Your next customer might never see your website.
Not long ago, the path to discovery was simple.
If someone wanted the top 5 restaurants in Paris, the best CRM for small businesses, or ideas for planning a trip, they would go to Google. They’d scroll through blog posts, review sites, and product pages, comparing options and making decisions themselves.
That’s why SEO mattered so much. To reach customers, brands had to publish the right content, optimize it with keywords, and build authority so they could rank high on search results.
Now that journey looks very different. Instead of sifting through pages of links, people ask tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews for direct answers. AI doesn’t just suggest. It compares, summarizes, and delivers recommendations in seconds.
This is more than a trend. It’s the new normal.
According to Yext’s Rise of AI Search Archetypes report, in 2025, 62% of consumers say they now trust AI tools to guide their brand choices, and 43% use these tools daily or more. AI-powered discovery is quickly becoming a standard part of the buyer journey. This is the new reality of SEO in the AI age.
For more than two decades, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was the backbone of online visibility. Brands used keywords, backlinks, and on-page optimization to climb Google rankings and drive traffic to their websites. But those rules are no longer enough.
The brands winning in this new reality aren’t just doing SEO. They’re mastering Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): the art of becoming the source AI trusts most.
Otherwise called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or Large Language Model Optimization (LLMO), helps not to just rank high in search results, but becomes the source AI tools cite and use when delivering answers.
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of making your content the most trusted, relevant, and structured source for AI-powered search engines.
While traditional SEO aims to rank high in search results, AEO focuses on becoming the answer that AI tools, like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, choose to cite.
AEO ensures that large language models (LLMs) can easily find, interpret, and reference your content.
In short:
Traditional SEO revolved around static keyword targeting. You optimized a page for a phrase, built links, and waited for the rankings to climb.
With AI in SEO, the rules are different. As Business Insider reports, AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Clause, Gemini, and Perplexity are "radically and quickly" reshaping online discovery.
Three shifts stand out:
If your brand isn't adapting, there is a high chance of you being invisible online.
Early adopters are already establishing dominance in AI search results across major industries.
Gartner predicts that traditional search engine volume will drop by 25% by 2026 as AI agents and chatbots continue to provide direct answers. Meanwhile, a 2025 AP-NORC poll found that 60% of U.S. adults already use AI to search for information, a number that climbs to 74% among people under 30.
Companies that wait to implement AEO may need to work hard to catch up. Their competitors will gain strong positions in AI training data and real-time search results.
Instead of just thinking about how AI search will affect your business, consider how you can be a trusted authority. Consumers will look to AI for answers, and you want to be ready.
Or you'll be absent from the conversation entirely.
For some, SEO and AEO aren't much different. AEO isn't far from SEO; it's search's latest chapter. Great SEO forms the foundation of AEO. In a sense, it is an expansion of SEO, not its replacement.
But there are key differences.
.png)
.png)