Welcome to the Era of AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)

The way consumers discover your brand is shifting, dramatically. Traditional keyword-based Google search is no longer the only game in town. With the rise of large language models (LLMs) and AI chat interfaces, discovery is evolving beyond the search engine results page. If your strategy is still focused solely on optimising for Google keywords, your brand may soon become invisible.

Enter: AEO—Answer Engine Optimisation.

In this new landscape, people aren’t just “Googling.” They’re turning to conversational AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and others. They’re not typing fragmented search queries; they’re asking full questions. And these AI bots aren’t browsing the top 10 results like a typical user might. Instead, they select one or two sources they deem most trustworthy to provide a complete answer.

That’s a seismic shift. To be chosen as the answer, your brand’s online presence must be:

• Consistent across all platforms

• Credible with clear, trustworthy information

• Context-rich, offering detailed explanations that AI can easily interpret
  

If your messaging is fragmented, if your services are described differently on your website, your social channels, and business directories, it becomes difficult for AI to determine who you are and why you’re relevant. These bots don’t “figure it out” like a human might. They rely on clean, clear, consistent data to make decisions.

This means the old playbook, relying on backlinks, keyword hacks, or trying to game Google’s algorithm, is becoming less valuable. AI doesn’t care about how many links point to your website if the context they lead to is incoherent or inconsistent.

You’re no longer just writing for humans or for search algorithms. You’re now writing for machines that talk to humans.

And here’s the challenge: the way Google indexes and ranks pages is fundamentally different from how LLM-powered bots like ChatGPT gather and surface information. Understanding this difference is key.

To adapt, you need to start tracking how your brand is receiving traffic from AI chat bots. Is your brand being mentioned? Are these bots drawing from your own content to answer user questions? This kind of data gives you insights into how AI systems perceive and use your content—and it shows you where your brand discovery is happening in this new frontier.

In short, the question isn’t just how your brand is being discovered, but where, and by what. Your digital strategy needs to evolve with that reality.