Your next customer is asking ChatGPT, not Google.
ChatGPT crossed 800 million weekly users in 2025. Google AI Overviews now appear above 60%+ of commercial searches. Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot are carving off more search traffic every quarter. And almost nobody has optimized for any of it.
We help brands appear, get cited, and win the click when their buyers are asking AI — not just Google — for recommendations.
Straight talk before we go further
Any agency telling you they have "proven AEO methodology" or "guaranteed AI visibility" in 2026 is lying. This discipline is 18 months old. What we have is a framework based on published LLM research, primary testing, and principles that are genuinely durable — combined with honest admission that parts of this will change as the AI engines evolve. If that honesty bothers you, we're not the right agency.
Search didn't die. It fractured.
Ten years ago, "search" meant Google. Five years ago, "search" meant Google plus a little YouTube and Amazon. Today, "search" means Google and ChatGPT and Perplexity and TikTok and Reddit and YouTube and Google's own AI Overviews sitting above its traditional results.
Your buyers are distributing their research across all of these. Your marketing is optimized for exactly one.
Even within Google, the game has changed. AI Overviews now appear above commercial searches and directly answer the query without the user clicking through. Studies suggest AI Overviews reduce downstream organic traffic by 30–60% for affected queries. Your "#1 ranking on Google" doesn't mean what it meant in 2022.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT users don't see rankings at all. They see a synthesized answer that cites 3–5 sources. If your brand isn't in those sources, you don't exist to that user. No ranking. No click. No awareness. Invisible.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) are the disciplines of making sure your brand shows up in those synthesized answers. It's not SEO with new keywords — it's a structurally different optimization problem.
Six pillars of AI search optimization
AEO isn't one tactic. It's a stack of technical, content, and authority work that compounds over 6–12 months.
LLM-ready structured data
Schema markup, JSON-LD, FAQ structures, and the emerging llms.txt standard — formatted so AI engines can ingest your content cleanly. Most sites have schema that's incomplete or wrong. We fix that and add the structures specifically weighted by AI crawlers.
Content engineered for citation
LLMs cite content that makes clear, authoritative claims backed by specific data. We rewrite your core content with defined statements, cited sources, expert attribution, and the sentence structures that AI engines preferentially quote.
Brand mention authority
LLMs don't just read your site — they weight how often your brand is mentioned across the web's authoritative sources. We run digital PR, earned media, and strategic placement designed specifically to build the brand-mention density AI engines reward.
Original research & first-party data
AI engines can't generate your proprietary data. Original research, surveys, case studies with real numbers, and industry reports give LLMs content that isn't replicated elsewhere — making your brand the default citation for that topic.
AI visibility monitoring
We track how often your brand appears in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, and Gemini for your target queries. Monthly reports show which queries you're winning, which you're losing, and what the AI answers actually say about your brand.
Traditional SEO, done right
AEO doesn't replace SEO — it sits on top of it. Google's AI Overviews draw from Google's organic index. If you can't rank, you can't be cited. We keep the SEO fundamentals (site speed, E-E-A-T, technical hygiene) sharp underneath the AEO work.
How AEO actually differs from traditional SEO
| Dimension | Traditional SEO | AEO / GEO |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank #1 for keywords | Be cited in AI-generated answers |
| Primary unit | Keywords | Claims, entities, brand mentions |
| Success metric | Organic clicks, rankings | Citation rate, brand mentions in answers |
| Content style | Long-form, comprehensive | Structured, claim-first, sourced |
| Authority signal | Backlinks | Brand mentions + citations across the web |
| Technical focus | Speed, crawlability, schema | Schema + llms.txt + machine-readable structure |
| Time to impact | 6–12 months | 3–9 months (faster, less defensible yet) |
The practical implication: a site optimized only for traditional SEO can rank #1 on Google and still be invisible in ChatGPT. A site optimized for AEO can be cited in ChatGPT while ranking #7 on Google. The overlap is real — do both — but assuming SEO covers AEO is the most expensive mistake in 2026 marketing.
AEO isn't for everyone. Here's who it actually works for.
- B2B companies where buyers research before purchase
- SaaS, finance, legal, healthcare, education — expertise-driven categories
- Brands with real differentiation or original data
- Companies willing to invest 6+ months before seeing results
- Marketers who want to be early when everyone else is late
- Impulse-purchase consumer products (e-commerce commodities)
- Pure local services where buyers search "near me" and call
- Companies looking for 30-day results
- Brands without any real story, data, or expertise to surface
- Marketers who want guarantees (nobody can give them honestly)
AEO & GEO FAQs
Find out if your brand
exists inside ChatGPT
Free AEO audit: we'll run 20 category-relevant queries through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, and tell you exactly where your brand appears (or doesn't) and what's missing. No pitch. Just the data.