The field has changed. The work has not.
Explore AI marketing
What AI marketing, AI SEO, generative engine optimization and answer engine optimization mean, and what changes for a brand when the buyer asks a model instead of a search engine.
What is AI marketing?
AI marketing is the use of artificial intelligence systems inside marketing work: to research buyers, generate and test creative, target and bid on media, and to earn a place in the answers AI assistants give when somebody asks for a recommendation. It is a set of tools and a new distribution channel at the same time, and most teams are only treating it as the first.
What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?
Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the practice of writing and structuring content so that generative engines cite it in the answers they produce. The term comes from a 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues at Princeton, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Allen Institute for AI and IIT Delhi.
What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?
Answer engine optimization, or AEO, is the practice of preparing content so that it is used in a direct answer rather than in a list of links. In practice it means answering one question per page, plainly and early, in a block that can be lifted out whole and still make sense.
What is AI SEO?
AI SEO is the work of getting a company named, described correctly and cited in the answers that AI assistants and AI search features produce. It shares a base with search engine optimisation, a page a machine can reach and read, and adds the part that decides an answer: a plain definition, one description of the company repeated everywhere it appears, and claims an engine can attribute to a source.
What is a retrievable brand?
A retrievable brand is one an AI system can find, identify correctly and describe accurately when somebody asks about its category. Three conditions, and all three have to hold: the system has encountered you, it knows which entity you are, and what it says about you is true.
How do AI models choose which brands to recommend?
Two different mechanisms, and which one is running decides what you can do about it. Either the model answers from what it absorbed during training, or it searches the live web first and builds an answer from what it finds. The first is slow to influence and the second is fast, and most advice in circulation assumes the second without checking.
How do I get my company mentioned in ChatGPT and Perplexity answers?
By being described, accurately and repeatedly, in sources the engines use, and by making sure the engine knows which company you are. There is no submission form, no paid placement in the answer itself, and no technical switch. Anyone offering guaranteed inclusion is describing something that does not exist.
What is llms.txt?
A proposed standard: a plain markdown file at the root of a website, /llms.txt, giving language models a curated guide to what the site contains and which pages matter. It was proposed by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI in September 2024. It is a proposal, not a ratified standard, and adoption by the major AI companies is limited.
Why does brand consistency matter for AI search?
Because an AI system builds its account of your company by aggregating everything it has seen about you, and inconsistency does not average out into a blurry picture. It produces either a confident wrong answer or a merged entity that is partly you and partly somebody else.