More people now ask an AI instead of scrolling a list of links, and AI agents are starting to book and buy for them. AEO makes sure the answer names your business, and that an agent can act on it.
AEO review $250 once · Monthly AEO from $500 a month · See pricing
AEO (answer engine optimization) means being the business an AI answer quotes, cites or recommends: in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude and voice assistants. Researchers call the same idea GEO, generative engine optimization. It builds on SEO rather than replacing it.
of US adults now use AI chatbots, up from 33% a year earlier.
Pew Research Center, Jun 2026people use Google's AI Overviews every month.
Google I/O keynote, May 2026monthly users of Google's AI Mode, with queries more than doubling every quarter.
Google, May 2026people use ChatGPT every week.
OpenAI, Feb 2026 (reported by TechCrunch)Share of US adults who have ever used each tool
Pew Research Center, “Americans and AI 2026”, survey of 5,119 US adults, Feb 2026. Scale 0–50%.
Your customers are asking AI first, and the answer they read may be the only one they see.
Google is still the biggest door. AI Overviews and AI Mode sit inside Google Search, so the basics of SEO still decide whether you can be quoted.
But it's no longer the only one. ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity each build their own answers from their own sources.
Trust isn't settled yet. 53% of consumers say they distrust AI search results or lack confidence in them, which is why sources, reviews and clear facts matter so much.
Point 3: Gartner consumer survey, Sep 2025.
When an AI summary answers the question, fewer people click through. But the visitors who do arrive from AI tend to be further along, and brands named inside the answer keep far more of the clicks.
Share of visits, with and without an AI summary on the page
Only 1% of visits included a click on a link inside the AI summary itself.
| Behavior | No AI summary | AI summary |
|---|---|---|
| Clicked a search result | 15% | 8% |
| Ended browsing session | 16% | 26% |
Pew Research Center, browsing data from 900 US adults, March 2025 (published Jul 2025).
The same studies show who keeps the traffic
Click-through rate for the #1 result on keywords with an AI Overview, Dec 2023 vs Dec 2025: about 58% lower.
Ahrefs, 300,000 keywords, Feb 2026
Organic click-through on informational queries that show an AI Overview, Jun 2024 to Sep 2025: down 61%.
Seer Interactive, 3,119 queries, Nov 2025
of consumers rely on zero-click results for at least 40% of their searches, which Bain links to an estimated 15–25% drop in organic traffic.
Bain & Company, Feb 2025
An AI agent doesn't just tell someone about you. It compares, books, orders and pays on their behalf, within limits they set. The largest research firms expect this to grow fast, and the payment networks and AI companies are building the rails now.
Up to $900B–$1T of US retail revenue could run through agentic commerce by 2030, and $3–5T globally.
McKinsey, Oct 2025 (forecast)of brands will use agentic AI for one-to-one customer interactions by 2028.
Gartner, Jan 2026 (prediction)of common customer-service issues will be resolved by agentic AI without a human by 2029.
Gartner, Mar 2025 (prediction)of global holiday 2025 online sales were already influenced by AI and agents.
Salesforce, Jan 2026Share of consumers who would allow it
People want agents to do the legwork, with a human approving the payment. Design for that: clear limits, a confirm step, and a person to reach.
Accenture, “Talk to My AI Agent”, 25,590 consumers in 16 countries, fielded Jan 2026. Scale 0–40%.
of customers say companies using AI for service must still offer a human. Gartner, Aug 2026
of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027, mostly for cost or unclear value. Gartner, Jun 2025 (prediction)
consumers say AI chatbots work as well as search engines for learning something new. Most still check. Gartner, 2026
The opportunity is real, and so is the hype. Start with what pays off either way: accurate facts about your business everywhere AI looks, then the agent connections that fit how you sell.
Most businesses only work on the first layer. Each layer up makes it more likely an assistant names you, and that an agent can finish the job without the customer leaving the chat.
AI systems can reach and read your site.
Your content is the best answer to quote.
Machines know exactly what you offer.
An agent can act: check, quote, book, buy.
Status as of October 2026. Live is in production use, Rolling out is live but limited by country, partner or approval, and Optional has no measured effect yet.
The open standard for connecting AI assistants to tools and data, created by Anthropic in 2024 and given to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation in December 2025, with AWS, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI as members. It had over 10,000 public servers at that point.
For you: lets ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and other agents check your availability, prices or bookings directly.
Google's protocol for agents talking to other agents, now at the Linux Foundation. Version 1.0 is out, more than 150 organizations support it, and it is built into Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio and Amazon Bedrock AgentCore.
For you: your own agent can hand tasks to, or take them from, a customer's agent.
Google's open standard for agent checkout, launched January 2026 with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart. It powers checkout inside AI Mode and Gemini for eligible US retailers, who stay the merchant of record. Integrations need Google's approval.
For you: customers can buy from you without leaving Google's AI.
Google's protocol, launched September 2025, for payments an agent makes with the customer's signed permission (a “mandate”). More than 60 payments companies support it, including Mastercard, PayPal, American Express, Adyen and Worldpay.
For you: a verifiable record that the customer approved what the agent bought.
OpenAI and Stripe's open protocol, launched September 2025. In March 2026 OpenAI moved in-chat checkout into Apps and kept ACP as the link between ChatGPT users and merchants, with a product feed format for being found in ChatGPT.
For you: a way for your products to show up, and be bought, through ChatGPT.
Visa Intelligent Commerce and its Trusted Agent Protocol, and Mastercard Agent Pay, let card payments carry proof of which agent is acting for which customer. Both report live agent transactions in 2026, with pilots expanding.
For you: safer agent purchases with fewer false fraud declines.
Google names its Business Profile and Merchant Center feeds as ways to be visible in AI responses as well as in regular results. For local businesses and shops, this is the most direct way to feed facts to Google's AI.
For you: correct hours, services, prices and stock inside AI answers.
Labels that tell machines what a page describes: your organization, location, products, prices, events. Google says no special markup is required for its AI features, but accurate data still helps rich results and other engines and agents.
For you: fewer mistakes when machines describe you.
A 2024 community proposal for a plain-text guide to a site for AI. Google says such files don't help or hurt in Search, and a study of about 300,000 domains found no effect on AI citations. Cheap to add, but don't expect results from it.
For you: useful for developer docs; low priority otherwise.
Each AI company runs several bots with different jobs. Blocking the wrong one can quietly remove you from AI answers. Check your firewall and CDN too: bot protection often blocks these without anyone noticing.
| Bot | Company | What it does | Our advice |
|---|---|---|---|
OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI | Powers ChatGPT search. Blocked sites won't appear in ChatGPT search answers. | Allow |
ChatGPT-User | OpenAI | Fetches a page when a user asks ChatGPT about it. | Allow |
GPTBot | OpenAI | Collects content for training models. | Your policy choice |
Claude-SearchBot | Anthropic | Indexes pages for Claude's search results. | Allow |
Claude-User | Anthropic | Fetches a page when a user asks Claude. | Allow |
ClaudeBot | Anthropic | Collects content for training models. | Your policy choice |
PerplexityBot | Perplexity | Indexes for Perplexity search; Perplexity says it's not used for training. | Allow |
Googlebot · Bingbot | Google · Microsoft | Regular search crawling, which also feeds AI Overviews, AI Mode and Copilot. | Allow |
Google-Extended | Controls use for Gemini training and grounding only. Doesn't affect Google Search ranking or inclusion. | Your policy choice |
# Example robots.txt: open to AI search, training decided separately User-agent: OAI-SearchBot User-agent: ChatGPT-User User-agent: Claude-SearchBot User-agent: Claude-User User-agent: PerplexityBot Allow: / # Uncomment to opt out of model training # User-agent: GPTBot # User-agent: ClaudeBot # User-agent: Google-Extended # Disallow: / Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
Bot roles from OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and Google crawler documentation (2026). OpenAI says robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to reflect in ChatGPT search. User-request fetchers may not follow robots.txt.
Tick what's already true. Proven means a published source supports it; Good practice is sensible but not yet measured. Your ticks stay on this device only.
A lot of AEO advice is sold as magic. Here's what the search engines themselves say.
Google says there's no special schema.org markup, AI text file or Markdown version needed for its AI features. Optimizing for them “is still SEO.”
Google says it neither helps nor hurts in Search, and a study of about 300,000 domains found no measurable effect on AI citations.
Google says it isn't necessary. Clear, well-organized pages that fully answer the question still win.
AI answers change from run to run, and Google warns against tools claiming access to its internal data. Track your share of mentions over time instead.
AI traffic is easy to miss: many clicks from assistants show up as “direct.” These are the tools that show it.
We take you through all four layers, starting with what pays off soonest, and we only use methods with evidence behind them.
We ask your customers' real questions in Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot, see who gets named, and check your crawlability, profiles and data.
robots.txt and firewall rules for AI bots, page HTML, sitemaps, IndexNow, schema.org data, Business Profile and Merchant Center feeds.
Pages that answer what customers ask, with sources, statistics and comparisons, in the languages your customers speak.
A plan for being mentioned and reviewed where AI looks: directories, partners, local press and industry sites.
An MCP server or booking and quote API for your business, connected to your Minaird app, with a human approval step where it matters.
Tell us your business and the questions your customers ask. We'll show you who AI names today and what to fix first.
AEO starts with the questions people actually ask before they choose a business like yours. We map them, see who AI recommends today, and build the content, data and connections that put your name in the answer.
No guaranteed rankings, no magic files. Clear steps and real data you can check.
It builds on SEO. Google says optimizing for its AI features “is still SEO.” AEO adds what classic SEO underweights: being quoted inside AI answers, mentions on other sites, visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot as well as Google, and being usable by AI agents.
Clicks on informational searches are falling: Pew measured 8% of visits with a click when an AI summary appeared, against 15% without one. But AI-referred visitors to retail sites converted 60% better than other traffic in July 2026 (Adobe), and brands cited inside AI Overviews keep more clicks than those left out (Seer Interactive). The goal is to be cited.
Google has the widest reach, with over 2.5 billion monthly AI Overviews users and over a billion AI Mode users. ChatGPT has 900 million weekly users. The same fundamentals work across all of them, so we optimize for each, not one.
Not for visibility. Google says such files neither help nor hurt in Search, and a study of about 300,000 domains found no measurable effect on AI citations. It's cheap to add and can help developer tools, but it's optional.
No, according to Google. Accurate structured data that matches your visible page is still good practice for rich results and for other machines that read your site.
Most businesses should allow the AI search and user-request bots: blocking OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot keeps you out of ChatGPT search answers. Whether to allow training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended) is a separate decision. Google-Extended doesn't affect Google Search ranking.
It's AI agents finding, comparing and buying for people. Shoppers are cautious today: about a third would let an agent decide within limits if they approve the payment, and fewer than one in eight would let it buy on its own (Accenture, 2026). But the rails are going live: Google's UCP checkout, Visa and Mastercard agent payments, and MCP. A complete Business Profile, accurate feeds and a clean catalog are the first steps, and they help today.
The Model Context Protocol is an open standard, now under the Linux Foundation, that lets AI assistants call a business's tools and data directly, for example to check availability, get a quote or book. It makes your business something an agent can act on, not just read about.
Use the AI Assistant channel in Google Analytics 4, the generative AI reports in Google Search Console, Bing's AI Performance report, your server logs, and a fixed set of prompts tested every month across the main assistants.
Technical fixes can show up within days to weeks; OpenAI says robots.txt changes reach ChatGPT search in about 24 hours. Earning mentions and trust across the web takes months. No reliable public study gives a fixed timeline, so be wary of anyone who promises one.
No. AI answers change from run to run. The useful measure is your share of mentions and citations over time, using the tools in the “Measure it” section above.
Mentions across the web track closely with appearing in AI Overviews (Ahrefs, 2025), and your Google Business Profile, including reviews, feeds Google's AI answers for local searches. No published study isolates reviews alone, but they're part of the same picture.
Checked October 2026. Forecasts and predictions are labelled as such on the page. Figures from vendors (Adobe, Salesforce, Ahrefs, Seer Interactive) use their own data and definitions.
Tell us your business and the questions your customers ask. We'll run them through the main AI assistants and show you who gets named, and what it would take to make it you.