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Mark Drosos notes that AEO is mirroring the evolution of social media. Initially, marketers tried to game LLMs by churning out content just to win citations and mentions. However, as LLMs increasingly pull from diverse third-party sources like YouTube and LinkedIn, brands must shift from superficial content creation toward earning genuine participation by clearly solving customer problems and demonstrating authentic business value.
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Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) requires a different strategy than traditional SEO. The most cited sources for major LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini are not necessarily corporate blogs, but platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, and Reddit. To ensure visibility and positive mentions in AI-generated answers, businesses must actively participate and build a presence on these three key platforms.
Authority for AEO is built on external validation, making PR relevant again. However, it's not about self-promotion. As shown in a Webflow experiment on Reddit, actively answering questions and solving real problems builds authentic authority that AI engines value, whereas simply posting promotional content does not.
The fundamental goal of search optimization has changed. Instead of focusing on getting a click to your website to provide an answer, brands must now aim to be included as a source in answers generated by AI, which occur on third-party platforms.
Traditional SEO aims to drive traffic to your site where you deliver an answer. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) requires a new goal: getting your brand or data included directly in the AI-generated response, as the answer engine now sits above your website as a new top-level channel.
As search behavior evolves from simple keywords to complex, conversational queries, the goal is no longer just ranking on a results page. The new metric for success is the "AI citation rate"—how often a brand's content is surfaced as the trusted, direct answer by Large Language Models (LLMs), fundamentally changing the nature of SEO.
As zero-click searches grow, traditional SEO is declining. Shift focus to AEO by creating structured, direct, citation-worthy answers to common customer questions. The goal is to be the source that AI assistants like Perplexity and ChatGPT cite, not just to rank on Google.
As users turn to LLMs for answers, brand visibility depends less on optimizing owned web content. The focus must shift to nurturing the community and third-party content (e.g., Reddit, forums) that AI models are trained on. What customers say about you is the new SEO.
With 80-90% of AI-powered searches resulting in no clicks, traditional SEO is dying. The new key metric is "share of voice"—how often your brand is cited in AI-generated answers. This requires a fundamental strategy shift to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), focusing on becoming an authoritative source for LLMs rather than just driving website traffic.
As AI-powered search provides direct answers instead of links, the traditional practice of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is becoming obsolete. The new imperative is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), which focuses on making information visible and trusted by AI models to be included in their generated answers, prioritizing creator-led trust.
Reddit is a major citation source for LLMs. While the temptation is to spam with fake accounts, this is ineffective as Reddit's community moderation is strong. The winning strategy is authentic participation: have real employees identify themselves and provide genuinely helpful answers in relevant threads.
