AI search
AI search optimization is the work of getting a company named and cited in AI-written answers. It builds on search engine optimization (SEO) and adds answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO). In practice that means opening each section of a key page with a direct answer, then checking every week whether ChatGPT puts the company on its shortlists.
6 articles · latest October 13, 2026
What AI answers changed, and what still works
GEO vs SEO vs AEO: what each one means for your company.
Ahrefs measured how many AI Overview citations also rank in Google's top 10 twice, with different methods: 76% in 2025 and 37.9% in 2026. The article's table gives a B2B company one action each for SEO, AEO and GEO.
Is SEO dead? What AI search changed, and what still works.
51% of B2B software buyers start research in an AI chatbot (G2, 2025), while AI assistants send about 1% of website visits (Conductor, 2025). The article explains why both hold, then sorts SEO spending into keep, cut and start.
Answer engines, buying agents, tracking tools and SEO firms
AEO vs SEO: what changes when the engine answers for you.
Answer engine optimization is judged by the paragraph, SEO by the page. AI summaries appeared on 60% of question-style Google searches (Pew Research Center, 2025), and four edits follow for the pages closest to revenue.
Agent engine optimization: getting bought by AI agents.
Agent engine optimization, a separate job from answer engines, covers the prices, feeds and checkout an agent needs to buy from you. Gartner expects agents to intermediate over $15 trillion of B2B spending by 2028 (Gartner, 2025).
The best generative engine optimization tools in 2026.
Only 11% of domains cited by ChatGPT are also cited by Perplexity (Averi, 2026), so one assistant gives a partial view. Eight tools, sorted into trackers, checkers and content tools, and all of them leave the fixing to you.
What the best SEO optimization companies do differently.
Three habits separate strong SEO firms, among them reporting pipeline next to rankings and tracking AI answers between monthly reports. An AI Overview cuts the top-ranked page's click-through by 58% (Ahrefs, 2026).
What a ranking report no longer shows
A top ranking earns fewer visits once an AI summary sits above it: in Pew Research Center's 2025 browsing study, people clicked a regular result link in 8% of visits with a summary and 15% without one. Ranking also predicts less about who gets cited. Ahrefs found 37.9% of the pages cited in Google's AI Overviews ranked in its top 10 for the same search (March 2026).
So the new work is mostly measurement: which buyer questions name your company, who appears instead and which pages get cited. Answers vary between runs, so the check has to repeat weekly, and by hand it tends to lapse within weeks. We build it as an agent: mostly tested code that asks the questions and compares the answers with last week's, with AI only to judge whether a reply recommends your company. Our team runs it and fixes it when an assistant changes.
Questions about AI search optimization
How is AI search optimization different from SEO?
Most of the work overlaps: crawlable pages with current facts and direct answers to the questions buyers ask. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode have no requirements beyond those for regular Search. The difference is in the report, because a page can be quoted in an answer and earn no click, so mentions and citations belong next to rank and traffic.
Does AEO mean answer engine optimization or agent engine optimization?
Writers use the letters for both, and they are different jobs. Answer engine optimization aims to make your page the source of a direct answer in a snippet, an AI summary or a voice reply. Agent engine optimization prepares a company for AI agents that compare and buy on a person's behalf, which takes machine-readable prices, live availability and an interface the agent can call. When a proposal says AEO, ask which of the two it covers.
Should we cut our SEO budget because of AI search?
Usually only part of it. Technical health and pages that answer real buyer questions feed Google and the assistants alike. Link-building by volume and thin keyword-variant pages are the first cuts, since brand mentions correlate with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks (Ahrefs, 2025). Check twelve months of your own Search Console data before you move money.
How do we find out whether AI assistants recommend us?
List the 20 or so questions your buyers ask and put each one to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google several times, because answers vary between runs. Record whether you are named, who is named instead and which pages are cited. The assistants draw on different sources, so check more than one, and trust the trend over several weeks more than any single answer.
Which parts of AI search work can be automated?
The measuring, because it repeats every week and follows fixed rules. An agent can put the same buyer questions to several assistants, log who is named and which pages are cited, and flag a page of yours that dropped out of the answers. Uplift can build and run that check as an agent, mostly tested code with AI only to read each reply. Deciding what to rewrite, and the rewriting, stays with your marketing team or SEO agency.
Marketing routines like this, built and run for you.
Describe the routine, for example a weekly check of what AI assistants say about your company, and we build the agent, run it next to your other marketing reports and keep it working when the assistants change.