engines and artificial intelligence (AI) systems use the instructions that website owners give to the bots that search for material or determine whether to include a brand's content in their index or model.
Both AEO and SEO aim to increase visibility by understanding and optimising the behaviour of ranking algorithms and response-generating LLMs.
SEO involves optimising keywords, backlinks, page headings, and meta descriptions to improve keyword relevancy and raise the content's ranking in search results.
Similarly, AEO necessitates optimising numerous components, including headers, author assignments, schema markups, author pages, and other tactics, to supply context.
Ultimately, SEO and AEO aim to deliver the appropriate message to the appropriate audience at the appropriate moment, guaranteeing brand exposure through search engine searches or artificial intelligence-generated interactions.
Remember when you’re ranking #1 on Google was the end goal when implementing digital marketing strategies? Those days are gone.
That unexpected traffic drop? Are those conversion rates mysteriously dropping? The leads that suddenly dried up?
It’s not your competitors. It’s not just the algorithm updates. It’s a fundamental shift in how people access information.
When someone asks ChatGPT, “What’s the best CRM for small businesses?” they get immediate answers, often without seeing your carefully crafted landing pages. And more than that, if they don't like the answer, rather than clicking links and reading, and stress levels building, they simply ask a better question to fine-tune the result.
That’s Ask Engine Optimisation for you!
If you’re still wondering whether Ask Engine Optimisation is worth your time, here’s why it matters and why you should start paying attention right now.
Zero-click searches have increased significantly. 60% of searches now end without the user clicking on another website.
Around 80% of search users depend on AI summaries at least 40% of the time. 68% of LLM users depend on these platforms for research, news, and shopping recommendations.
ChatGPT traffic increased 44% in November alone, and Perplexity hit 15M monthly users.
Most businesses haven’t even heard of Ask Engine Optimisation yet. This creates a rare opportunity to establish yourself as an authority source in your domain before the competition catches up.
Businesses that use AEO strategies will become the default recommendations as AI adoption continues to pace.
There was a time when the internet came out, and people said SEO? Don't be stupid, we don't need to do that, and those who adopted it won big, and those who didn't had to try to play catch-up, often years later.
Most importantly, being featured in AI responses builds an unbeatable trust.
When AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini or any other AI tool mention your company as the solution to a user’s problem, it carries the endorsement of the AI itself, which makes users increasingly trust for unbiased recommendations.
That’s why mastering Ask Engine Optimisation isn’t just about maintaining your brand visibility; it is more about positioning your brand as the definitive choice in this AI-dominated environment.
Here is how you can do an AEO/GEO overhaul or audit or this one on How To Audit Your Content For Aeo In 2025 The Ultimate Guide or if you are ready to get started then Book a strategy call
Personal Branding – Ensuring AI chatbots recommend you as an industry expert. By the way, our blog on personal branding might be a useful read.
Company Awareness – Making sure your business gets cited in AI-generated responses.
Thought Leadership – Crafting content that AI models recognise as authoritative in your niche.
AI-Friendly Content – Structuring content so that AI finds, processes, and references.
Long-Tail Search Queries – Answering conversational, question-based queries AI tools are likely to generate.
Social Media Amplification – Ensuring AI picks up your LinkedIn, Twitter, and other thought leadership posts.
Product Discovery – Making AI recommend your product/services in relevant contexts.
AI-Driven Referrals – Optimising content so AI tools suggest your brand when users seek recommendations.
Affiliate & Partner Marketing – Ensuring AI models connect your business with relevant opportunities.
E-commerce & DTC Brands – Optimising for AI shopping assistants like Google Bard Shopping.
Finance & Investment – Being referenced in AI-driven investment and financial insights.
Legal & Consulting Firms – Becoming the go-to expert in AI-assisted legal and business queries.
Healthcare & Wellness – Being cited in AI-generated medical, wellness, and lifestyle advice.
Education & Training – Making AI models refer to your courses, books, or expertise.
AI Chatbots & FAQs – Ensuring AI-powered virtual assistants pull accurate information from your content. Our Tenacious AI apps platform, with 50+ apps, has both a chatbot wizard for your website and objection-crushing FAQs to see here.
Product Documentation – Structuring content so AI models retrieve correct product details and support info.
Hyperlocal AEO – Getting recommended in AI-driven local search queries (e.g., "best café near me").
Multilingual AEO – Optimising AI models in multiple languages to expand reach.
Employer Branding – Ensuring AI-driven job search tools mention your company as attractive.
Talent Attraction – Making AI recommend your company to top talent in the industry.
You need to understand how generative AI engines work to master AEO. These technologies use large language models (LLMs), essentially extremely intelligent algorithms trained on enormous volumes of textual data. This is an abridged description of their procedure:
Large Language Models (LLMs): Generative AI relies on LLMs, which are trained on enormous volumes of text, such as billions of books, journals, and web pages. These models can produce responses that seem human by assimilating word relationships, context, and linguistic patterns.
Processing Your Query: When you type a question, the AI does more than simply look for keywords. It explores your meaning. It recognises that you want useful advice rather than a technical lecture when you ask, "How do I make my blog stand out in AI search?" To put it briefly, the system decodes the query, determining its main ideas and intent.
Scanning and Synthesising: After that, it searches through its indexed data, imagine the web content it has been educated on extrapolates insights from many sources and formulates a concise response. If it is truly impressed, it occasionally mentions a source by name, such as "Hey, [Your Blog] says this is the way to go."
Some of the most widely used generative engines are Perplexity, Siri, Alexa, Bard, Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT.
The main focus of traditional search engines (Google, for example) is rankings, backlinks, and keywords. When you search for "content optimization tips," a list of links appears for you to sort through.
AI that is generative? Instead of requiring you to navigate around, it gets right to the point and provides a direct response. Instead of looking through several pages, it's like asking a friend for restaurant recommendations and hearing, "Go to Burger King; their burger is unreal."
The catch? The AI may completely ignore your content if it is difficult to understand, poorly researched, or irrelevant. AEO can help you make sure your content is noticed.
Generative engines are easily understood and familiar in our daily lives. The following examples of Generative Engine Platforms will help you better understand their role.
By integrating AI for SEO, these engines could offer more intelligent, context-led responses, improving overall UX and search efficiency.
Gemini, previously known as Google Bard, is an AI tool developed by Google that acts as a generative language assistant.
It efficiently understands and responds to complex queries, generating informative, structured content.
Gemini uses the latest in natural language processing and machine learning, making it a leading platform for AEO optimisation.
Built by Microsoft, Bing Chat is a generative search engine that uses an enhanced version of ChatGPT.
It provides accurate answers through an interactive chatbot experience and supports in-depth conversations.
It also offers personalised results and integrates with Microsoft tools to improve search intent and engagement.
SGE brings AI directly into traditional Google Search, summarising and explaining results using natural language models.
It’s designed to answer, guide, and predict user needs without requiring them to click through multiple web pages.
As AI becomes part of Google’s core experience, optimising content for SGE visibility is a critical AEO strategy.
Perplexity is a rapidly growing AI research assistant designed for deep, trusted answers backed by source citations.
It provides users with direct, clear responses while linking to the original sources.
Because it relies on accurate, well-structured content, it rewards brands that create trustworthy, expert-level content.
ChatGPT is one of the most widely used AI tools for information and research.
When a user asks a question, ChatGPT generates summarised answers based on its training data and web sources.
Content that’s well-formatted, informative, and cited is more likely to be referenced in its responses.
Alexa is Amazon’s AI-powered voice assistant used in millions of homes and devices.
It answers spoken questions, provides recommendations, and interacts with users based on natural conversation.
Optimising for voice-first search queries helps content become discoverable through smart speakers and devices.
Siri is Apple’s intelligent assistant that integrates with iPhones, iPads, and other Apple products.
It pulls from web sources and structured data to respond to voice commands and search-based queries.
AEO-optimised content increases the chances of being cited in Siri responses, especially for local and mobile voice queries.
Below are the most common AEO mistakes you should avoid when implementing AEO.
AI engines focus on meaning over repetition when ranking the content. Use natural language and let the blend keywords fit organically instead of forcing them into a sentence.
Do not ignore Google for AI searches. The smartest strategy is to blend both approaches, optimising for traditional search while structuring content for AI extraction.
AI prefers substance and depth. Compared to extensive resources, a small 300-word piece will receive few citations. Therefore, it should include original data, examples, and insights.
Large volumes of text are difficult for AI to handle. Use bullet points, brief paragraphs, and clear headings to make your content readable.
Back your content and quotes with proper data, expert quotes or well-trusted sources. AI focuses on trustworthy content when generating responses.
AEO is changing quickly. Experiment with different formats, tones, and content types to determine what performs best in your area.
Slow loading times and non-responsive designs negatively impact your chances of appearing in AI responses. Therefore, it is important to maintain your website's technological soundness.
Even excellent content needs visibility. Distribute it across platforms so AI systems and your audience can find it.
Adhering to these guidelines will greatly increase your chances of appearing in AI-generated responses. Remember that what works now might not work tomorrow, so be adaptable!
Featured snippets are the highlighted search results shown at the top of Google’s search engine results page, often in a box.
AI-powered search tools and voice assistants pull data from this snippet to provide direct answers to user queries.
How to optimise for them?
Use structured formatting
Place the most important information at the top of the content for easy extraction.
What is structured data?
Structured data, or schema markup, is an HTML code that helps search engines understand and categorize content.
Moreover, it improves rich results (like star ratings, FAQs, product details, etc.)
How to implement structured data?
Use Schema.org markup to add structured data.
For AI-led search, use FAQ schema, How-To Schema and Product Schema.
Moreover, use Google’s Rich Results Test to check if your structured data is properly implemented.
What are conversational keywords?
These natural language and log tail keywords match people's speech using voice search or AI assistant.
Why are they important?
AI-driven search results on content and intent instead of matching keywords. Users ask full questions instead of typing short queries.
How to optimise content with conversational keywords?
Use question-based keywords
Instead of "best accounting services," target "What are the best accounting services for small businesses?"
Include filler words (just like real conversations)
Instead of "Best SEO strategy," use "What’s the best SEO strategy for ranking higher?"
Use tools like Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) and AnswerThePublic to find conversational search terms.
What is voice search optimisation?
Voice search differs from traditional search; it prioritises quick, direct, and conversational responses.
How to optimise for voice search?
Write in a conversational tone (avoid complex, robotic language).
Structure answers as direct responses to questions.
Keep answers between 20-30 words, as AI prefers short responses.
Match user queries using the “who, what, where, when, why, how” format.
And why not Book a strategy call
What is content authority?
AI search engines prioritise trustworthy, high-quality content. To rank higher, your content should demonstrate expertise, credibility, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).
How to build content authority?
Cite reliable sources: Link to studies, statistics, and research.
Publish well-researched content: Avoid generic, vague writing.
Use expert insights: Include quotes or opinions from industry professionals.
Ensure factual accuracy: AI tools fact-check content; misinformation hurts rankings.
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and Ask Engine Optimisation (AEO) are reshaping digital content. While E-E-A-T ensures credibility, AEO optimises content for AI-driven search.
Expertise – As skilled authors provide valuable insights, AEO refines content to enhance online visibility.
Experience – First-hand knowledge makes content useful; AEO leverages AI to personalise user experiences.
Authoritativeness – Trusted sources rank higher, and AEO improves discoverability through structured content and AI-friendly formatting.
Trustworthiness – Reliable, fact-checked content builds trust, and AEO ensures transparency in AI-driven search results.
As AI search engines evolve, businesses must integrate E-E-A-T with AEO to maintain credibility, visibility, and user trust.
After understanding how AEO works, let us check out How to measure SEO and AEO performance.
Various measurement techniques are crucial for accurately gauging the success of your search engine optimisation (SEO) and Ask Engine Optimisation (AEO) initiatives.
Every tool provides distinct insights into various aspects of your performance, enabling you to adjust your tactics as necessary.
Google Search Console is a free tool for monitoring websites. It can help you track your site’s performance on Google.
It offers insights about keyword rankings, click-through rates, and indexing status.
Mangools is an effective suite of SEO tools designed to boost your website’s visibility online.
One of its standout products is SERPWatcher, which eases tracking your website’s performance in search engines for all important keywords.
Moreover, it offers daily updates and a performance index to gauge the potential traffic from specific keywords.
Mangools provides more crucial SEO tools to assist you in ranking higher in Google SERPs, in addition to the rank-tracking tool:
KWFinder: Finding high-volume, low-difficulty keywords is easy using KWFinder, a robust keyword research tool.
SERPChecker: This tool helps you comprehend the competitive environment and spot chances by analysing search engine results pages (SERPs) for any phrase.
LinkMiner: LinkMiner is a robust backlink analyser that can quickly identify possible external links from other websites.
SiteProfiler: A simple domain authority checker for websites that gives you all the important SEO data for any domain.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) thoroughly analyses user behaviour on your website.
Analysing conversion rates, user engagement with content, and traffic sources can reveal much about how well your website performs on different platforms.
Now, further, let us see what the future holds for AEO.
Large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence (AI) are key components of Ask Engine Optimisation (AEO), which has the potential to transform search beyond conventional SEO.
This is what will happen:
Search is becoming conversational. The CEO of Perplexity observes that the average length of queries on AI platforms has increased from 2-3 words on Google to 10-11 words. Content must change to reflect these conversational searches, less keyword stuffing, and more organic responses.
Voice or image-based searches may account for half of all queries by 2025. AI is powering predictive, multimodal search—think beyond text to graphics and voice, like Google's MUM, which is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT.
AI search quickly updates, customising results based on user location, activity, and trends. AI models that provide tailored replies will be the foundation of AEO's success.
Trend identification for new material in real-time.
User-focused, flexible content is preferable to static keywords.
How to Get Ready:
To analyse trends in real-time, use AI technologies such as Writesonic.
Use AI-driven keyword insights to optimise for intent.
Content should be structured for simple AI extraction.
AEO will keep your content ahead of the curve in the ever-changing future!
Sometimes, having the headspace or the manpower for these things is not feasible. If you need help from our team, let us write AEO/GEO-enabled content so you can dominate in search for years to come!
Book a free strategy call and let’s map out how you can grow with Tenacious Sales.
1. What is AEO and how is it different from SEO?
AEO helps AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini find, understand, and cite your content in answers, while SEO focuses on ranking in traditional search results.
2. Why does AEO matter now?
AI search gives direct answers, so fewer users click links. AEO ensures your brand still gets mentioned and trusted.
3. How do I optimise for AEO?
Use clear headings, bullet points, conversational keywords, schema markup, and credible sources.
4. What mistakes should I avoid?
Avoid keyword stuffing, shallow content, ignoring SEO, poor structure, and skipping authority signals.
5. How do I measure AEO success?
Track AI mentions, featured snippets, impressions, and engagement using tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, Peec.ai, Google Search Console and GA4.
