How AI Chatbots Are Making AEO The New SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, has long been the practice of designing online content to rank highly in search results, particularly on Google. An entire industry emerged around mastering Google's often opaque rules to gain visibility.
However, the rapid rise of generative AI, large language models, and AI chatbots is fundamentally changing online discovery. While SEO was the standard, a new approach is gaining prominence: "answer engine optimization," or AEO.
Caption: Marketers are now focusing on "AEO" to improve placement within AI tools like Sam Altman's ChatGPT. Source: Axel Schmidt/REUTERS
As AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity become primary gateways for information, AEO is becoming crucial for growth. Numerous AEO startups and tools have launched recently, aiming to help businesses appear in the answers generated by these AI models.
"There must have been 30 AEO product launches in the last few months, all trying to do what SEO did 20 years ago," notes David Slater, a marketing executive with experience at Mozilla and Salesforce. "It's absolutely going to be a hot space."
What Is AEO?
Ethan Smith, CEO of Graphite Growth, describes AEO as SEO adapted for conversational AI. In a insightful blog post, he explains the key differences.
Traditional SEO targets specific keywords. In contrast, AEO focuses on influencing AI chatbot responses to user questions. Modern chatbots increasingly use real-time web searches and provide clickable links, acting like hybrid search engines. This creates a dynamic environment where influencing AI outputs is vital.
Instead of optimizing a page for a single term like "project management software," AEO requires addressing numerous related questions. Smith suggests pages might need to answer variations like "What's the best project management tool for remote teams?" or "Which project management platforms support API integration?"
Why ChatGPT's Live Web Access Makes AEO Important
This evolution wasn't immediate. Early versions of ChatGPT relied on static training data. However, over the past year, large language models have incorporated techniques like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). This allows them to access and summarize real-time information, often performing live web searches.
This ability to use current data makes influencing AI responses (AEO) faster and more dynamic than traditional SEO, according to Smith.
While interest in AEO has grown over the last year, it truly gained traction in early 2025 when OpenAI's ChatGPT and similar services began prominently featuring links and citations in their answers.
This shift has fueled venture capital investment in AEO startups, driven traffic increases for some businesses from AI sources, and led to a surge in AEO analytics, tracking, and content creation tools.
Smith highlighted several emerging AEO startups and tools, alongside established players like HubSpot adapting to this new landscape.
Looking into the 'Brain' of an AI Model
The race is on to understand how AI chatbots generate recommendations, allowing businesses to optimize for visibility in this new AI-driven era.
GPTrends is one startup tackling this. Co-founder David Kaufman recently shared insights on LinkedIn about the unpredictable nature of AI search results from tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Unlike stable Google results, AI answers can vary even for the same query asked multiple times, reflecting the model's real-time processing.
Caption: Results from asking ChatGPT "What's the best support ticketing software?" 100 times. Source: David Kaufman, GPTrends
Kaufman's team asked ChatGPT "What's the best support ticketing software?" 100 times. Zendesk appeared in 94% of responses, while others like Freshworks and Zoho appeared less frequently and in varying positions. This inherent randomness, Kaufman argues in his analysis, could give lesser-known brands opportunities for discovery.
"Strategically, this means brands need to rethink how they optimize for discovery, focusing less on traditional SEO tactics and more on comprehensive, authoritative content that AI systems recognize as valuable," Kaufman advises.
