Search has entered a new era. The old model — where people typed keywords into Google and clicked on a list of links — is still alive, but it’s no longer the only show in town. AI-powered search tools and AI-driven summaries are rewriting how people discover information, making what you publish not just a matter of ranking, but of being quotable. If you care about visibility — or you rely on organic search traffic — it’s time to think beyond SEO. That’s where AEO (AI Engine Optimisation / AI Search Optimisation) comes in.
The shift is already underway
According to recent research, around 13% of Google queries in early 2025 triggered an AI-generated “overview” — up from roughly 6.5% at the start of the year.That’s nearly double in a matter of months — and it suggests AI-powered summaries are far from niche.
Complementing that, users are rapidly embracing dedicated AI-search tools. For example, one 2025 report shows that a leading AI search engine, Perplexity AI, processed 780 million queries in a single month.
Whether it’s Perplexity, ChatGPT or other AI-driven assistants, millions are already asking AI directly — and expecting an answer, not just links.
At the same time, the effect on traditional web traffic is visible:
- For searches where an AI Overview appears, organic click-through rates (CTR) dropped from ~1.76% to ~0.61%, while paid CTR fell even more sharply.
- For brands who have worked hard to gain top positions in search are now seeing a 34.5% lower CTRwhen AI Overviews are present.
- Other reporting indicates some publishers have seen zero-click search rates surge, eating into traffic they used to count on.
If search behaviour is changing — from “search → click → read” to “search → answer” — then content strategies must evolve too.
What AEO is (and why it matters)
AI search optimisation is about making your content easy for AI engines to find, interpret, and reference when generating answers.
In practical terms, that means structuring, formatting and writing so that when an AI (like a search-assistant) processes your site, it recognises your page as a credible, clear, concise answer — and cites it.
That isn’t the same as just ticking SEO boxes. AEO builds on SEO fundamentals (crawlability, content quality, authority), but it adds extra layers: clarity, structure, quotability, and external signals (citations, backlinks, brand footprint).
In short: where SEO asks “How do I rank in the top 10?”, AEO asks “How do I become one of the 2–5 sources AI trusts worth quoting?”
This makes AI engine optimisation relevant for every kind of content owner — from bloggers and service providers to publishers and e-commerce brands. If you want to stay visible, even as search evolves, you should care about AEO now.
Why do we need to talk about AEO now?
AEO is still new. Best practices aren’t locked in yet. Tools are evolving daily. But many marketers and content teams are already seeing the impact — declining clicks, rising zero-click rates, shifting traffic patterns.
That’s why we’ve assembled this guide: to capture what we know now, what seems to work, and how to experiment intelligently.
Treat this as a living playbook — not gospel. As AI search evolves, so will AI engine optimisation. For now, these are the strongest known levers.
What AEO Really Is (and What It Isn’t?)
Marketers are used to new acronyms, but AEO isn’t a gimmick or a rebrand of SEO. It’s a response to a structural change in how search works.
When users ask questions to AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, DuckDuckGo AI, or even voice assistants, they’re not expecting a list of links — they’re expecting a fully formed answer. These tools then decide which sources to quote, reference or link underneath that answer.
So the question for content creators becomes:
What makes an AI search engine choose one source over another?
That’s the purpose of AEO — AI Engine Optimisation (also sometimes called AI Search Optimisation).
AEO defined in plain English
AEO is the practice of shaping your content so AI search tools can easily crawl it, understand it and use it inside their answer.
It’s not about trying to “trick” AI into visibility. It’s about making your content:
- easier to interpret
- easier to quote
- easier to verify
Think of SEO as ranking.
Think of AEO as referencing.
You can be position #1 on Google and still not be quoted in AI search.
You can also be position #6 and become the primary citation in an AI answer — if your content is clear, concise and quotable.
Why AI engine optimisation feels different from SEO
Traditional SEO optimisation was built around:
- Signals of authority (links, authorship, expertise)
- Keyword relevance
- Topical depth
- Technical accessibility
Those still matter — but AI search layers now prioritise slightly different things:
- Direct answers high in the page
- Short, self-contained sentences that can be referenced
- Conversational, natural-language content
- Schema signalling the type and structure of information
- Freshness and recent updates
- Citations of trustworthy statistics
AI isn’t just scanning for keywords. It’s scanning for clarity and certainty.
The more “useful” your content is to the AI — meaning it can quote you without rewriting you — the greater your AEO potential.
What AEO is NOT
A lot of confusion is already circulating, so let’s be direct — AEO is not:
- replacing SEO
- keyword stuffing for AI queries
- forcing AI-written content into content calendars
- obsessing over tools or trackers that don’t exist yet
- redesigning every post you’ve ever written
AI search optimisation sits on top of SEO — and builds on it.
Here’s the simplest way to understand their roles:
| SEO | AEO |
| Helps Google decide whether to rank your page | Helps AI tools decide whether to use your page in an answer |
| Optimises for search engines | Optimises for generative models |
| Winning metric: visibility in search results | Winning metric: references in AI-generated answers |
AEO doesn’t make SEO obsolete — in fact, the best early research shows the opposite.
Recent data suggests that a large proportion of sources cited in AI results are taken directly from page-1 Google results (often the top 3–5). So SEO still lays the foundation, and AEO builds the “extra layer” that gets you quoted.
Why this matters now
The shift from ranking to referencing is not theoretical; it’s already affecting traffic. Early reporting shows that when an AI Overview appears, it can suppress organic clicks, because users get their answer immediately rather than visiting websites.
If AI search engines are deciding which websites show up inside the answer, then ignoring AEO risks invisibility — even if your SEO is strong.
The takeaway is simple:
SEO gets you discovered; AI engine optimisation determines whether your content gets used.
Master both, and you’re visible everywhere users now search.
The Changing Search Landscape
The world of search is transforming — fast. What used to be a reasonably predictable combination of keyword-based queries, blue-link results and click-through traffic is now being disrupted by artificial-intelligence–powered tools, changing how people search, how they click — and sometimes whether they click at all.
If you rely on SEO (or even SEO + content marketing), the shift is invisible but powerful. That’s why AEO (AI Engine Optimisation) is not speculative: it’s increasingly necessary.
AI Search Is Growing (and fast)
- Over 1 billion people globally now use standalone AI tools at least monthly.
- A survey by a major consultancy in late 2025 found around half of consumers already use AI-powered search for discovery, research and decision-making.
- For some AI-native engines the growth is dramatic: one tool alone — a widely used generative AI search engine — saw referral visits increase by 357% in June 2025 compared with June 2024.
- Industrywide estimates suggest that, within just a few years, AI-driven search traffic could overtake traditional organic search traffic — making AEO vital for future visibility.
In short: AI search is not a fringe experiment — it’s becoming a mainstream way people find answers online. And it’s not just tech-savvy users: these tools are bleeding into everyday research, shopping, decision-making and browsing behaviour.
What does this mean for brands?
Because people trust AI-powered summaries and answers — not just lists of links — user behaviour is shifting:
- Users are less likely to click through when a summary or answer is provided; many settle immediately.
- When they do click, they’re often more “qualified”: they’ve already had an answer, they know roughly what they want — so clicks may be fewer but higher intent.
- The visibility game is changing: it’s not just about ranking. It’s about being referenced — being one of the trusted sources AI draws on.
Even if your SEO is solid, that’s no guarantee you’ll maintain traffic levels. The web is becoming — in part — an AI-mediated ecosystem, where being discoverable, just isn’t enough.
The Opportunity for Early Movers
While the changes bring risk, they also create opportunity — especially for those who adapt early:
- Less competition for AI citation: many publishers are still optimising purely for SEO, unaware of how AI search works. That means fewer players in the “quote-ready” content pool.
- Chance to differentiate: content that’s clear, authoritative and structured for AI — even if short — can outrank long, dense, traditional-style content.
- Future-proof visibility: as more users migrate to AI-first search behaviours, being cited by AI means maintaining reach even if organic CTR continues dropping.
- Higher-intent traffic: when someone does click after seeing an AI answer, they’ve often already processed context. That means better conversions and more motivated visitors.
How to do AEO in practice
Think of AI search optimisation as four intertwined layers:
- Technical foundations – can AI engines actually crawl and interpret your site?
- Content design – are you giving them clear, quotable answers?
- Off-site signals – does the wider web “vouch” for you?
- Opportunity finding – do you know where you could be cited but aren’t yet?
Let’s walk through each of these in a way you can actually implement.
Technical: Make your site easy to crawl
AI engines don’t magically know things. They rely on crawlers and upstream data sources (Google, Bing, Perplexity’s “knowledge index”, social platforms, etc.) to ingest your content.
Here’s what you need to do:
1. Check your robots.txt for AI crawlers
Look for any lines blocking:
- GPTBot (OpenAI)
- PerplexityBot
- Applebot
- CCBot / Claude
- or generic * blocks that might catch them
You may choose to block some (for privacy or licensing reasons), but that decision should be conscious. If your goal is visibility in AI search, wholesale blocking works against you.
2. Keep core technical SEO in good shape
Good SEO still underpins AEO: Google and other search systems feed a lot of data into AI models.
- Make sure pages load quickly and Core Web Vitals are in a decent place.
- Avoid heavy interstitials, pop-ups or cookie banners that hide the main content in the HTML.
- Use semantic headings (H1 > H2 > H3) and avoid building key content entirely in JavaScript or images.
Studies of AI Overviews show that being in positions #1–#5 still materially increases your chances of being cited, even though average organic CTR across those positions has dropped by 18%.
3. Add or improve structured data (Schema)
AI systems love shortcuts. Schema gives them a machine-readable summary of what’s on your page.
Prioritise:
- Article / BlogPosting for long-form content
- FAQPage where you genuinely answer multiple questions
- HowTo for step-by-step guides
- Product / Service / Organisation where relevant
- Author data if E-E-A-T matters in your niche
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) guides consistently cite structured data as a core building block because it improves “extractability” — how easily models can pick up the intent and type of your content.
Content: Design answer-first, quotable pages
Technical access is the baseline. Next, the content itself needs to be shaped for AI answers.
A big emerging theme in GEO/AEO guidance: “answer-first content”.
AI systems prefer:
- pages that open with a clear, 40–80 word answer
- headings phrased as questions
- short, self-contained sentences that can be quoted
- conversational tone and minimal fluff
What to do:
1. Lead with a quick answer
For each important query, start your page with something like:
Quick answer: AEO (AI Engine Optimisation) is the practice of structuring content so AI search tools can easily crawl, understand and quote it in their answers.
That’s a perfect snippet for an AI to lift.
Then expand underneath with nuance, detail and examples.
2. Use question-based headings
Turn your H2/H3s into actual questions users (and AI) care about:
- “What is AEO and how is it different from SEO?”
- “How do AI search tools choose which sources to cite?”
- “What technical changes improve AEO the fastest?”
Immediately under each heading, give a direct answer in the first sentence, then elaborate.
3. Make paragraphs short and scannable
Think in 2–4 sentence chunks. Use bullets where helpful. Bold important phrases.
Search Engine Land and other GEO resources point out that Reddit and Wikipedia perform strongly in AI citations partly because their content is structured in short, answerable units rather than long, dense essays.
4. Make your content “quotable” on purpose
Ask yourself: If an AI had to summarise this page in one or two lines, what would it pick up?
Then, write those lines yourself.
For example: “If your page doesn’t contain a sentence worth quoting, your AEO potential is low, even if your SEO is strong.”
Short, declarative, and self-contained: these are the lines AI models love to reuse.
5. Put the answer near the top
A common mistake is building up slowly. For AI engine optimisation, don’t bury the lede.
Models may only skim the first part of your page. If the direct answer is three scrolls down, they’ll often choose a competitor who front-loads it. Answer-first structures explicitly recommended in GEO playbooks exist for this reason.
Off-site signals: Build a web of trust around your brand
AI engines don’t operate in a vacuum. They learn from patterns on the wider web.
Bain’s research on zero-click search notes that around 80% of consumers rely on instant answers in at least 40% of searches, and AI platforms are increasingly part of that “instant answer” ecosystem.
To be trusted, you need more than a good blog post.
1. Use stats and cite your sources
AI tools are trained to value verifiable claims. When you use numbers, back them up. These citations:
- help humans trust you
- help AI systems recognise your content as evidence-based
Bonus if you can include your own data: survey results, anonymised platform stats, benchmark studies.
2. Maintain a visible brand footprint beyond Google
AI systems pull from:
- social platforms (LinkedIn, X, TikTok, Reddit)
- Q&A forums (Reddit, StackExchange, Quora)
- review and directory sites (Yell, G2, industry directories)
- news articles and podcasts
- other websites that link to you
Gen Z and younger audiences are already using social and communities as search engines. That matters because:
The more consistently your brand appears as a credible voice across platforms, the more likely AI is to see you as an entity worth referencing.
So:
- Answer questions in relevant Reddit threads (without spamming).
- Publish expert posts on LinkedIn.
- Ensure your directory listings are accurate and content-rich.
- Pitch PR that reinforces your expertise (not just product launches).
3. Keep cornerstone content up-to-date
AI engines prefer current information, especially in fast-moving topics.
Set a regular review cycle (e.g. quarterly) for key pages:
- update stats with the latest numbers
- add new examples or use-cases
- expand FAQs based on questions you see in sales/support/communities
Freshness is becoming an important signal in GEO discussions; stale content is less likely to be trusted as the “best answer right now”.
Finding AI search optimisation opportunities
The good news: you don’t have to guess what AI search engines want. You can ask them.
Here’s a straightforward AEO research process you can run in a day:
1. List 10–20 of your highest-value topics or questions
These should be things your buyers actually ask, not just your internal keywords.
Example:
- “How do I calculate cost per lead for B2B SaaS?”
- “What is answer engine optimisation vs SEO?”
2. Plug each one into AI search tools
Try:
- Google Search with AI Overview turned on (where available)
- Perplexity
- ChatGPT with browsing
- Any industry-specific AI search if relevant
3. Note who gets cited and why
For each query, write down:
- Which domains are cited?
- Does the answer quote a sentence or summarise loosely?
- What does the cited content look like? (length, structure, tone, headings, stats, schema if you check the source)
You’ll start to see patterns very quickly: certain styles of page (answer-first, FAQ rich, stat-heavy) show up more often.
4. Look for gaps
The most valuable AEO opportunities are where:
- the AI answer is weak, vague, or inaccurate
- there’s no obvious specialist authority on the topic
- or the cited content is out of date
Those are topics where you can realistically become the “best available answer”.
5. Publish with AEO baked in — then re-check
After you publish or significantly update a page:
- give it a bit of time to be crawled
- then re-run your AI searches
- see if you start appearing in citations
It won’t be instant. But you’ll learn quickly which formats and techniques work in your niche — and you can double down on them.
Summary
AI search is already reshaping how people discover information, how they make decisions, and how traffic flows across the web. That doesn’t mean SEO is disappearing, but it does mean that visibility now depends on more than rankings alone.
It depends on whether your content is useful enough, clear enough and credible enough for an AI model to lift into an answer.
AEO is still developing, and it would be misleading for anyone to claim definitive rules.
But certain patterns are emerging — and they all point in the same direction:
- Make your site easy for AI systems to crawl.
- Write in a way that reflects how people naturally ask questions.
- Put the answer first.
- Build content that’s quotable, structured and supported by evidence.
- Strengthen your presence across the wider web, not just Google.
- Keep improving and updating your pages so they remain current and relevant.
Do these consistently, and you don’t just hedge against the shifts happening in search — you put yourself in a strong position to lead within your niche. Content that’s discoverable, understandable and verifiable will always be valued, whether it’s by a person, a traditional search engine or an AI assistant.
The most important thing to remember is this:
AEO isn’t a departure from good content — it’s an evolution of it.
We’re still early in the lifecycle of AI-driven search, but brands that begin adapting now will benefit the most as behaviour continues to shift. That’s why we see AEO not as a tactic to “game” a system, but as a mindset: creating content that answers real questions clearly, confidently and credibly.
If you’d like to explore how AI engine optimisation fits into your current search strategy — or how to start implementing some of these changes — we’re always happy to help you make sense of what’s next. Get in touch.
