AEO vs SEO: what changes when search becomes an answer

SEO wins a position on a results page. AEO (answer engine optimization) wins a mention inside the answer itself, where ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews name two or three businesses and the buyer may never see a list. For a multi-location brand the difference shows up in three places: which systems read you, what makes them name you, and what you report.

This post is for the corporate marketing or ops lead who already runs an SEO program across many locations and needs to know what to keep, what to add and who should own it. For how to put a number on it, see how to measure AI share of voice across 50+ locations. For how we work with multi-location brands, see our enterprise page.

Is AEO just SEO with a new name?

On Google, mostly yes. Outside Google, no. Google Search Central says the best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and that there are no additional requirements or special optimizations needed to appear in them. To be shown as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet.

That makes your SEO program the entry ticket for Google's AI surfaces. It does not make it sufficient. The same Google page explains that AI Overviews and AI Mode may use a "query fan-out" technique, issuing multiple related searches across subtopics to build one response. A page that ranks first for one phrase can lose to a page that shows up across many related phrases. And ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude do not answer from Google's index at all.

What actually changes between SEO and AEO

Why doesn't a top Google ranking carry over to ChatGPT?

Because the AI assistants mostly cite pages Google doesn't rank for that question. In a study of 15,000 long-tail prompts, Ahrefs found that only 12% of URLs cited by AI assistants also ranked in Google's top 10 for the same query, and about 80% of the cited URLs didn't rank anywhere in Google for it. Perplexity was the outlier, with close to 1 in 3 of its citations coming from Google's top 10 (Ahrefs, August 2025).

Google's own AI Overviews behave differently. The same Ahrefs report points back to its earlier finding that 76% of AI Overview citations come from pages in the top 10. So strong rankings help most on Google's AI surface and least on ChatGPT and Gemini.

Ahrefs' explanation matches Google's: assistants retrieve pages for several variations of a prompt and merge the results, so a page that appears consistently across those variations can beat a page that ranks first for only one. For a brand with hundreds of location pages, that rewards coverage and consistency over one heavily optimized page.

Which crawlers decide whether you can be named at all?

Each engine publishes its own crawler rules, and the search crawler is the one that matters for being named. These are separate from the training crawlers, which many sites block for other reasons.

• OpenAI: OpenAI's documentation says OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features, and sites that opt out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. GPTBot is the separate crawler for model training.
• Perplexity: Perplexity says PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in its search results and is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.
• Anthropic: Anthropic lists three robots. ClaudeBot collects content that may be used for training, Claude-User fetches pages when a user asks, and Claude-SearchBot indexes content for search. It says disabling Claude-SearchBot or Claude-User may reduce your visibility in user search results.
• Google: Google says robots.txt rules for Googlebot are the control for AI features in Search, and nosnippet or noindex limit what can be shown. Google-Extended applies to some of Google's other AI systems, not to AI Overviews.

The enterprise wrinkle is that robots.txt is rarely the only gate. Location pages often live on regional subdomains with their own robots files, and security teams run bot-management rules at the CDN or firewall that can block a search crawler without anyone in marketing knowing. Both OpenAI and Perplexity say robots.txt changes take up to about 24 hours to reach their systems, so this is one of the quickest fixes in the program once you find it.

What happens to clicks when the answer comes first?

They drop, which is why traffic alone undercounts AI visibility. Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 U.S. adults in March 2025. When a Google search showed an AI summary, users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits, against 15% when no summary appeared. They clicked a link inside the summary on just 1% of visits, and ended their browsing session on 26% of pages with a summary versus 16% without.

The same Pew analysis found that 18% of all searches in the study produced an AI summary, rising to 60% for queries that began with a question word such as "who" or "what". Buyer questions about providers are often phrased that way. If a buyer reads your name in the answer and then calls the location or searches your brand directly, your analytics credit branded search or direct traffic, not the answer that sent them.

What carries over from your SEO program

• Indexing and technical health: Google's AI features require an indexed, snippet-eligible page, so crawl budget, canonicals and page speed work still counts.
• Helpful content: clear pages that answer real questions are what the engines quote, the same pages Google's guidance calls people-first.
• Structured data: schema that states who you are, where each location operates and what it offers helps both channels describe you correctly.
• Business Profiles: a complete, accurate profile per location supports local rankings and gives every engine one more consistent source for that location's facts.

What AEO adds for a multi-location program

Three jobs that most SEO programs don't own today.

• Consensus per location: the engines name the business that trusted sources describe the same way. Every location's name, address, hours, services and providers need to match across your site, its Business Profile, the main directories and review sites. A mismatch at one location is invisible in a brand-level SEO report and obvious in an answer.
• Measurement by sampling: answers vary on every run, so you count the share of answers that name each location across a fixed set of buyer questions, run many times, instead of tracking a rank. Our share-of-voice guide covers sample sizes and reporting.
• Mentions and reviews with substance: answers often explain why they picked a business ("known for same-day appointments"). Those reasons come from what reviews and third-party articles say, so review requests and PR become part of search, not a separate line item.

The governance point matters most. When listings sit with operations, reviews with customer experience, PR with communications and the website with SEO, nobody owns the answer. Name one owner for location facts and one scorecard for AI answers before buying any tool.

How should a multi-location brand start?

Do these in order. The first three cost no budget and can start this week.

1. Audit crawler access. Pull the robots.txt for every domain and subdomain that hosts location pages and confirm OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot and Googlebot are allowed. Then ask your security team whether CDN or firewall bot rules block any of them.
2. Confirm location pages are eligible. In Search Console, check that location pages are indexed and not carrying nosnippet, max-snippet:0 or noindex by accident.
3. Spot-check facts at ten locations. Compare name, address, phone, hours and services across the location page, its Business Profile and your top three directories. Log every mismatch and the system that owns it.
4. Write the question set. List 20 questions a buyer asks before choosing a location like yours, in their words, including the city or neighborhood.
5. Take a baseline. Run each question several times in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode, record which businesses are named and which sources are cited, and keep the raw answers.
6. Assign one owner. Give one person the scorecard and the authority to fix listings, pages and review requests across locations.

How to check where you stand

Pick your three highest-revenue locations and ask ChatGPT and Perplexity the question a new customer would ask, such as who to use for your service near that location. Run it three times each. If your location isn't named in most answers, or a competitor is described with strengths you also have, the gap is in your sources, not your rankings. For the full picture across engines and locations, book our free AI visibility audit: we run your real buyer questions across five engines and show you who is named and why. The full guide to AEO covers each step in more depth.

Frequently asked questions