AI Search Optimisation

The shift to answer engines

For twenty years, search meant typing a few words and choosing from a list of blue links. Now buyers ask full questions and get a written answer straight back, often without clicking anything. They ask ChatGPT to recommend a supplier, ask Perplexity to compare options and cite its sources, and read Google's AI Overview before they ever reach a website. Being named in that answer is the new front page.

AEO, GEO and AI Overviews are one discipline

Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is about being chosen as the direct answer. Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is about shaping how AI describes and cites you. AI Overviews are Google's version sitting above the results. They overlap by roughly 90 per cent, so we treat them as one job rather than three, and optimise for all of them at once.

How AI chooses who to cite

Answer engines do not invent facts from nowhere. They draw on pages they can crawl, understand and trust, and a large share of what they quote comes from content that already ranks well. They also lean heavily on third-party lists and directories. That is why strong SEO fundamentals remain the entry ticket, and why being on the lists AI reads matters as much as your own site.

Answer-ready content and structured data

The content that gets quoted leads with the answer, uses real questions as headings, and keeps paragraphs short and factual. Layered on top, structured data (FAQ, Organisation, Product and LocalBusiness schema) removes ambiguity about what your page claims, so a machine can lift it cleanly. It was a nice-to-have for classic SEO. For answer engines it is close to essential.

Entity and authority

AI reasons about entities: your business as a named thing, connected to services, locations, people and reviews. Consistent information across your site and the wider web, named authors with genuine expertise, steady reviews and mentions on trusted sites all make you a recognisable, quotable source. This is broader than keywords, and it compounds over time the way traditional authority always has.

Measuring AI visibility

Rankings and clicks no longer tell the whole story, because people increasingly get their answer without visiting your site. We track how often AI assistants mention and cite you, whether they describe your business correctly, and your presence in AI Overviews, alongside your normal rankings. The goal is being the named, trusted source, and the qualified clicks tend to follow. A note on honesty: nobody controls what an AI assistant says, and answers vary by question, user and day. What we control is how crawlable, consistent and credible your business looks to these systems, which is exactly what they draw on. We measure by sampling your key queries on a recurring schedule, so trends are comparable month to month.

The through-line is simple: be the clearest, most credible source on the questions your customers ask, and you compete on every AI surface at once. It starts with the technical SEO foundations that let the machines in. If you would rather we handled it, that is what our Brisbane SEO team is for.