AI Search Optimisation
Search is increasingly answered rather than listed. This section covers optimising for AI Overviews, generative engines, answer surfaces and AI assistants — and what that means for traffic.
Why This Section Exists
For twenty-five years SEO meant earning a position in a list of links. That is no longer the whole job. A growing share of queries are answered on the results page or inside an assistant, with the source cited rather than clicked.
The guides here cover the distinct disciplines that has produced: optimising to be cited in AI Overviews, structuring content so generative systems can retrieve it, targeting direct-answer surfaces, managing AI crawler access, and building a strategy that survives falling click-through.
How It Relates to Traditional SEO
None of this replaces technical SEO, content quality or authority. Retrieval-based systems overwhelmingly draw from conventional search results, so being crawlable, indexable and well-ranked remains the entry condition.
Treat this section as a layer applied on top of a technically sound site — not as an alternative to one.
All 6 guides in this section
- Optimising for Google AI Overviews
How AI Overviews select and cite sources, which queries trigger them, their effect on click-through, and what makes content quotable by them. - Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)
Optimising for direct-answer surfaces — featured snippets, voice results, People Also Ask and AI answers — and the question-first content structure they share. - Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)
What GEO means in practice, how it differs from traditional SEO, and the content and entity work that makes a brand visible inside AI-generated answers. - llms.txt and AI Crawler Access
What llms.txt proposes, how AI crawlers differ from search crawlers, robots.txt directives for AI bots, and the strategic decision on whether to allow them. - Visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot
How AI assistants choose sources, why visibility differs between them, and the practical work that increases the chance of being recommended. - Zero-Click Search
Why an increasing share of searches end without a click, which query types are most affected, and how to build a strategy that survives it.