AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) target different surfaces of the same buyer journey. SEO positions your pages in ranked search results. AEO positions your brand inside AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and others. They share foundations — page speed, E-E-A-T, schema, content depth — but AEO requires at least eight distinct actions that have no SEO equivalent, and only 10% of ChatGPT citations overlap with Google's top 10 organic results. For UK businesses, with 66% of B2B decision-makers now using AI to find suppliers, the question is not whether to invest in AEO but how to layer it onto existing SEO.
The debate is real. Google's Danny Sullivan says "Good SEO is Good GEO." Search Engine Journal's Roger Montti calls AEO "repackaged SEO." Meanwhile, Ahrefs data shows 80% of AI assistant citations don't rank anywhere in Google's top 100. So who is right — and what should a UK marketing lead recommend to their CMO?
This guide examines the evidence from both sides and gives you a practical framework for allocating budget between SEO and AEO. It is part of Whitehat's Answer Engine Optimisation learning path.
SEO is the practice of optimising web content to rank in traditional search engine results — Google's blue links, Bing organic listings, featured snippets. It has been the dominant digital marketing discipline for over two decades, with a well-established toolkit: keyword research, on-page optimisation, technical SEO, link building, and content strategy.
AEO is the practice of optimising content to be cited by AI-powered answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude. Instead of ranking in a list of links, AEO aims to get your brand mentioned, quoted, or linked inside AI-generated responses to user queries.
The distinction matters because each AI platform uses a different search backend. ChatGPT relies on Bing (87%+ citation match — Seer Interactive, 2025). Claude uses Brave Search (86.7% overlap — Profound, March 2025). Google AI Mode cites different URLs from AI Overviews 86.3% of the time (Ahrefs, December 2025). Optimising for Google alone leaves significant gaps across the AI search landscape.
The case for AEO being repackaged SEO is not trivial. Google's Danny Sullivan stated at WordCamp US (August 2025): "Good SEO is Good GEO — there isn't anything new that creators need to be doing." Roger Montti at Search Engine Journal (October 2025) reviewed Bing's official AI visibility guide and concluded that every AEO tactic mapped back to established SEO practices. Lily Ray (Amsive, January 2026) called out a "Great Acronym Gold Rush" where agencies repackage standard SEO under new names.
The data partly supports them — but only for Google's own AI features. Google AI Overviews draw 76% of citations from pages already ranking in Google's top 10 (Ahrefs, 2025). An seoClarity study of 432,000 keywords found over 99% of AIO sources came from top-10 web results (September 2025). If your only concern is Google AI Overviews, then yes — strong SEO gets you most of the way there.
The shared foundations are real. Page speed, E-E-A-T signals, schema markup, internal linking, content depth, mobile optimisation, and server-side rendering all benefit both SEO and AEO. If your technical SEO is poor, no amount of AEO-specific work will compensate.
The overlap argument collapses when you look beyond Google AI Overviews. Ahrefs' August 2025 study is the most decisive: only 12% of URLs cited by AI assistants (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity) also rank in Google's top 10. Critically, 80% of AI assistant citations don't rank anywhere in Google's top 100 for the original query. Chatoptic's study across 15 brands found a near-zero rank correlation of 0.034 between Google rankings and ChatGPT mentions (September 2025).
Kevin Indig's analysis of 1.2 million ChatGPT citations (Growth Memo, February 2026) found that none of the classic SEO metrics — domain authority, backlinks, keyword density — have strong relationships with AI citations. What does correlate: definitive language (36.2% of cited content vs 20.2% non-cited), front-loaded answers (44.2% of citations from the first 30% of content), high entity density (20.6% proper nouns vs typical 5–8%), and conversational Q&A structure (2× more likely to be cited).
At least eight AEO tactics have no SEO equivalent:
| AEO-Only Tactic | What It Involves | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| AI crawler management | Robots.txt rules for 30+ AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, etc.) | 578K sites reference GPTBot; 305% request volume increase (HTTP Archive, 2025) |
| Answer capsule architecture | Self-contained 120–180 word passages under question headings | 70% more ChatGPT citations vs short sections (SE Ranking, Nov 2025) |
| Front-loaded writing | Key answer in first 30% of content ("ski ramp" pattern) | 44.2% of all ChatGPT citations from first 30% (Indig, Feb 2026) |
| Off-site citation building | Brand presence on Reddit, Wikipedia, Quora for AI training data | Wikipedia in 43% of ChatGPT citations; Reddit 450% AIO increase (Azoma; Digital Bloom, 2025) |
| Brand mention optimisation | Building mentions (not links) across third-party sources | Top 25% for mentions earn 10× more AIO citations (Passionfruit, 2025) |
| Aggressive freshness cycling | Monthly updates (vs quarterly for SEO) | Content updated within 30 days gets 3.2× more AI citations (SE Ranking, Nov 2025) |
| Platform-specific targeting | Different optimisation for each AI platform's search backend | Only 12% of top sources shared across platforms (Passionfruit, 2025) |
| LLMs.txt protocol | Markdown file at site root for LLM comprehension | Early-stage; Triangle IP saw 5× AI traffic increase (SE Ranking, 2025) |
The strongest evidence that AEO is genuinely distinct: for ChatGPT alone, traditional Google ranking position is essentially irrelevant. The same applies to Copilot (9.8% overlap with AIOs) and Claude (20% overlap with ChatGPT). Only for Google AI Overviews does traditional SEO remain the dominant factor — and even there, AIO-specific optimisation adds a meaningful citation layer on top.
Each answer engine draws from a different index, favours different content signals, and rewards different behaviours. The table below summarises the key differences based on the latest research.
| Factor | Google AIOs | ChatGPT | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search backend | Google organic index | Bing (87%+ match) | Own RAG system |
| Google ranking correlation | 76% from top 10 | 10% from top 10 | 65% from top 10 |
| Page speed impact | Weak (r = −0.12) | Strong (3× at FCP <0.4s) | Moderate |
| Schema influence | Strong (2.5× higher chance) | Minimal effect | Moderate |
| Content freshness | Moderate | High (76.4% updated <30 days) | Very high (strongest recency bias) |
| Top social citation source | YouTube (39.2%) | Wikipedia (7.8%) | Reddit, forums |
The implications are clear: optimising only for Google — even for Google AI Overviews — leaves your brand invisible to ChatGPT's 252 million monthly UK visitors (Ofcom, August 2025), Perplexity's rapidly growing user base, and Microsoft Copilot. Only 12% of top-mentioned sources are shared across AI platforms (Passionfruit, 2025). A Google-only SEO strategy is, by definition, a single-platform strategy in a multi-platform world.
For a deeper look at ChatGPT-specific optimisation, see our guide to optimising for ChatGPT. For Google AI Overviews, see our AIO optimisation guide.
SEO measurement is mature: keyword rankings, organic traffic, click-through rates, and conversions tracked through Google Search Console, GA4, Ahrefs, and Semrush. You know what good looks like because two decades of benchmarks exist.
AEO measurement is emerging but already distinct. The core AEO metrics are AI citation rate (how often your brand appears in AI responses), Share of AI Voice (your percentage of AI mentions versus competitors), and AI-referred traffic (visitors arriving via chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, and similar domains). Specialist tools have launched rapidly: Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit (from $99/month), Ahrefs Brand Radar (included with standard plans), Profound (enterprise-grade, $499+/month with GA4 integration), and Otterly.AI (from $29/month).
The early benchmarks are compelling. AI search visitors are worth 4.4× more than traditional organic visitors for conversion (Semrush, 2025). AI-referred traffic shows 27% lower bounce rates (Position Digital, 2026). However, AI currently represents less than 5% of site revenue for most businesses (SEOFOMO Survey, 2025), and Rand Fishkin's research shows less than 1 in 100 chance that ChatGPT will give the same brand list in any two responses (SparkToro, January 2026) — making point-in-time position tracking unreliable. Track visibility percentage over time, not individual rankings. For a comprehensive measurement approach, see our guide to AEO measurement and KPIs.
The UK AI search landscape has reached a tipping point. ChatGPT received 1.8 billion UK visits in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million in the same period the previous year — making it the UK's second-largest search service (Ofcom Online Nation 2025). Gemini grew 146%, Claude 138%, and Perplexity 100% year-on-year to August 2025. Meanwhile, 30% of UK keyword searches now deliver AI-supported overviews.
For B2B specifically, the shift is already affecting pipeline. Magenta Associates' November 2025 survey of 300 UK senior decision-makers found 66% now use AI tools to find and assess suppliers, 90% trust the recommendations, and 85% have discovered a new supplier through an AI response. Only five brands capture 80% of top AI responses per B2B category — creating winner-take-most dynamics that reward early movers.
The CMA's proposed publisher opt-outs for Google AI Overviews under the DMCCA could fragment the UK AI search landscape further. If major publishers opt out of AIOs, it makes AEO on third-party platforms — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot — even more important, as these are not subject to the same opt-out provisions. The regulatory environment is actually strengthening the case for multi-platform AEO rather than weakening it.
Expert consensus supports a layered model: SEO is the foundation, AEO is the amplification layer. A 70–80% SEO / 20–30% AEO budget split is the recommended starting point (CMSWire, August 2025). This reflects the reality that AI engines currently account for approximately 3.3% of online discovery time (eMarketer, 2025), but that percentage is growing rapidly.
In practice, AEO is best treated as an incremental 20–30% budget uplift on existing SEO spend. UK AEO packages start from approximately £450/month (Tenacious Sales, 2025), with full-service integrated programmes ranging from £1,967–£2,967/month on top of SEO retainers. The risk of waiting is quantifiable: Gartner predicts traditional search volume will drop 25% by the end of 2026, and AI-referred sessions already grew 527% year-on-year (Search Engine Land, August 2025).
If budget is genuinely constrained, start with these three actions that cost nothing beyond staff time:
Check your robots.txt for AI crawler rules. Allow OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot to access your content. Block training-only bots if desired, but do not block search/citation bots. This single step removes the most common barrier to AI visibility.
Add answer capsules (20–25 word direct answers) below your H2 headings on your highest-traffic pages. Front-load key facts in the first 30% of each page. This requires no new content — just restructuring what you already have.
Create a custom GA4 channel group for AI referral traffic. Check GSC's AI Mode filter. Use Ahrefs Brand Radar (included in standard plans) or Otterly.AI (from $29/month) to establish a baseline. You cannot improve what you do not measure.
No. AEO is an additional layer on top of SEO, not a replacement. Strong SEO foundations — technical health, content depth, E-E-A-T — remain essential because most AI platforms draw from existing search indexes. However, SEO alone leaves your brand invisible to the 80% of AI assistant citations that don't come from Google's top 100.
Not effectively. AI engines rely on existing search indexes to find content. If your pages are technically inaccessible, slow to load, or lack authority signals, AI crawlers will struggle to index and cite them. Get SEO fundamentals right first, then layer AEO-specific actions on top. The recommended budget split is 70–80% SEO, 20–30% AEO.
If you already rank well in Google organic results, start with Google AI Overviews — 76% of citations come from the top 10, so you are already most of the way there. Then address ChatGPT, which has the largest UK user base at 252 million monthly visits but only 10% overlap with Google rankings, requiring distinct optimisation.
UK AEO packages start from approximately £450/month for basic services. Full-service integrated AEO programmes from specialist agencies range from £1,200–£2,800/month for mid-sized businesses, typically as an incremental 20–30% uplift on existing SEO retainers. Three high-impact actions — AI crawler audit, content restructuring, and AI visibility tracking — can be done at zero incremental cost.
AEO ROI data is still early-stage, but the signals are strong. AI search visitors are valued at 4.4× higher economic value than traditional organic visitors (Semrush, 2025) and AI-referred traffic converts up to 23× better (Ahrefs data). Enterprise brands achieve 7× citation increases in 90 days with dedicated AEO programmes (Profound, 2026). However, AI currently drives less than 5% of total site revenue for most businesses.
Most organisations run AEO through their existing SEO team. Aleyda Solis' SEOFOMO survey found 75% of respondents said the SEO team handles AI search efforts, with almost no organisations having dedicated AI search teams. The overlap in skills — technical auditing, content strategy, analytics — means your SEO team is the natural home for AEO, with some additional training on AI-specific tactics.
Whitehat's AEO visibility scan queries ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity with your top buyer queries and reports exactly which brands get cited — yours and your competitors'. Includes a gap analysis and prioritised action plan.
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This article was researched and written by Whitehat SEO's content team using data from Ahrefs (August–December 2025), Semrush (2025), SE Ranking (November 2025, 129K domains), Growth Memo/Kevin Indig (February 2026, 1.2M citations), SparkToro/Rand Fishkin (January 2026, 2,961 prompts), Chatoptic (September 2025, 15 brands), Seer Interactive (2025), BrightEdge (October 2025), Profound (March 2025), Magenta Associates (November 2025, 300 UK decision-makers), Ofcom Online Nation (December 2025), CMA DMCCA documentation (October 2025/February 2026), SEOFOMO Survey (2025, 200+ senior SEOs), Acquia/Researchscape (2025, 500+ marketers), and additional sources cited throughout. All statistics verified against primary sources at time of publication. Last updated: February 2026.