How to get found in the age of AI search

How search changed: SEO, AEO and GEO

For two decades, being found online meant one thing: ranking on Google. You optimised a page, climbed the results, and earned clicks. That world has not disappeared, but it has been joined by two new ones. Buyers now ask ChatGPT for recommendations, read Google's AI Overview instead of scrolling, and let Gemini or Perplexity summarise their options before they ever visit a website. The question is no longer only "where do I rank?" but "am I the answer the machine gives?"

This shift has a real cost for businesses that ignore it. Gartner has predicted that traditional search engine volume will drop by around 25 per cent by 2026 as AI chatbots and virtual agents take over more queries. At the same time, Google's AI Overviews have rolled out to over a billion users, and hundreds of millions of people now treat ChatGPT as a starting point for research. The traffic is not vanishing, it is moving, and it rewards a different kind of preparation.

That preparation comes in three overlapping disciplines. SEO keeps you visible in classic search. AEO, or answer engine optimisation, gets you quoted inside direct answers like AI Overviews and featured snippets. GEO, or generative engine optimisation, gets your business named inside the conversational replies of tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. They are not three separate campaigns. They share the same foundations of clear content, technical health and earned trust, and the businesses that win treat them as one connected effort.

Check your AI search readiness (free tool)

Before you change anything, it helps to know where you stand. Answer a handful of quick questions and the checker gives you an AI search readiness rating, your visibility tier, and a prioritised list of the gaps holding you back across SEO, AEO and GEO. It is free, instant and needs no sign-up.

SEO: the foundation that still matters

It is tempting to think AI has made SEO obsolete. The opposite is true. AI engines do not conjure answers from thin air; they draw on the open web, and time after time the sources they quote are the same pages ranking on the first page of Google. Strong SEO is now the entry ticket to AI visibility. If a crawler cannot reach your content, understand it, or trust it, no AI engine will ever lift it into an answer.

The foundations are unglamorous but decisive. Your site needs to load fast, work flawlessly on mobile, and be fully crawlable, with clean URLs and a logical structure. Your content needs to genuinely answer the questions your buyers ask, organised around clear topics rather than scattered keywords. And you need authority: real expertise on the page, an identifiable author or business behind it, and references from other trusted sites. Get this right and you are simultaneously building the base that AEO and GEO depend on. Our SEO services exist to put exactly these foundations in place.

AEO: getting cited inside AI answers

Answer engine optimisation is about earning a place inside the direct answer, not just the list of links beneath it. When someone searches and Google returns an AI Overview, or when a featured snippet sits at the top of the page, that box is now the most valuable real estate in search. AEO is the practice of writing and structuring content so that an engine can confidently lift your words as the answer.

The technique is answer-first writing. Lead each page or section with a crisp, self-contained response to the question, ideally in 40 to 60 words, then expand with the detail and evidence that earn trust. Use real questions as headings, write in plain language, and back claims with specifics: numbers, steps, named examples. Engines favour content that is unambiguous and easy to extract, so a clear two-sentence answer near the top of a page will outperform a brilliant insight buried in paragraph nine. For the full method, see our AEO services and our 2026 guide to answer engine optimisation.

GEO: showing up in generative engines

Generative engine optimisation aims one level deeper, at the conversational answers of tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot. When a buyer asks one of these assistants for the best provider of a service in their city, the engine assembles a recommendation from everything it understands about the businesses in that space. GEO is the work of making sure your business is understood clearly enough, and referenced widely enough, to be one of the names it offers.

In practice, GEO rewards clarity and consensus. Generative engines favour businesses with a coherent, consistent description across the web: the same name, the same services, the same details, echoed on your own site, your Google Business Profile, directories, and third-party mentions. They reward content that states facts plainly and is genuinely useful, and they reward being talked about by sources they already trust. The takeaway is that you cannot trick a generative engine; you earn your place by being clearly the kind of business it should recommend. Our GEO services are built around exactly that.

Structured data: the language machines trust

Structured data, or schema markup, is how you tell machines exactly what your content means rather than leaving them to guess. It is a layer of code that labels your pages: this is an article, this is a business, this is a service, this is a frequently asked question, this is a review. Both search crawlers and AI engines read it to understand and trust your content, and well-marked-up pages are far more likely to power rich results and AI answers.

The high-value schema types for AI visibility are straightforward. FAQ and Question markup makes your answers easy to lift. Article and HowTo markup clarifies what a page teaches. LocalBusiness and Organization markup tells engines who you are, where you operate, and how to describe you as an entity. The goal is to remove ambiguity: the less an engine has to infer, the more confidently it can quote you. This is technical work, but it is some of the highest-leverage work available for getting found in AI search.

Local signals and entity trust

For most Australian businesses, the highest-value AI queries are local: someone asking for the best agency, plumber, clinic or cafe near them. AI engines answer these by drawing on the same local signals that power Google's map pack, and then some. A complete, active Google Business Profile, consistent name, address and phone details everywhere they appear, and a steady stream of genuine reviews all tell engines that you are a real, trusted, local entity worth recommending.

Entity trust is the thread that runs through all of this. AI engines increasingly think in terms of entities, the people, businesses and concepts behind the words, rather than just matching keywords. The more consistently your business is described and the more it is referenced by sources the engine already trusts, the stronger your entity, and the more likely you are to be named. For the local side in depth, read our guide to local SEO for Sydney businesses.

How to measure AI visibility

Measuring AI visibility is newer and messier than classic rank tracking, but you are not flying blind. Start by monitoring a set of prompts your buyers would actually type into ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and check whether your business is mentioned and how it is described. Watch your analytics for referral traffic from AI tools, which is now a growing channel in its own right. And track how often your key queries trigger an AI Overview, and whether you appear within it.

Pair these signals with the fundamentals you already trust: rankings on your money keywords, organic traffic, and most importantly, enquiries. The most reliable proof that AI visibility is working is still a customer who tells you an assistant recommended you. Treat measurement as a monthly habit rather than a one-off, because the engines, and the way people use them, are changing quickly. What you measure today tells you where to invest next.

25%

Predicted drop in classic search volume by 2026

3 fronts

SEO, AEO and GEO to win together

40 to 60

Words for an answer-first response engines can lift

How to get started

Start with the readiness checker above if you have not already, then fix the single biggest gap it surfaces first. For most businesses the fastest wins are the same three moves: tighten your SEO foundations so engines can find and trust you, rewrite your most important pages answer-first so they can be quoted, and add the structured data that removes any ambiguity about who you are and what you offer. Do those well and you become eligible across all three fronts at once.

If you would rather move quickly with a partner, Vikilinks helps Australian businesses get found in Google and inside AI answers from our base in Parramatta, NSW. Call 0452 598 138 or book a free AI visibility audit and we will show you exactly how Google and AI engines see you today, and the fastest path to becoming the answer they give.