domain · aeo
Get cited by AI search, not crawled-and-skipped
Answer-engine optimization: structured data, schema, llms.txt, .well-known surfaces. Designed for AI search.
Strongest claims
- Point-in-time AEO citation counts are noise: 74 percent of cited sources rotate weekly Aleyda Solis
- AI search visibility is an off-site corroboration problem with an on-site quality floor, not the inverse Aleyda Solis
- Keyword position reporting is measuring a construct that is dissolving as Google personalizes results per user Eli Schwartz
- Content paraphrasable by an AI answer engine is no longer a distribution moat Rand Fishkin
- Only 2.37 percent of URLs cited by AI search engines appear across all three major platforms; 91 percent live in exactly one Kevin Indig
- High-reasoning AI mode and standard mode share only 25.6% of cited domains; AEO built for one misses three in four sources the other cites Kevin Indig
Adjacent domains
- seo · 34 co-occurrences
- growth-demand · 12 co-occurrences
- content-strategy · 9 co-occurrences
- pmm · 3 co-occurrences
- technical-seo · 2 co-occurrences
- growth · 2 co-occurrences
- measurement · 1 co-occurrences
- ecommerce · 1 co-occurrences
44 insights in aeo
- Point-in-time AEO citation counts are noise: 74 percent of cited sources rotate weekly · Aleyda Solis
- AI search visibility is an off-site corroboration problem with an on-site quality floor, not the inverse · Aleyda Solis
- More AI answer links do not automatically mean more traffic; track six AEO signals separately, not blended into one score · Aleyda Solis
- Google formalized five citation surfaces in AI Mode and AI Overviews, giving AEO a specific placement target inside Google search · Barry Schwartz
- Google preferred-source labels create a credibility tier inside AI Mode citations that compounds authority for brands already earning it · Barry Schwartz
- Three-quarters of LinkedIn AI citations go to individual authors, not company pages · Anthony Blatner
- Nav and footer placement is a first-class LLM relevance signal, independent of page content. · Casey Hill
- Keyword position reporting is measuring a construct that is dissolving as Google personalizes results per user · Eli Schwartz
- AI brand recommendations produce a 7 to 14 percent direct visit lift within seven days · Rand Fishkin
- Content paraphrasable by an AI answer engine is no longer a distribution moat · Rand Fishkin
- Web traffic fell 46% in three years; clicks were always the wrong proxy for attention, and the fix is a measurement reframe, not a content overhaul · Rand Fishkin
- Web traffic is down 46 percent in three years: produce content made for platforms first, articles second · Rand Fishkin
- A brand's website is now the training source AI tools use to form answers about it; a thin site produces AI misinformation · Rand Fishkin
- Zero-click Google search has crossed 68% and will not reverse because Google's financial incentives now align with keeping users on-platform · Rand Fishkin
- Google's subscription highlight in AI Mode gives paywalled content a visual trust tag inline, changing the ROI on publisher partnerships for AEO · Google
- Aggregators hold 76% of Google's SEO visibility but only 38% of ChatGPT's citation pool, requiring separate authority-building strategies for each surface · Kevin Indig
- AI Mode cut publisher mentions nearly in half while tripling major retailer mentions, revealing a structural bias toward commercial endpoints · Kevin Indig
- AI search category ownership concentrates fast and holds: owners win on brand mentions, not citations, and retain first position 90 percent of the time · Kevin Indig
- Search visibility earned through algorithm shifts reverts to baseline unless underlying authority supports it · Kevin Indig
- When every brand in a content category declines together in AI search, the platform is repricing the category, not re-ranking competitors · Kevin Indig
- AI search citations and brand recommendations respond to different inputs; depth drives recommendations while breadth tolerates citations · Kevin Indig
- Only 2.37 percent of URLs cited by AI search engines appear across all three major platforms; 91 percent live in exactly one · Kevin Indig
- Google's organic SEO and AI Overview citations now move in opposite directions, requiring separate strategies · Kevin Indig
- UGC platforms are the most consistent AI citation source, holding a floor share across every buying stage · Kevin Indig
- High-reasoning AI mode and standard mode share only 25.6% of cited domains; AEO built for one misses three in four sources the other cites · Kevin Indig
- LLMs recommend games by citation authority in training text, so studios without earned media coverage are invisible to AI-assisted discovery · Joseph Kim
- AI discovery is a live signup channel: Webflow sees 10% of signups from AI, growing 4x year-over-year · Kyle Poyar
- The signals that earn blue-link rankings are the same ones that earn AI-generated answer citations, making AEO an extension of SEO discipline, not a replacement. · Lily Ray
- A Google penalty removes a page from every AI surface at once, not just Google search · Lily Ray
- Google rewrites public quality guidelines weeks before major algorithm updates, producing seven observable signals practitioners can monitor · Lily Ray
- Scaled AI-generated content has replaced link spam as Google's primary enforcement target, confirmed by a Google engineer's statement and four spam updates in under a year · Lily Ray
- AI search runs a five-gatekeeper pipeline and the Critic is where most content dies, invisibly · Mike King
- AI crawlers return 499 errors on slow pages. Speed is a gate, not a ranking modifier. · Mike King
- Google's AI optimization guide contradicts its own technical research in four places; calling it 'still SEO' is a rhetorical strategy, not a neutral description · Mike King
- Wrap proprietary research in JavaScript-rendered divs to protect IP from LLM crawlers; 69% cannot execute JavaScript · Mike King
- Serve Markdown to AI crawlers you want indexing your content; Cloudflare measured an 80% token size reduction versus full HTML · Mike King
- AI search visibility depends on off-site brand reputation as much as on-site content, and publishing more content rarely improves either · Lily Ray
- AI Overviews reduce outbound clicks by 40% with no corresponding improvement in user satisfaction · Ananya Sen
- AI search is a 3rd-party citation problem: external domains supply over 80 percent of citations while owned pages corroborate · Aleyda Solis
- The pages AI engines cite and the pages that receive AI referral traffic are structurally different assets requiring separate optimization · Aleyda Solis
- Ecommerce YOY organic traffic drops despite stable ranking positions diagnose SERP layout displacement, not ranking failure · Aleyda Solis
- Third-party sources generate 84 to 93 percent of AI citation weight for SaaS brands across platforms · Aleyda Solis
- Six criteria for deciding which third-party platforms are worth investing in for AI search citations · Aleyda Solis
- Google's May 2026 Core Update rewarded source type fit over authority alone, concentrating visibility around canonical destinations for each query's dominant intent · Aleyda Solis