The Metamorphosis of Search: AEO and GEO Visibility for Campaigns

Let Your Audience Find You Through AI

Getting a conversion requires your campaign to reach the right people at the right moment, in the right place.

AI is now the intermediary between the questions your audiences are asking and the answers they receive. That changes how marketers need to show up online.

This brief gives you strategic context and concrete actions to keep your campaigns visible, credible, and citable in an AI-first search environment. Version2 can help you implement Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and support omnichannel campaigns to increase your visibility within AI queries.

What makes AI answers different?

Historically, SEO has been built around one goal: getting people to click through to your site. Rankings were won through keyword matching, content depth, backlinks, and UX signals. That model has been steadily, not suddenly, disrupted.

Now, generative engines provide answers to queries by synthesizing information from across the open web. Optimizing for agentic discovery is becoming the new norm. As click-through rates decline, zero-click strategies are becoming the new baseline for visibility.

Here’s the critical reframe: declining clicks don’t mean declining opportunity; they mean the opportunity has moved. AI-curated answers are the new opportunity for front door to campaign discovery. Being cited or recommended in an AI response now carries the same weight (often more) than a top organic ranking once did.

GEO and AEO: Know the Difference

These terms get used interchangeably, but they’re not identical. Marketers need to know the difference so that you can optimize for both.

What AI Rewards, and What It Ignores

Every LLM parses information differently. Answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini draw from many of the same sources, but they process questions in different ways. ChatGPT provides long-form essays to explain its logic; Gemini and Perplexity seek out clear, concise, citable sources.

Queries directly to AI platforms (i.e., GEO) are longer, and sessions are deeper, than AI summaries at the top of traditional search engines.

The same brand can dominate in one model and disappear in another because each one is pulling different signals.

The way to make sure you’re visible in multiple models? Diversify your presence across the platforms your audience actually uses, and build the kind of credible, widely-cited content that earns trust across all of them.

How can marketers leverage this system?

Marketers want their clients and campaigns to show up in “position zero”: a search summary or AI Overview.

Content at the midpoint and bottom of the funnel is now the most direct route into AEO responses. Top-of-funnel educational content is not obsolete, but it shouldn’t dominate your strategy. The shift is from volume to value.

This might mean:

• Comparison tables for software programs or other solutions
• How-to guides
• Testimonials

Five Steps to Winning in AEO and GEO

Here’s how marketers can build a zero-click strategy:

1. Structure content for machine readability

   • Use schema markup, FAQ formats, and bulleted lists. AI agents extract tokens, entities, and fields to read a website.
   • Break long-form content into easily scannable sections with descriptive subheadings. AI prioritizes content that is well-organized, dense and specific, and easy to parse.
   • Make calls to action explicit: if AI can’t parse the call to action, it won’t include the call to action.

2. Build expert, citable content

   • Publish original research and unique perspectives.
   • Include author bios with credentials to demonstrate experience and expertise.
   • Build content clusters: interconnected pieces that explore a topic from different angles.
   • Enrich your content with visuals: charts, infographics, and transcribed video can boost visibility and engagement.

3. Go omnichannel to signal your authority.

   • AI synthesizes information across the entire web. Your campaign execution strategy should match.
   • Become a part of the bigger conversation. Collaborate with thought leaders through blog posts, podcast features, or organic social media mentions. AI is tracking metrics like off-site signals and how often other AI queries have cited your content to determine your credibility. Give it more to work with.
   • Standardize the info about your organization across review platforms, niche industry sites, and professional networking sites, to create consistency for AI readers.

4. Unify paid and organic strategy.

   • Align campaign targeting with user intent patterns, rather than just keyword matches (like traditional SEO). Conversational queries are longer and more detailed.

5. Test, measure, and iterate.

   • Experiment with GEO. Query ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude about your own organization. What does AI say about you? What other organizations or campaigns appear alongside you?
   • Establish AI visibility benchmarks and track them quarterly.

The Strategic Imperative

We’re not writing for keywords anymore. We’re writing for a system that makes informed recommendations.

Your brand, offerings, and calls to action need to be visible and citable in the AI ecosystem that now shapes people’s decision-making processes.

Every citation strengthens your authority in the field.

Every positive mention builds trust.

Every data point helps to optimize your visibility.

Sources: Pew Research (2025), Forbes (2025a), PR Daily (2025), a16z (2025), Tinuiti (2026), Digiday (2025), WARC (2026a), WARC (2026b), Fast Company (2025), Forbes (2026), Wired (2025), New York Magazine (2025), Forbes (2025b), PR Newswire (2025), Try Profound (2025)

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