SEO used to be about climbing to the top of Google’s results. If you nailed the right keywords, had some decent backlinks, and kept things ticking over, you could get your content in front of people.
People aren’t searching the same way they did traditionally; they’re getting their answers directly from AI. According to early 2025 data reported in the Wall Street Journal, around 40% of brand-site traffic is now being routed through AI tools rather than traditional search. That means fewer clicks, more summaries, and a new kind of competition. The goal now is not just to rank, but to be the answer.
Whether it’s Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, or Perplexity, search is evolving into something more conversational, more intelligent, and more invisible. Instead of showing a list of links, AI tools often pull together answers from across the web and your content either gets included, or it doesn’t.
So, where does that leave SEO?
GEO is about helping AI tools like ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini AI Overviews understand and surface your content. That means presenting information in a way that’s structured, credible, and easy for machines to parse.
What matters most:
If AI can’t trust or clearly understand your content, it simply won’t use it.
AEO focuses on making your content useful in answer-based formats. AI tools are favouring pages that directly respond to user questions quickly and clearly.
Key things to do:
Good AEO content doesn’t waffle. It gets to the point and answers properly.
AI Interaction Optimisation is about structuring your content so that it’s easy for users to engage with, especially when it's shown inside AI tools like ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews, where users might not even visit your website. Your content needs to work well in those environments, not just on your site.
That includes:
All things that are geared towards being genuinely useful.
Once someone does land on your site, the experience needs to work.
This means:
It’s tempting to focus on just one or two of the pillars. Maybe you’ve nailed traditional SEO (GEO) or your team writes great content that answers questions (AEO).
But in an AI-first search world, leaving one out means your content is either invisible, ignored, or ineffective. Here's how it breaks down:
AI won’t understand or trust your content, and it won’t cite it. You won’t appear in answers, summaries, or sidebars.
Your content might get noticed, but not selected. If you don’t structure it to answer questions clearly, AI tools will move on to someone else who does.
Even if you get surfaced, your content might look like a wall of text or feel unhelpful. No one’s reading dense paragraphs when they’re after a quick answer. Worse, AI tools might struggle to break your content into usable chunks.
You get the click, but the experience falls flat. The site is slow, hard to use on mobile, or fails to guide the user to the next step. That means lost opportunities and lower return on everything you've invested.
10. Run a speed and mobile-friendliness audit using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or Core Web Vitals. Make sure your content not only gets found, but also actually works when users land on it.
It won’t just be about what you say on your site, but who else is reinforcing it. The more aligned and visible your brand is across the web, the more likely AI will trust and surface you in answers.
Forward-thinking SEO will start to include this sort of “AI-readiness” alongside traditional optimisations.
AI will likely start to factor in those user signals, so brands will need to treat Search Experience Optimisation (SXO) as a core part of performance strategy. Expect growing importance on accessibility, voice navigation, and even real-time feedback loops from AI tools.
Search, discovery, and visibility are evolving fast. As AI continues to shape how content is found and presented, relying on traditional SEO alone won’t cut it. Brands need a joined-up approach across GEO, AEO, AIO, and SXO to stay relevant and get results.
Each pillar does something different, but they’re strongest when used together. Drop one, and your chances of being seen, cited, or clicked fall away. Get them working in sync, and you create a solid foundation for visibility that actually leads somewhere.