SEO & AIEO · March 18, 2026 · 6 min
What is AIEO and why does it matter more than traditional SEO in 2026?
AI engines are answering your customers' questions before they ever reach your website. Here's how to make sure you're the source they cite.
AI Engine Optimisation (AIEO) is the practice of making your brand, content, and expertise more likely to be cited, summarised, or recommended by AI systems, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, and the models embedded in search across the web.
The shift matters because a growing share of search queries never reach a results page. They get answered in the chat interface, the overview box, or the AI assistant. If your content isn't structured in a way that LLMs can reliably extract and cite, you're invisible to that audience.
AIEO is not a replacement for traditional SEO, it's an extension of it. The same principles apply: authoritative content, clear structure, strong internal linking, and real EEAT signals. But AIEO adds a layer: structured data, citation-ready summaries, and brand mentions in contexts AI systems can recognise and repeat.
We've been tracking our clients' GEO scores since early 2025. The brands that invest in AIEO now are the ones that will own their niche in the AI-mediated web. The window to build that position is still open. Not for long.
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