What changed in search
For twenty years, being found meant ranking on Google and earning the click. Now many searches end with an answer instead of a list of links. Buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini directly, and Google shows an AI Overview above the results.
49%
of US adults use AI chatbots
Pew, 2026
82%
noticed AI Overviews in search
Gartner consumer survey, Jan 2026
68%
of US Google searches end with no click
SparkToro, early 2026
−38%
organic clicks when an AI Overview shows
Randomized field study, Apr 2026
All four figures are US data.
The question for a business is no longer only “do we rank?” but also “when someone asks AI, are we in the answer?”
SEO, AEO and GEO
Three names for three overlapping jobs. Most good work helps all three at once.
| Name | The goal | Where it shows up |
|---|---|---|
| SEOSearch engine optimisation | Rank well in search results | Google's blue links |
| AEOAnswer engine optimisation | Be the direct answer engines quote | Featured answers, voice assistants, AI answers |
| GEOGenerative engine optimisation | Be mentioned and recommended by generative AI | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews |
How AI picks who to name
AI products work in different ways, and none publishes exact rules. In general, two things shape an answer.
What it can read right now. Many AI search products look up web pages for each question, summarise them and cite sources. Pages that answer the question clearly, in plain text, with facts that are easy to extract, are easier to use.
What the web says about you. Answers also reflect how consistently your business is described across the web: your own site, reviews, directories, articles and forums.
Answers also vary from one run to the next. That is why it helps to track the same questions over time rather than trusting a single check.
A ten-point checklist for this week
You can do all of these yourself. Omnishown is built to check the ones that live in your code on every release.
- 1Give every important page a specific title and descriptionSay what you offer and where. “Home” tells search and AI nothing.
- 2Answer the main question at the top of the pageOne or two plain sentences: what you do, for whom, and where.
- 3Add an FAQ written in your buyers' wordsUse the questions customers actually ask you on calls and WhatsApp.
- 4Use headings that match real questionsA heading like “Do you deliver on Sundays?” is easy for an AI answer to quote.
- 5Add structured data for your businessSchema.org markup for your business type, products and FAQs makes facts machine-readable.
- 6Keep your business facts consistent everywhereSame name, address, phone and hours on your site, Google Business Profile and directories.
- 7Check that robots.txt isn't blocking crawlers you wantIf search and AI crawlers can't read a page, they can't use it in an answer.
- 8Keep key content as real textPrices, menus and service lists locked inside images or scripts are hard for machines to read.
- 9Earn mentions on sites AI tends to draw fromReviews, directories, local news and community forums all shape how AI describes you.
- 10Re-check after every releaseSmall changes can undo good work. A redesign can quietly drop a title, a schema block or an FAQ.
Glossary
- AI Overview
- The AI-written summary Google shows above some search results.
- Answer Share
- an Omnishown term: of the buyer questions you track, the share of sampled AI answers that name you.
- Citation
- A link or source an AI answer shows to back up what it says.
- Structured data
- Labels added to a page's code, using schema.org, that describe facts like your business type, hours or FAQs.
- Pull request
- A proposed change to a website's code, shown line by line, that someone reviews before it is merged.
- Crawler
- A program that reads web pages on behalf of a search engine or AI product.
Want this checked on every release instead of once? See how Omnishown works.