In recent years, the way internet users find information has undergone a profound shift. Today, an increasing number of searches no longer end with a click to a website, but with an immediate answer provided by an AI engine or a conversational assistant. This phenomenon is no longer marginal: AI-generated response environments (such as AI Overviews, chatbots, or voice assistants) represent a growing share of user interactions. In some cases, up to 40% of queries now display direct snippets without generating a click to a traditional website.
In this context, optimizing a site to rank well in Google is no longer enough. The emergence of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) complements traditional SEO: instead of simply aiming for a good position in search results, the challenge is now to become the source directly cited by the AI when a user asks a question.
1) AEO in Practice: How AI Choses Its Answers
AEO involves structuring and drafting content so that it is easily interpretable, understandable, and reusable by AI-based response engines like ChatGPT, Google Search Generative Experience (SGE), Gemini, or Perplexity. Unlike classic SEO—which focuses on page ranking—AEO aims to have content selected as a direct answer as a query, providing concise, verifiable, and clear information.
Best practices include:
- Producing immediate, short, and factual answers at the very beginning of a page or content block.
- Structuring texts with hierarchical headings, lists, and FAQs to facilitate automatic extraction.
- Using relevant structured data (schema markup: FAQPage, HowTo, Article, etc.).
- Adapting vocabulary to users' natural phrasing, particularly for voice search.
AEO is thus characterized by a focus on answer quality rather than traffic volume: the goal is no longer just to attract clicks, but to be the answer provided by the AI.
2) Why AEO Does Not Replace SEO (And Must Not Be Ignored)
Assuming AEO renders SEO obsolete would be a mistake. The two approaches complement and reinforce each other. Without solid SEO, content is neither sufficiently visible, nor correctly indexed, nor deemed credible by engines. The fundamentals of SEO—content relevance, domain authority, and technical quality—remain essential to hope for pickup by AIs.
Furthermore, many use cases, particularly transactional or complex queries, continue to generate traffic via clicks from classic SEO results. A strategy that neglects one or the other risks missing out on significant opportunities.
AEO does not replace SEO: it extends its objectives to a new search ecosystem, centered on the answer rather than the link.
3) Measuring the Impact of AEO Today
There is not yet a direct, standardized metric for content pickup by an AI; AEO remains partially opaque. However, certain signals can be tracked: the evolution of long-tail queries, informational visibility, presence on question-oriented queries, and traffic coming from AI platforms.
Tools like Semrush allow for the analysis of these indirect signals to identify trends by cross-referencing classic SEO data with shifts in search behavior.
Conclusion
SEO is evolving, not disappearing. AEO does not replace it; it completes it
At Mediamix, we guide brands through this transition by mobilizing our SEO expertise, structuring existing content, and analyzing new usages related to conversational search. Our approach aims to strengthen the sustainable visibility of sites—both in traditional search engines and in AI-generated responses—to position our clients as references in their sector.