The Next Revolution: From SEO’s Dawn to AI’s Sudden Breakthrough…and Dominance

Introduction: History Repeating Itself in Search

In the early 2000s, search engine optimization (SEO) emerged as a transformational “underground” marketing move. Google AdWords launched in 2000 and quickly changed how brands gained visibility online. At first, many companies were skeptical that tinkering with keywords or paying for “AdWords” would amount to much. Yet a handful of forward-thinking pioneers recognized the shifting landscape and quietly invested in SEO and content, while others dismissed it as a fad. Those early adopters went on to reap outsized rewards, dominating their markets throughout the 2000s and 2010s ahrefs.commedium.datadriveninvestor.com.

Fast-forward to today: Generative AI search and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Google’s AI search (SGE), Bing’s AI Copilot, and emerging systems (Claude, Bard, Gemini, etc.) are rewriting the rules of online discovery. We’re at an inflection point uncannily similar to the dawn of SEO. Once again, most brands are cautious or oblivious, and once again, a few bold adopters are positioning themselves to leap ahead for years to come. This white paper explores why AI-powered search is the new frontier, how it mirrors the early SEO revolution, and what marketers can learn from the past to win the future.

1. When SEO Was the Underground Power Move

In the early days of Google, winning online meant ranking high on organic search. Yet around the year 2000, traditional advertisers scoffed at the idea that blog posts or meta tags could beat big ad budgets. SEO was often derided as “snake oil” or a trick only niche webmasters worried about medium.datadriveninvestor.com. But a few companies saw the potential. They realized that appearing at the top of Google results for relevant searches would bring a steady stream of ready-to-buy visitors without the ongoing cost of ads.

HubSpot stands out as a classic case study of early SEO vision. Founded in 2006, HubSpot was among the first to wholeheartedly embrace inbound marketing creating helpful content to attract customers organically narrato.ionarrato.io. While competitors continued to cold-call and spam prospects, HubSpot invested in blogging and SEO before it was mainstream. Crucially, they built a culture of content creation across the entire company – not just marketing. Early on, every employee was encouraged to blog and address customer questions in writing. This continuous flood of relevant content helped HubSpot rise dramatically in search rankings for countless marketing and sales topics. By 2009-2010, those efforts translated into explosive growth: HubSpot’s revenue hit $15.6 million in 2010, and the company was on its way to dominating the marketing automation category narrato.ionarrato.io.

Today, HubSpot’s content machine remains unparalleled. Their website now hosts the largest corporate blog in the world by organic traffic, with over 18,000 pages generating an estimated 8.2 million visits per month (worth over $5.3M in equivalent ad spend) ahrefs.com. This success traces directly back to their early bet on SEO and content. They wrote the playbook on inbound marketing while others stood on the sidelines. As an Ahrefs analysis notes, HubSpot was “among the early champions of inbound and content marketing” and living proof that betting on SEO can pay off massively ahrefs.com. In short, bold early moves yielded exponential returns for those pioneers.

Many brands that ignored SEO until years later found themselves perpetually behind these early movers. By the time “SEO” became a buzzword, HubSpot and its peers had already amassed huge authority, thousands of backlinks, and entrenched top rankings that were hard to dislodge. The lesson is clear in hindsight: embracing new discovery mechanisms before your competitors can confer a nearly unassailable lead. Just as “first page of Google” became the prime real estate of the 2000s, we’re now entering an era where “first result in ChatGPT (or SGE)” will be the coveted position.

2. Today’s Equivalent: AI as the New Search

We are now in the midst of another seismic shift in how people find information. Instead of ten blue links on a search engine results page, users are increasingly presented with one concise answer – often generated by an AI and accompanied by just a handful of citations. ChatGPT can directly answer questions with information drawn from web sources; Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) shows an AI Overview at the top of search results, summarizing key points; tools like Perplexity AI, Bing Chat (Copilot), and others provide conversational answers with references. In short, AI-powered answer engines are becoming the new front door to the web businessinsider.comdigitalcommerce360.com.

This emerging practice has a name: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) (also called LLM SEO or Generative Engine Optimization). Just as SEO is about optimizing content for traditional search engines, AEO is about optimizing content to be selected and cited by AI assistants and LLM-based search tools businessinsider.combusinessinsider.com. The rise of generative AI has radically accelerated this shift. As one Business Insider analysis put it, “OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other generative AI services [have] begun surfacing prominent links and citations in answers… AEO is emerging as a strategic imperative for growth.” businessinsider.com Companies can no longer focus solely on getting a #1 Google ranking; they now must aim to be the source that a chatbot chooses to quote in its single synthesized answer.

The parallels to the early 2000s are striking. Back then, Google’s ascent forced marketers to master SEO or become invisible. Today, AI chatbots and assistants are the new gatekeepers, and the rules are changing again searchengineland.comsearchengineland.com. We’re entering “an era of uncertainty we haven’t seen since the early days of SEO,” as SearchEngineLand observes searchengineland.com. No one can say exactly which AI search platforms will dominate (ChatGPT? Google’s Gemini? Microsoft’s Copilot?) – akin to the early search engine battles – but it’s clear that user behavior is shifting quickly. Gartner and Forrester note that consumers and B2B buyers alike are rapidly adopting conversational AI for discovery. In fact, Forrester’s 2024 survey found B2B buyers are using AI-powered search at three times the rate of consumers, with 90% of organizations now using generative AI in some part of their purchasing journey digitalcommerce360.comdigitalcommerce360.com. These users are skipping traditional search results and getting answers directly from AI platforms, often without clicking through to any website at all digitalcommerce360.comdigitalcommerce360.com.

This shift has given rise to the concept of “zero-click search”, now amplified by AI. Google’s AI Overview, for instance, can answer a query with a written summary synthesized from multiple sources, satisfying the query without the user needing to click any of the cited links. For marketers, this is a double-edged sword: it threatens traditional inbound traffic, but it also creates a new type of visibility for those featured in the AI answer digitalcommerce360.comdigitalcommerce360.com. In other words, you might not get the click, but you get the credit.

The upside is that being cited by AI confers authority and brand exposure in a context where the AI has effectively vetted the information. The downside is that if you’re not one of the few sources an AI pulls in, you may as well not exist to that user. This dynamic is driving the urgency around AEO. As Amsive’s SEO experts frame it, “adapt to the AI-driven search experience, or risk losing visibility.” amsive.com

Crucially, AEO doesn’t replace SEO so much as build on it. Many core SEO best practices – fast load times, structured data, high-quality content – remain foundational amsive.com. But AEO adds new dimensions: understanding how AI models interpret queries, retrieving and synthesizing information, and what signals make them choose one source over another amsive.combusinessinsider.com. For example, content may need to be formatted in more conversational, question-and-answer styles to be AI-friendly businessinsider.com. Snippets that directly answer specific questions (akin to FAQ content) stand a better chance of being used by an AI than a lengthy essay buried in dense paragraphs. The focus shifts from just keywords to entities and intent, because LLMs are matching the meaning of a query with the most context-rich, direct answers available.

Already, businesses are springing up to ride this wave. Venture capital is flowing into AEO startups and tools that help brands track their “share of voice” in AI results and optimize content for chatbot citation businessinsider.combusinessinsider.com. One CMO noted in mid-2025, “There must have been 30 AEO product launches in the last few months, all trying to do what SEO did 20 years ago… It’s absolutely going to be a hot space.” businessinsider.com. In short, the scramble to master AI discovery is on just as the SEO gold rush was on in 2005. The question is: who will write the playbook this time?

3. The Stakes of AI Citations: 3-5 Brands Win, Everyone Else Vanishes

One of the most striking aspects of AI-generated answers is how few sources they tend to cite. Whether it’s ChatGPT’s browsing mode, Bing’s AI chat, or Google’s SGE, the final answer typically includes only a small handful of citations: often 3 to 5 sources at most in total. For instance, Google’s AI Snapshot usually references 2-4 pages (sometimes with multiple points from the same domain), and Bing Chat similarly might show 3 or 4 footnoted links. This means that only a tiny fraction of brands “win” the visibility for any given AI query, while the rest of page-one (and certainly page-two) search results get crowded out entirely lead-spot.netlead-spot.net.

Recent data underscores this high-stakes dynamic. A study by SearchEngineLand in 2023 found that 46% of Google’s AI Overview citations come from the top 10 traditional search results for that query searchengineland.com. In other words, if your page isn’t ranking on the first page of Google already, the odds of it being pulled into the AI summary are dramatically lower. Conversely, ranking well organically greatly improves your chances of inclusion. (In the study, being in the top 10 gave roughly a 46% chance of citation; being outside the top 10 meant you were usually absent from the AI answer searchengineland.com.) This aligns with an analysis by Semrush/Authoritas, which noted you likely need to be in at least the top 20 Google results to have a shot at AI citation, with very few outliers beyond that searchengineland.com. The implication: strong SEO remains a prerequisite for AEO. You must earn a seat at the table of authoritative content before the AI even considers you searchengineland.com.

Even within that elite set of candidate sources, only a few will be chosen. Perplexity’s AI, for example, often displays exactly 4 citations per query. ChatGPT’s browsing results might list 3 or 4 sources for a factual question. SGE sometimes lists 3 sources with hyperlinks in the snapshot. The average seems to hover around four sources, in many cases lead-spot.netlead-spot.net. That means even if you are ranking in the top ten, you’re competing with those other 9 results for one of maybe 4 citation slots. The stakes are arguably higher than classic SEO, where a user might still scroll and click result #7 if it appeals to them. In an AI answer, anything outside the cited few might as well be invisible.

To put it bluntly: AI-driven search is a winner-take-most scenario. The brands that secure one of those few citation spots gain enormous exposure and credibility, while others, even if they have relevant content, simply do not appear. A recent Forrester report termed this the “zero-click squeeze”, noting that AI summaries often satisfy the query completely, so the user has no need to click additional results digitalcommerce360.comdigitalcommerce360.com. If the AI cites your brand as a key source, you effectively own the answer and become embedded in the user’s mind (even if they don’t click through in that moment). But if you’re not cited, the user may never even know your brand had a relevant solution or insight.

Consider an example: A user asks ChatGPT (with browsing enabled) or Google SGE, “What’s the best CRM software for a 50-person team?” The AI will search and then present a summary answer, perhaps mentioning 3 CRM providers with a couple of supporting points each. If Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho are cited, those three have made the cut: the user is now aware of them as the top options. If you were CRM #4 in the traditional Google ranking, you might have appeared on page one of a normal search, but in the AI answer paradigm, you’re simply absent. The user might not go any further unless they are dissatisfied with the summary.

Data from early experiments confirms this funnel effect. One analysis found that when ChatGPT was asked the same question 100 times (to simulate different answer variations), a core 3-5 brands kept recurring in answers while others rarely, if ever appeared businessinsider.combusinessinsider.com. For instance, in a test asking about “best support ticketing software” 100 times, Zendesk showed up in 94% of answers, while a few other competitors rotated through occasionally, and all others never showed up businessinsider.com. So not only do a few winners get nearly all the visibility, but the AI’s slight randomness still tends to favor the already-visible. The study’s author noted this gives smaller brands some chance to appear occasionally, but it’s not an even playing field: established authoritative sources still dominate most of the answers businessinsider.com.

From a traffic perspective, winning an AI citation can be a major boon, while missing out can sharply reduce your share. Early evidence from Google’s SGE rollout showed that for certain queries, webpages included in the AI overview received 3.2× more clicks than those that were not, for transactional searches (1.5× more for informational searches) searchengineland.com. In other words, being in the AI box not only gives brand exposure but can also drive significantly higher click-through to your site compared to if you were just a regular organic result without being cited. The flip side is that pages excluded from the AI summary experienced a noticeable drop in clicks, as users either got their answer without clicking or chose from the AI-highlighted options searchengineland.com.

Publishers have understandably raised concerns about this dynamic. Fewer clicks spread among more content means a tougher fight for traffic. Media sites and forums that feed the AI answers get lots of impressions, but not necessarily proportional traffic. The Guardian, for example, reported that many publishers fear losing direct visits as Google’s AI answers “upend the world’s most profitable online business” by keeping users on Google’s page businessinsider.combusinessinsider.com. Reddit is a real-world example: Google’s AI was found to cite Reddit as a top source (the second most-cited site in SGE, behind only Quora) businessinsider.com, yet users consuming answers may not click through to Reddit itself. In fact, analysts noted that many of Reddit’s AI-referred visitors are “logged-out” one-and-done users who view the snippet of a thread via Google’s summary and leave, providing little engagement on Reddit’s actual platform businessinsider.combusinessinsider.com. So being cited can increase brand awareness even without clicks, which is a new paradigm to consider.

For businesses, the takeaway is urgent: in an AI-driven search world, a few brands will command the vast majority of visibility. If you can become one of (say) five sources that an AI frequently trusts for answers in your domain, you effectively own that digital shelf, much like how being the #1 Google result yielded outsized traffic historically. But if you ignore this trend, you risk vanishing from the customer journey as it evolves. A stark line from a LeadSpot research piece puts it well: “The LLM gives an answer, usually listing 2 to 4 brands. You’re either in that answer, or you’re not.” lead-spot.netlead-spot.net In practical terms, this could mean the difference between capturing 20-30% of a market’s leads versus 0%.

Fortunately, the game isn’t pure chance. Just as companies learned to influence Google’s algorithm, we can now identify factors that influence AI citation choices and proactively work to become one of those top 3-5 cited voices. The next sections explore how.

4. Learning from SEO Pioneers: Adapt Boldly, Build Authority Everywhere

What can today’s marketers learn from the early SEO pioneers like HubSpot, Moz, and others who dominated through content? Several principles emerge that apply just as much in the AI era:

• Bold, Early Adoption Yields Exponential Returns: The companies that embraced new search technology early (be it Google SEO in 2002 or AEO in 2023) enjoyed compounding advantages year after year. HubSpot’s head start in blogging meant that by the time competitors ramped up content, HubSpot had amassed domain authority and thousands of inbound links, an almost insurmountable lead. Likewise, a brand that starts optimizing for AI citation now can secure key positions before the field gets crowded. Early movers in AEO are already seeing spikes in AI-driven traffic and leads, while laggards have yet to realize they’re invisible. As Forrester notes, this isn’t hype: “AI-powered search may represent the largest expansion of the media footprint since the advent of social media.” Those who plant a flag early will own a disproportionate share of that new territory digitalcommerce360.comdigitalcommerce360.com.

• Create a Culture of Content (Now AI-Ready Content): One reason HubSpot won SEO is that they operationalized content creation across their company. Marketing, sales, executives, everyone contributed to the blog and knowledge base, creating an authentic, prolific content ecosystem. This breadth and consistency of content built their authority with both users and search algorithms ahrefs.comahrefs.com. Today, organizations should strive for a similar culture, but tuned for AI: encourage teams to generate content that directly answers customer questions. Instead of just blog posts, think in terms of knowledge snippets, Q&A entries, explainer videos, and insight-rich posts on external platforms. Every informative piece your team produces and syndicates (on your site or elsewhere) is another hook that an AI might grab onto. Authority in the AI era is a function of being everywhere with credible answers.

• Build an Ecosystem of Authority (Beyond Your Own Website): Traditional SEO eventually taught that Google looks at your site and beyond, assessing backlinks, brand mentions, reviews, etc., to gauge credibility. AI systems take this to another level. LLMs pull information not just from the top of your homepage, but from across the web forums, news sites, YouTube transcripts, academic papers, social media amsive.comlead-spot.net. That means to be truly authoritative in the eyes of AI, your brand’s presence must extend far beyond your own domain. Early SEO winners often engaged in guest blogging, public speaking (which led to online mentions), community participation, etc. Similarly, today’s AEO winners are deliberately seeding their expertise across channels. For example, if you’re a B2B software company, your content strategy might include: answering relevant questions on Quora/StackExchange, getting your experts quoted in industry publications, publishing research that journalists cite, contributing to high-authority sites (like a column on Forbes or a case study with Gartner), and fostering discussions on Reddit or LinkedIn. This isn’t just PR – it directly boosts the signals that AI models use to decide if you’re “the source” to pull from lead-spot.netlead-spot.net. In short, think of it as networked authority: the more credible touchpoints you have online, the more likely an AI sees your content as part of the consensus answer.

• Consistent, Clear Value Wins (Then and Now): Google’s algorithm updates over the years (Panda, Penguin, etc.) all trended towards rewarding high-quality, user-friendly content and punishing spam or fluff. Likewise, AI models like ChatGPT have a mandate to provide accurate, trusted answers. They will lean towards sources that demonstrate E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), a concept Google has emphasized and which translates to AI selection too lead-spot.netlead-spot.net. The early SEO giants succeeded by consistently publishing genuine, helpful insights (think Moz’s famous SEO guides or HubSpot’s how-to posts), which naturally attracted links and shares. Today, focusing on comprehensive, well-structured, factual content will not only keep you high in traditional SEO, but it also makes your content attractive for AI to cite. An LLM is effectively saying to the user, “Here is the combined wisdom on your question.” If your content has unique insights, clear explanations, and supporting data, it’s more likely to be included in that combined wisdom writesonic.comwritesonic.com. Conversely, shallow or purely promotional content is likely to be ignored by AI (just as it is by savvy human searchers).

• Experiment and Adapt Continuously: In the early 2000s, SEO was a wild frontier, algorithms changed often, and pioneers had to constantly experiment (tweaking title tags, monitoring results, trying new link tactics) to see what worked. We’re in a similar period with AI search. No one has it completely figured out, and the “secret sauce” of each AI system is evolving with new updates. Successful marketers treat this as an ongoing R&D project: testing how different content formats perform, monitoring when and where their brand appears in AI answers, and adjusting strategy accordingly. For example, one might experiment by creating a detailed FAQ page on a topic and see if that starts getting picked up by Perplexity or SGE. If yes, then rinse and repeat for more topics. Use the AI tools yourself and note whose content gets cited for key queries in your industry. Early SEO practitioners often spent hours in forums sharing findings; today, we see similar knowledge-sharing on LinkedIn and communities about AEO. Stay plugged in. The only wrong move is standing still. As one AI SEO expert put it, “AI results evolve rapidly; today’s visibility can shift tomorrow. Stay ahead through continuous monitoring and optimization.” businessinsider.combusinessinsider.com In practice, that means building AEO KPI tracking (more on metrics in section 5) and being ready to pivot content approaches as needed.

By embracing these principles – move early, create prolifically, extend your presence, deliver real value, and iterate constantly – today’s marketers can mirror the success of the SEO trailblazers. The underlying theme is foresight and commitment: having the vision to see where discovery is headed, and the commitment to align your resources and culture behind that vision before it’s obvious to everyone else. Those who do will find themselves with a HubSpot-like moat in the AI-driven landscape of the late 2020s.

5. How to Optimize for AI-Driven Citations (Answer Engine Optimization Tactics)

If AEO is the new SEO, how exactly does one do it? This section provides a tactical playbook, concrete steps and best practices to increase your chances of being the cited source in AI-generated answers. Think of it as the modern equivalent of an SEO checklist, adapted for generative AI:

a. Answer Clusters, Not Just Keywords: Traditional SEO often started with a keyword (“project management software”) and building content around that. AEO starts with user questions and intents, often longer and more specific than keywords. Aim to cover clusters of related questions in one comprehensive piece. For example, instead of a generic page about “Project Management Software,” create an authoritative guide that answers dozens of real user queries: “What’s the best project management tool for remote teams?”, “Which project management platforms integrate with Slack?”, “Top 5 PM software for agile development,” etc. By doing so, you increase the likelihood that for any given phrasing of a question, some part of your content directly addresses it. AI models prefer to cite a source that neatly answers the exact question asked businessinsider.combusinessinsider.com. Ethan Smith of Graphite notes that, unlike a single keyword approach, “AEO pages might answer dozens or even hundreds of variations” of a query businessinsider.com. Structuring your content with clear subheadings phrased as questions (H2s and H3s that are full questions) is a great way to achieve this. It not only helps readers scan but also signals to AI where relevant answers reside in your text.

b. Use Structured Data and Schema Markup: Just as schema markup (FAQ schema, HowTo schema, etc.) can help you earn rich snippets in Google, it can assist AI in parsing your content. In fact, a recent analysis found that 87% of top-ranking AI-featured content used schema markup, especially on sites that frequently appear in AI answers writesonic.com. Implement FAQ schema for Q&A sections, HowTo or Step-by-Step schema for instructional content, and Organization/Person schema to reinforce your brand’s identity and expertise. Schema makes your content machine-readable, increasing the chance an AI model will correctly interpret and trust your page. Google’s own guidance for SGE suggests that structured data helps their AI overview pinpoint relevant info searchengineland.com. Additionally, use semantic HTML structure (clear headings, lists, tables for data) – these make it easier for AI to quote or summarize your content accurately.

c. Optimize for Conversational Tone and Clarity: Many AI answers quote text verbatim from sources (especially Bing Chat and Perplexity), or paraphrase in a style that mimics a neutral explanatory tone. Content that is written in a straightforward, conversational manner tends to perform better. Write as if you’re answering the user directly in plain language. Avoid overstuffing jargon or marketing speak; an AI may skip a highly promotional page in favor of a neutral Wikipedia-like tone writesonic.comwritesonic.com. One tip is to include concise summary sentences for key points (which are easy for an AI to quote). For instance: “X is the best CRM for small teams because it combines robust features with a simple interface and affordable pricing.” A sentence like that could directly appear in an AI answer with a citation to you. If the valuable info on your page is buried in long paragraphs, it’s harder for the AI to extract. Remember, write for humans, but in a way that’s easy for AI to digest – short declarative sentences, direct answers first (details and elaboration after), and proper grammar.

d. Establish Topical Authority (Breadth and Depth): AI systems, much like search engines, gauge whether a source is authoritative on a given topic by looking at the breadth and depth of content as well as external signals. To be the go-to answer source on, say, “email marketing,” you should have a cluster of content demonstrating expertise: beginner guides, advanced tips, case studies, definitions of key terms, comparisons of tools, etc. HubSpot succeeded in SEO by doing exactly this – covering every angle of marketing and sales topics over time narrato.ionarrato.io. In the AI context, if your site (and your brand across the web) consistently produces high-value content around a niche, the AI is more likely to “know” about you. This also ties back to backlinks and mentions become known for a domain, and others will reference you, which in turn boosts your authority. Writesonic’s research emphasizes creating high-quality, in-depth content with unique insights and original data to improve citation rates writesonic.comwritesonic.com. In essence, be the expert that AI would be proud to quote. This may also mean focusing your efforts; it’s better to own a few pillars (e.g., “CRM for SMBs” and “email deliverability”) than to have shallow content in dozens of areas.

e. Leverage Multi-Channel Content Syndication: As discussed, AI draws from a wide swath of the internet, not just your blog. Content syndication, placing your content on third-party sites, is emerging as a key AEO tactic. This might include guest posts in industry publications, sharing articles on LinkedIn or Medium, contributing answers on Q&A forums, or working with partners to publish collaborative content (like an eBook or research hosted on a high-authority domain). The reason is simple: LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude primarily trained on large, authoritative sites, and tools like Google SGE explicitly trust certain domains more businessinsider.combusinessinsider.com. If you can get your insights into those domains, your content is more likely to be seen and cited by the AI. For example, if your company publishes a bylined article on a site like TechCrunch or gets a mention in a Gartner report, that content is now part of the “knowledge base” that AI references. LeadSpot’s team reports that syndicating client content to high-authority domains led to those clients appearing in Perplexity’s answers within 10 days of syndication lead-spot.netlead-spot.net. The bottom line: don’t rely solely on your own site. Actively distribute and repost content in places that AIs are known to crawl frequently (news sites, wikis, reputable blogs, etc.). This increases your surface area of visibility in the AI’s training data and live crawling.

f. Understand Platform Citation Patterns: Each AI platform has its own “personality” in terms of favored sources. Knowing these patterns can help you prioritize efforts:

• ChatGPT (with browsing/GPT-4 plugins): Skews toward neutral, highly authoritative sources. Analyses have shown that Wikipedia is by far the most-cited source by ChatGPT when it has web access (in one study, nearly 48% of ChatGPT’s top citations were Wikipedia) tryprofound.comtryprofound.com. It also often cites large news organizations (Reuters, Forbes) and well-known databases (IMDb for movie info). Community content is less cited (Reddit was 11% of ChatGPT’s top citations in the study, far behind Wikipedia) tryprofound.comtryprofound.com. So for ChatGPT, aim to get factual, reference-style content out there. This could mean creating or improving Wikipedia pages related to your domain (and ensuring your brand’s Wikipedia page is robust), publishing factual guides, or earning mentions in sites ChatGPT trusts. It’s also observed that ChatGPT rarely cites commercial product pages; less than 3% of its citations were to sales-oriented pages in one analysis writesonic.comwritesonic.com. It prefers informational content.

• Google AI Overviews (SGE): Built off Google’s index, it tends to pull from already-ranked sites but also has a penchant for user-generated content (UGC) on complex or niche queries. A Semrush study found Quora was the #1 cited source and Reddit #2 in SGE snapshots businessinsider.combusinessinsider.com. Google’s AI thus mixes professional and community sources (Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn are all in its top 5) tryprofound.comtryprofound.com. This means Google’s AI looks for conversational, real-life explanations often found in forums or detailed blog posts in addition to authoritative articles. To optimize for SGE, ensure your content addresses specific questions clearly (so it can compete with Quora/Reddit answers), and consider engaging on those UGC platforms. If, for example, a Reddit thread discussing “best email marketing software” is frequently cited, it could be worthwhile to participate in that discussion legitimately (providing helpful info, not just self-promotion) or to create content on your own site that is as useful as what people shared on Reddit. Also, since Google’s AI is an extension of Google Search, normal SEO best practices strongly apply high Page Experience scores, good backlink profile, etc., all increase your chances that Google will “favor” your content for the AI summary searchengineland.comsearchengineland.com.

• Perplexity AI and Others (Bing, etc.): Perplexity is known for a heavy emphasis on community and niche authoritative content. In its top citations, Reddit accounts for almost half (46.7%) of the share, an even greater proportion than Google’s AI tryprofound.comtryprofound.com. It also likes sources like YouTube (14%) and Gartner (7%), and other sites with specialized expertise or user contributions tryprofound.comtryprofound.com. This suggests that for tools like Perplexity (and possibly Bing’s chat to an extent), being part of industry conversations and reviews is crucial. For example, getting your product listed and well-reviewed on sites like G2, Capterra, or niche forums could boost visibility (note: G2 appears in top citations for both ChatGPT and Perplexity) tryprofound.comtryprofound.com. Also, engaging in Q&A communities and even creating video content (since YouTube is cited) can help. The key is to identify where your target audience or topic experts congregate online and ensure your brand is meaningfully present there. If there’s an active StackExchange for your field, answer questions there. If Yelp or TripAdvisor matter (as they do in the Perplexity stats for certain topics) tryprofound.comtryprofound.com, cultivate good reviews. Essentially, diversify your content footprint to include community-driven platforms.

In summary, tailor your approach for where you want to be cited: polished wiki-like content for ChatGPT, Q&A, and community engagement for SGE and Perplexity, credible news/analyst mentions for all platforms. By understanding the “citation culture” of each AI, you can prioritize the most effective channels to boost your inclusion.

g. Monitor and Measure Your AI Visibility: Just as SEO has an array of analytics (rank trackers, Google Search Console, etc.), AEO requires new ways of measuring success. Start tracking metrics like:

• Frequency of Citation: How often does your site (or brand) appear as a cited source in AI outputs? There are emerging tools (Writesonic’s GEO dashboard, Profound’s AI Visibility Leaderboard) that can monitor this writesonic.comwritesonic.com. Even without specialized tools, you can manually query key questions on various AI platforms and log if/when you appear.

• Share of Voice in AI: Similar to share of search. If there are 5 citations and you have 1 of them, that’s a 20% share for that query. Some tools attempt to aggregate an overall “AI citation share” across many queries. This can be a benchmark to beat over time.

• Traffic from AI platforms: Although AI answers often result in fewer clicks, track what you can. For example, if ChatGPT browsing mode cites you, you might see referral traffic from the bing.com domain (since ChatGPT uses Bing’s API) – specifically from URLs like bing.vc or OpenAI’s user agent. Similarly, SGE clicks might show up as coming from Google but with distinguishing parameters. Watch for direct traffic spikes too: LeadSpot observed a 31% surge in direct traffic correlated with an increase in AI citations, suggesting users saw them in AI and later navigated directly to the site lead-spot.net. If you run surveys or sales calls, ask leads how they found you. You may start hearing “I saw you on ChatGPT” (as LeadSpot did) lead-spot.net.

• Engagement from AI-driven visitors: For the visitors that do arrive via AI references, measure their on-site behavior. Forrester’s research noted that AI-referred visitors often spend 2-3x longer on site and convert at higher rates digitalcommerce360.comdigitalcommerce360.com. This was echoed by LeadSpot, which saw LLM-driven traffic converting at 5.8% vs 2.1% for regular organic traffic lead-spot.netlead-spot.net. Track metrics like time on page, pages per session, and conversion rate for segments of users coming from AI sources (you might need to use UTM parameters or landing pages to identify them). High engagement can reinforce the value of AEO efforts in your broader marketing ROI.

By monitoring these, you can refine your strategy, doubling down on content that is getting cited and improving areas where you’re absent. It also allows you to demonstrate success. Much as early SEO had to prove its worth to executives, you may need to show that “we got cited 10 times this month in AI answers, leading to X leads” to justify further investment in AEO.

h. Be Ethical and Authentic: Finally, a note of caution, just as SEO has “black hat” tactics (keyword stuffing, link farms) that eventually backfire, it’s likely that manipulative AEO tactics (gaming AI with spam content or low-quality “answers” blasted everywhere) will fail. Already, we’ve seen instances of AI chatbots citing fake sources or misattributed info, leading to user mistrust theatlantic.com. The winners will be those who build real credibility. Focus on earning citations by contributing value in every piece of content. In practical terms: don’t try to trick the AI (it will only improve at filtering out noise); instead, make yourself unambiguously the best source for the topics you care about. That strategy stood the test of time in the SEO era and will do so again now.

6. A Rare Opportunity Awaits

Moments of upheaval in digital marketing are rare. SEO in the early 2000s was one; social media marketing in the early 2010s was another. We are now living through the next revolution with AI-driven search. History tells us that those who recognize the revolution early and act boldly will enjoy outsized advantages for years, perhaps decades.

In the early days of SEO, many businesses dismissed it as a gimmick or “nice to have.” Some executives infamously called SEO “snake oil”, not understanding its value medium.datadriveninvestor.com. We see echoes of that today: skeptics claim AI answers will always be trivial or that users will stick to old habits. Meanwhile, smart marketers aren’t waiting to find out – they’re already securing their spot in the new world of AI answers. And the window is open right now for forward-thinkers to stake a claim. As Forrester research emphasizes, “Zero-click search isn’t a problem…it’s an enormous opportunity.” Buyers using AI to get information are actually more qualified and come in further down the funnel; being part of those AI-facilitated conversations means you’re engaging buyers at the moment of decision digitalcommerce360.comdigitalcommerce360.com. In B2B, especially, AI-driven discovery is growing exponentially (2-6% of traffic now and projected to exceed 20% by the end of 2025) digitalcommerce360.comdigitalcommerce360.com. Grabbing even a small leadership percentage in that channel could translate to massive compounding growth.

Think of the compounding effect: Early SEO adopters didn’t just get more traffic one time – they accumulated domain authority that kept paying dividends, and they had years of refinement advantage over late entrants. Similarly, early AEO adopters can accumulate an unassailable lead in AI prominence. They’ll have more data to learn from, more brand recognition from AI outputs, and likely a better understanding of how users interact with AI in their journey. While competitors are sleeping, you could be training the AI to “know” and trust your brand. A year or two from now, that kind of entrenchment may be very hard to disrupt (just as it’s hard to dethrone a content-rich, domain-authority-90 site that’s been around since 2005).

To put it plainly: don’t miss the dawn of AI search. The opportunity today is the same magnitude as SEO’s rise, perhaps even higher, given the speed of AI adoption. In a world where AI assistants might handle a large chunk of discovery, those who are the trusted answers will own the customer relationship, even if intermediaries (search engines, etc.) change. As one marketing expert advised, “If you’re still optimizing only for Google, you’re already behind. The brands winning in 2025 are the ones showing up in AI-generated answers… You’re either in that answer, or you’re not.” lead-spot.netlead-spot.net In other words, be the HubSpot of your era, the company that embraced the new paradigm while others clung to the old.

The early 2000s companies that wagered on SEO became the digital giants of their industries. Now AI is rewriting the rules again. The few brands that understand and optimize for AI-driven search today will become the market leaders of tomorrow. By learning from the SEO playbook and applying those lessons to AEO, you can ensure your brand isn’t just present, but dominant, in the next generation of search.

Conclusion: The revolution in search is here. SEO in the 2000s was about being found by algorithms; AEO in the 2020s is about being recommended by intelligent machines. Both revolutions reward those who see the future and act decisively. The tools and tactics may change, but the strategy endures: show up where your customers are looking, provide them value, and you will win. Today, this means optimizing for answers, not just clicks. It means making your brand the one AI trusts. The playbook is being written in real-time; make sure you’re the author, not the footnote.

Are you ready to take your place at the forefront of AI-powered discoverability? The steps you take now could determine your brand’s trajectory for the next decade. Don’t sit on the sidelines as this new landscape takes shape. The companies that act now and seize this rare opportunity will be the household names and industry titans of the AI era.