Google users clicked a traditional search result on just 8% of visits where an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% of visits where none did. That is Pew Research Center data, and it explains why your traffic chart looks worse than your business feels. People are still searching. They are just being handed answers instead of links.
AI search optimisation is how you get your business inside those answers. This guide covers what GEO and AEO actually mean, how they differ, and what a UK business owner should do about it.
Key Takeaways
- AI search optimisation is the work of getting your business found, cited and recommended inside AI-generated answers, not just ranked in the blue links below them.
- GEO (generative engine optimisation) targets tools that write answers conversationally: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot.
- AEO (answer engine optimisation) targets extracted answers on Google: AI Overviews, featured snippets and People Also Ask.
- Neither replaces SEO. Both sit on top of it, and both fail without a crawlable, credible website underneath.
- Google’s own documentation confirms there is no secret technical requirement for AI Overviews. The advantage comes from clarity, structure and authority.
- Fewer clicks, higher intent. Being the recommendation beats being result number four.
What is AI search optimisation?
AI search optimisation is the practice of making your business easy for AI systems to find, understand, trust and repeat. It covers two related disciplines: generative engine optimisation and answer engine optimisation. The goal is straightforward. When someone asks an AI tool for a recommendation in your category, your name comes up.
Traditional SEO asks: does my page rank? AI search optimisation asks a harder question: when a machine writes the answer, does it mention me, and does it get me right?
That second question has real money attached. If a buyer asks ChatGPT for three commercial cleaning firms in South London and receives three names, the fourth-best-known firm in that market does not get a bad result. It gets no result at all.
What has actually changed in how people search?
The search box has not gone anywhere. The results page has changed. Increasingly the answer sits at the top, written by a model, with a small number of cited sources underneath. Many users read the answer and stop there. Fewer clicks reach your site even when your ranking has not moved an inch.
The Pew study found that AI summaries appeared on 18% of the Google searches it tracked. Users clicked a source cited inside the summary on just 1% of visits.
At the same time, a growing share of research now begins outside Google entirely, in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Copilot, where there is no results page at all. There is a paragraph, and a handful of names in it.
So the commercial risk is not that you lose rankings. It is that you lose the mention.
What is GEO (generative engine optimisation)?
Generative engine optimisation is the work of getting your business mentioned, cited and recommended by AI assistants that generate answers from scratch: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude. These tools do not rank pages in order. They synthesise a response from everything they have read about you, on your own site and across the wider web.
That makes GEO largely a reputation and consistency exercise. The levers include:
- Entity clarity. The model needs to understand what you are, where you operate and who you serve, described the same way everywhere.
- Third-party corroboration. Directories, industry publications, review platforms, LinkedIn, podcasts and press. A model trusts a claim it has seen in several places.
- Consistent naming and details. Company name, address, service list and positioning identical across every profile you own.
- Content worth quoting. Original data, clear definitions, specific numbers and named expertise.
Most of that work happens off your website, which is why GEO tends to be slower and more compounding than classic SEO. You can explore how we approach it on our generative engine optimisation service page.
What is AEO (answer engine optimisation)?
Answer engine optimisation is the work of structuring your content so a search engine can lift a clean, complete answer straight off your page and display it. Its home turf is Google: AI Overviews, featured snippets and People Also Ask boxes. AEO is more on-page and more technical than GEO, and it is usually the faster of the two to show results.
In practice, AEO means writing so that a machine can extract a self-contained answer without needing the rest of the page:
- Headings phrased as the questions your buyers actually ask.
- A direct, complete answer in the first 40 to 60 words underneath each heading.
- Clean HTML, sensible heading hierarchy and no answer buried in a slideshow or an image.
- Structured data such as FAQPage and LocalBusiness schema, used honestly.
- Genuine FAQ sections rather than padded keyword lists.
Google’s AI features documentation is blunt on this: there are no additional technical requirements to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. The edge comes from being clearer than your competitors, not from a trick. Our answer engine optimisation service page covers the detail.
GEO vs AEO: what is the difference?
GEO is about being known. AEO is about being quotable. GEO works on your reputation across the web so AI assistants recommend you by name. AEO works on your pages so search engines can extract a direct answer from them. GEO is mostly off-site and slow to build. AEO is mostly on-site and quicker to influence.
| GEO | AEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it shows up | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot | Google AI Overviews, featured snippets, People Also Ask |
| What it optimises | Whether you are mentioned and recommended | Whether your page is extracted as the answer |
| Main levers | Entity clarity, third-party mentions, reviews, PR, consistency | Content structure, question-led headings, schema, technical health |
| Mostly happens | Off your website | On your website |
| Typical time to impact | Months, compounding | Weeks to months |
| Success looks like | Your name appears in an AI recommendation | Your page is cited or quoted in the answer box |
How do GEO and AEO work together?
They feed each other. AEO makes your pages easy to extract, which increases the odds of being cited in AI answers. Those citations and the surrounding mentions are part of what teaches generative engines who you are. Strong GEO authority then makes your pages likelier to be pulled in the first place.
Running one without the other leaves value on the table. Perfectly structured pages that nobody references get quoted rarely. A well-known brand with unstructured, waffly content is hard to lift a clean answer from.
Both sit on the same foundation: a fast, crawlable, technically sound site with real expertise behind it. If AI crawlers cannot access your content, nothing else matters. Our AI search optimisation service treats the two as one programme for that reason.
Why does AI search optimisation matter commercially?
Because the traffic you lose is cheap traffic, and the traffic you keep is expensive traffic. AI answers absorb the casual, top-of-funnel clicks. What still reaches your site tends to be someone who has already read a summary, formed a shortlist and wants to check you out properly.
That is a better visitor, and there are fewer of them. So the value of being on the shortlist has gone up, not down.
There is a second cost that owners underestimate: being described wrongly. AI tools will confidently state your service area, your specialisms and sometimes your prices based on stale or thin information. Correcting that is cheaper than losing enquiries to it.
“when I led marketing in-house across facilities management and property, the tender shortlist was decided long before anyone spoke to us. Buyers arrived with three names already in mind. AI search has simply moved that shortlist earlier and made it machine-generated.” – Marcus, Founder of Lobo Digital
How do you start with AI search optimisation?
Start by finding out what AI tools already say about you, then fix the foundations before chasing citations. The order matters. There is no point building authority signals for a site that AI crawlers cannot read or a business the models cannot confidently identify.
A sensible first 90 days:
- Audit your current visibility. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the questions your buyers ask, without naming your company. Record who gets recommended and how you are described.
- Fix technical access. Check robots.txt, server rules and any CDN settings are not blocking AI crawlers you want to allow.
- Tidy your entity. Make company name, address, service list and positioning identical across your site, Google Business Profile, Companies House, LinkedIn and every directory listing.
- Restructure your key pages. Question-led headings, direct answers up front, genuine FAQs, accurate schema.
- Build corroboration. Reviews, industry directories, guest articles, podcasts, original data worth citing.
- Measure the right things. Track AI referral traffic, branded search volume and mention rate, not just rankings.
Imagine a 12-person cleaning firm in Croydon working through that list. Steps one to four are largely a fortnight of focused work. Step five is the year-long job, and it is the one that decides whether the AI names you.
Frequently asked questions
Is AI search optimisation the same as SEO?
No, but it depends on it. SEO gets your pages indexed, crawlable and credible. AI search optimisation builds on that foundation to influence whether AI systems cite and recommend you inside their answers. The skills overlap heavily. If an agency sells you AI search optimisation while ignoring your technical SEO and content quality, you are buying the roof without the walls.
Do I need both GEO and AEO?
For most UK businesses, yes. AEO is usually the faster win because it is on-page work you control directly, so it is a sensible starting point. GEO is the longer game that decides whether AI assistants recommend you by name when there is no results page at all. Doing only one caps your visibility in a market where buyers use both surfaces.
How do I know if I am already visible in AI search?
Test it. Open ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and ask the questions a prospect would ask, without mentioning your company name. Note which businesses appear and how you are described if you appear at all. Then check Google Analytics for referral traffic from AI domains. That takes an afternoon and gives you a genuine baseline.
How long does AI search optimisation take to work?
AEO improvements can show within weeks once pages are recrawled, particularly for question-led content on an established site. GEO takes longer, typically several months, because it depends on building mentions and consistency across sources you do not own. Anyone promising results in a fortnight is describing a technical fix, not a visibility programme.
Can anyone guarantee I will appear in ChatGPT or AI Overviews?
No, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. Google states plainly that meeting every requirement does not guarantee its systems will crawl, index or serve your content. Generative engines are less predictable still, with cited sources shifting month to month. What a good programme does is stack the odds properly and measure the movement honestly.
Ready to get found in AI search?
Search behaviour has moved. The businesses that adjust in 2026 will be the names AI tools reach for in 2027, and the ones that wait will be explaining to their board why enquiries dried up without a single ranking dropping.
If you want a clear read on where your business currently stands in AI search, and a plan to fix it, we can help.
Explore our AI search optimisation service → /services/geo-aeo/
