Is your website feeling like a forgotten ghost town? If you're struggling to get traffic and enquiries, it may be because your customers are starting their search somewhere you're not showing up yet.
The way people find and evaluate businesses has changed, and if you're not visible in the new AI search platforms, you simply won't be found.
How Search Behaviour Has Changed
Buyers no longer start their research on Google. The new journey looks like this: start with an AI tool, use that to build a shortlist, turn to reviews and social proof to validate, then arrive at a vendor website. By the time someone lands on your site, the decision is often close to made.
The scale of this shift is significant:
- 1 in 10 US internet users now turns to generative AI first for online search
- 400 million people use ChatGPT weekly
- 69% of Google searches now end without a click, up from 56% in 2024
The old model of "rank on Google, get the click, convert the visitor" is still relevant. But it's only capturing part of the journey. If you're not present at the AI stage, you may not make the shortlist at all.
What Is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring your content so AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews cite your business in their responses.
It's different from SEO. SEO is about ranking in Google's search results. AEO is about appearing inside the AI-generated answer before a user sees any links at all.
When someone types "best accountant for small business" into ChatGPT, it generates a response and pulls from sources it considers authoritative. If your business isn't one of those sources, it won't appear.
AI engines reward content that is:
- Structured for direct answers: clear, concise responses to specific questions
- Factually verifiable: claims that can be cross-referenced and trusted
- Authoritative and credible: associated with genuine subject matter experts
- Present across the web: mentioned on forums, directories, and third-party sites AI already trusts
That last point matters more than most people expect. Research found Reddit now accounts for the dominant share of social AI citations. An unhappy customer's Reddit comment can surface in ChatGPT before your own service page does.
Why It Matters for Your Business
The businesses paying attention to AEO are seeing real results. HubSpot's own AEO strategy produced a 1,850% increase in qualified leads. Visitors arriving via AI citations convert at up to 4.4x the rate of organic search visitors. They arrive already informed, already closer to a decision, which means shorter sales cycles and less convincing required.
The reason the conversion rate is so high comes back to the buyer journey. Someone who finds your business through an AI citation has already gone through a filtering process. The AI tool assessed your content as authoritative and relevant to their query. By the time they reach your website, they're not browsing, they're evaluating.
Compare that to a cold click from a Google result, where the visitor may still be in early research mode. The quality of the intent is fundamentally different.
The gap between those acting on AEO and those waiting is still wide. Only 20% of marketers have begun implementing AEO, despite 70% believing it will impact their strategy. For businesses in professional services, trades, eCommerce, and B2B, that gap represents a genuine advantage.
How’s Your Business Performing?
Before making any changes, it's worth knowing where you stand. HubSpot's free AEO Grader tool gives you a rapid diagnostic of how well your content is positioned for AI citation.
It checks your site against the key factors AI engines use to assess trustworthiness, including structured data, topical authority, and how directly your content answers queries in your industry.
What it typically surfaces:
- Pages that rank organically but aren't structured to be cited by AI
- Missing FAQ content that answers high-intent questions directly
- Thin content that doesn't demonstrate genuine expertise
- Missing structured data markup
A useful manual test to run alongside it: open ChatGPT or Perplexity and search for what your ideal customer would type. If a competitor appears and you don't, that's your gap.
What to Do About It
The fix is more content-driven than technical. The goal is creating expert-led answers to questions your customers are asking AI tools, across your website and beyond it.
Audit your existing content. Where pages give generic overviews instead of specific answers, they're unlikely to be cited by AI.
Add FAQ content to service pages. AI engines favour content that answers a question clearly and concisely. This is one of the highest-impact changes you can make.
Build topical depth. AI engines assess whether a site demonstrates genuine knowledge across a subject area, not just whether a keyword appears once.
Grow your off-site presence. Reviews, directories, industry mentions, and forum discussions all factor into how AI engines assess credibility.
Add structured data markup. Schema helps AI engines interpret your pages correctly and increases the chance of being cited.
Want to stand out in AI Search?
Businesses that get cited by AI tools are seeing visitors convert at 4.4x the rate of organic search. Talk to us about what AEO could do for you.
