“The best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google search results.”
❓ What You’ll Learn
- How to transform existing content for AI?
- How to get 13x better conversion rates?
- What’s the pay-to-play future of AI search?
- What will be the role of voice search?
- How do AI platform preferences differ from traditional search?
💎 Why It Matters
AI search is becoming the go-to way for billions of people to shop, learn and more.
🔍 Problem
AI searches are on track to overtake traditional search (Google) by 2027.
💡 Solution
Answer engine optimization (AEO) makes brands visible in AI-generated responses.
🏁 Players
- Promptwatch • Real-time tracking with conversion attribution. Booking.com client.
- PromptMonitor • Affordable multi-platform tracking.
- Profound • Tracking 9+ platforms. $20M from Kleiner Perkins.
- AthenaHQ • Ex-Google/DeepMind team. Y Combinator W25. $2.1M raised.
- Peec AI • Marketing analytics with percentage visibility metrics.
🔮 Predictions
- AI search will overtake traditional search by late 2027. Traditional search will drop 25% by 2026.
- The AEO market will reach $7.3 billion by 2031. Growing 34% annually from $886 million today.
- Voice will become the primary interface. Local searches will shift to voice-first as smart speakers proliferate.
- Platforms like ChatGPT and Claude will introduce transaction fees for purchase-intent searches. Pay-to-play for product visibility.
☁️ Opportunities
- Optimize your own content for AI search. Citations improve visibility up to 40%. Adding statistics boost another 40%.
- Build optimized content creation tools. Combine traditional SEO with AEO capabilities. See Frase, Copy.ai and Surfer.
- Launch an AEO agency. Only 22% of marketers track AI mentions. Charge $4,000-13,000/month.
- Target niche markets with design concessions. Build AEO tools exclusively for Shopify’s 2.3 million stores. Local businesses managing multiple locations is a great niche too. Generic AEO platforms can’t match specific features without degrading the experience for other users.
- Build a browser extension showing AI visibility scores. Make the Keywords Everywhere extension for the AEO age.
🔑 Key Lessons
- Multi-platform optimization is essential. Traditional search engines will still be relevant for a long time. Integration trumps isolation. AEO complements traditional SEO, doesn’t replace it.
- A lot of traditional SEO tactics will transfer. Schema markup helps AI understand content.
😠 Haters
“AEO is just SEO with a fancy name.”
Lily Ray argues techniques overlap. But AI synthesis requires different strategic thinking than ranking for keywords. AEO uses different ranking factors than Google. Citation patterns and confidence scores don’t exist in traditional SEO.
“AI companies will shut down AEO like Google killed link farms.”
It seems like they are not incentivized. They will most likely get in on the transactional actions.
“AI won’t overtake Google. It has AI overviews in the search.”
It will overtake traditional search. What do you picture when you hear “traditional search”? We bet it’s Google.
🔗 Links
- From 2 to $3M ARR • Tally founders explain how ChatGPT became their #1 referral source.
- AEO vs SEO Explained • Industry can’t agree on terminology for AI optimization.
- Answer Engine Optimization Is The New SEO • Learn how AI chat is converging with search.
- Proven AEO Optimization Case Studies • See how AI-sourced visitors convert at 27% compared to just 2.1% from standard search traffic (13x better).
- AI Discoverability • Read how you can get ChatGPT to recommend your brand.
📈 What else?
Trends PRO #0152 — AI Search Optimization (AEO) has more insights.
What you’ll get:
- 15 AEO Tools (150% More)
- 8 Predictions (100% More)
- 12 Opportunities (140% More)
- 5 Key Lessons (150% More)
- 8 Links (60% More)
With Trends Pro you’ll learn:
- (📈 Pro) Which types of search queries get AI visibility?
- (📈 Pro) How to optimize for regional AI platforms?
- (📈 Pro) What international markets are wide open?
- (📈 Pro) What metrics will replace traditional rankings?
- (📈 Pro) Which SEO giants are making major AEO acquisitions?
- (📈 Pro) Which industries need vertical AEO?
- (📈 Pro) How does voice change everything?
- (📈 Pro) What ranking factors does AEO use?
- (📈 Pro) What threatens traditional SEO distribution?
- And much more…
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