Key Takeaways
Your website is no longer the front door to your business. It’s the plumbing behind the walls.
Today, when someone says, “Book me a flight to New York” or “Find the best accountant near me”, they don’t go to Google, click a blue link, land on your page, and browse.
An AI agent like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, or even a voice bot, handles it in seconds.
If your brand isn’t visible inside those answers, it doesn’t exist.
This isn’t “someday.” It’s already happening. And if you want your business to survive, you must master Ask Engine Optimisation (AEO), the skill of making your brand discoverable, trusted, and cited by agents.
Ask Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the evolution of SEO for the agent era. Instead of optimizing for search engine results pages (SERPs), you’re optimizing for agents and AI assistants that directly answer questions.
Key pillars of AEO:
As Dean Whitby (founder of Tenacious Sales (operating internationally as Tenacious AI Marketing Global)) puts it: “You must build a business AI can’t replace, and AEO is how you stay in the conversation when the agent answers instead of the SERP.”
Watch Dean break this down in more detail here: Speak with Power, Earn More: The AI Era Advantage.
For a deeper dive into how AEO differs from traditional SEO and why it matters in 2025, check out our blog: AI SEO vs AEO: What Smart Founders Need to Know in 2025.
AI adoption is accelerating at an unprecedented speed.
In fact, a Forbes report indicates that the generative AI market has grown 554% in the past four years, reaching $36 billion in 2024.
Platforms like WeChat Mini-Programs and Instagram Checkout show us the pattern: the transaction happens inside the ecosystem, not on your website.
Agents collapse the journey. No “10 blue links → click → browse → buy.” Just: “Book the flight.” Done.
If you’re not in the agent’s dataset, you don’t exist in the customer’s decision.
Here’s the hard truth: agents don’t see web design. They don’t care about banners, sliders, or pixel-perfect UX.
They consume signals.
In the agent world, your job is not to design pretty pages. Your job is to feed the machine clean, structured, trusted data so you get chosen.
The biggest risk: agents answer without your brand attached.
Imagine this: a user asks, “Best business consultant in the UK.” The agent says: “Here are three trusted consultants…”, but doesn’t mention you. That’s invisibility.
To prevent this:
Your brand must become the watermark on every answer.
Forget pageviews, bounce rates, and sessions. They mean nothing when users never visit your site.
What you must track instead:
And the stakes are massive: voice AI startups alone raised $398 million in VC funding in 2024, said one report of The Business Insider. Agents aren’t a side project; they’re where the money and innovation are flooding in.
Here’s how to start winning visibility inside agents:
Here’s the future:
At Tenacious Sales (operating internationally as Tenacious AI Marketing Global), we don’t just follow trends; we anticipate the future and engineer strategies that dominate it.
Explore our full AEO Services to see how we help brands stay visible in the Agent Era.
When AI agents replace websites as the default entry point, most businesses will fade into invisibility. We make sure you’re not one of them.
Here’s how we help you win in the Agent Era with Tenacious Sales (operating internationally as Tenacious AI Marketing Global):
With Tenacious Sales (operating internationally as Tenacious AI Marketing Global), you don’t just survive the agent revolution. You dominate it. Book a Growth Call to stay visible in the Agent Era.
Ready to take the next step? Contact us today, and let’s make sure your brand becomes the one agents choose.
The agent era isn’t a “future trend.” It’s here.
Your choice:
You don’t win this with pretty pages. You win it with signals, structure, authority, and relentless brand presence.
Because in the agent era, Invisibility = death. Visibility = dominance.
What is Ask Engine Optimisation (AEO)?
AEO (Ask Engine Optimisation) is the process of making your brand discoverable and trusted by AI agents, voice assistants, and conversational platforms. Unlike SEO, which optimizes for rankings on Google’s results pages, AEO optimizes for being chosen and cited directly in AI answers.
Why are AI agents replacing websites?
AI agents collapse the user journey: instead of search → click → browse → buy, the agent completes the task directly. Platforms like WeChat Mini-Programs and Instagram Checkout prove this is already happening. Agents prefer structured data, APIs, and trusted signals over traditional web pages.
How do AI agents decide which brands to show?
AI agents prioritize trust and authority signals:
If your data is messy or unverified, the agent will skip you for a competitor it trusts more.
What are the biggest mistakes businesses make with AEO?
The most common pitfalls are:
Will websites still matter in the agent era?
Yes, but their role changes. Websites won’t disappear, but they’ll act more like archives, showrooms, or brand hubs. The frontline experience will be AI agents. To stay visible, your site must serve as a signal source for agents rather than just a destination for visitors.
