It’s important to stay on top of the latest trends. Although trends will always shift, some tactics have a significant impact on how companies interact with their target markets. Right now, in 2025, AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) are two areas that are changing search behaviour, SEO, and how content is found and consumed.
So why are AEO and GEO two of the hottest topics in digital marketing today?
Understanding AEO & GEO: A Brief Overview
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
AEO concerns itself with optimising content to give users an answer, usually with voice search, featured snippets, and AI-generated results. Instead of ranking above the competition based on traditional search terms, AEO is about being the answer in platforms such as Google’s AI Overview, Siri, Alexa, or ChatGPT.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
GEO is the next evolution in content strategy, designed for AI search engines and LLMs (Large Language Models). As users continue to leverage more and more tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s Gemini, etc., GEO is about how to structure your content so that these AI systems can easily reference and summarise it.
Why AEO/GEO Are Dominating the Digital Marketing Industry
The digital marketing field is in transformation. Users means of search and how engines deliver outcomes are changing. It is the whole ecosystem of search that is changing from keyword-based strategies and optimisation to conversational, context-based queries. The emergence of a market trend shift into conversational search and context-based queries opens new approaches for how content is created and structures content strategy. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) are how content creators can adapt to this shift in understanding user query expectations.
Today’s users expectation for answers is fast and direct, especially with AI and voice assistants expecting to connect their needs with an answer. The increasing popularity of AI search engines like ChatGPT has changed all previous norms for how information is created, marketed, and shared. AI Generative platforms not only return typical searches
They produce answers based on verified links.
Gone are the days when digital marketers could apply SEO tricks. Nowadays, your content must be able to be easily understood, summarised, and trusted by AI. Since search has turned conversational and relevant, marketers must pay attention to how people are actually asking questions, like “what are the 5 types of conversational marketing?” and create content that specifically answers these.
A major shift is happening with zero-click searches. 60% of mobile searches are now zero-click and give users answers in the search results without them clicking on a website. To obtain a top featured position in both SERPs and page results, you need Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). As we mentioned in the previous section, AEO makes your content visible as featured snippets, voice assistant answers, and AI summaries.
The key isn’t just short and quick; it’s about authority and structure. That’s why we have Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). GEO is about making your content trustworthy and clean for AI citation. You want to emphasise clarity, that you have proper citations, and that you can be a trusted source.
User intent is at the heart of AEO and GEO. If you’ve created content that is clear, answers actual user questions and is trustworthy, you’ll improve your visibility, brand trust, engagement and sales.
Many industries are already benefitting from these strategies:
E-commerce: AEO helps get your products included in “best product” crowdsourced artificial intelligence results.
Local SEO: GEO helps Siri or ChatGPT to recommend your business over others.
B2B SaaS: SEO, as well as other trusted and well-written content, helps your brand be featured in AI-generated buyer guides or comparisons.
Doing all this helps your content show up not only on Google but also on tools like ChatGPT and other AI-driven search engin
