Search is changing in a way you can measure. In 2025, Pew Research analysed the browsing of 900 US adults and found that when Google showed an AI summary, people clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits, compared with 15% when there was no summary. Links cited inside the AI summary itself were clicked in just 1% of visits (Pew).
At the same time, B2B buyers are doing more of their research alone, and increasingly with AI assistants. 6sense’s 2025 study notes that generative AI and large language models are becoming part of how buyers research vendors (6sense).
The question for B2B websites is no longer just “do we rank?” It is also “are we the source the answer is built from?”
SEO still matters, AEO builds on it
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is not a replacement for SEO. AI-powered search features still depend on crawling, indexing and judging the quality of pages. If your site is slow, badly structured or thin, it will not be cited.
What AEO adds is a sharper focus on being understandable, trustworthy and quotable.
1. Answer questions directly
AI summaries are built from clear answers. Structure important pages so that:
- each section starts with a direct, one- or two-sentence answer;
- headings are phrased the way people ask questions;
- supporting detail, examples and nuance follow the answer.
This also helps human readers, who skim before they read.
2. Show real expertise
Google’s guidance says it rewards original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, however it is produced (Google). In practice that means:
- specific advice from people who have done the work;
- original data, examples and opinions, not rewritten summaries;
- sources cited clearly;
- a clear organisation behind the content, with an about page and contact details.
Content produced mainly to manipulate rankings, with or without AI, is treated as spam (Google).
3. Make structure machine-readable
- Semantic HTML: one H1, logical heading order, real lists and tables.
- Structured data: Organization, Article, FAQPage, Service and BreadcrumbList where relevant.
- Clean URLs and internal links: so the relationship between topics is obvious.
- An XML sitemap: kept up to date.
4. Let the right crawlers in
AI assistants use their own crawlers. Check your robots.txt deliberately rather than by accident. Decide which search and AI crawlers you want to allow, make sure important content is not hidden behind scripts or logins, and consider publishing an llms.txt file, an emerging convention that gives AI tools a plain-language summary of your site and its key pages.
5. Publish ungated versions of your best insight
If your most valuable thinking is locked inside gated PDFs, AI assistants and search engines cannot see it. Publish summaries, key findings and FAQs as normal web pages, and keep detailed reports gated if you need the leads.
6. Measure differently
Rankings and clicks are only part of the picture now. Track:
- branded search growth;
- mentions and citations in AI answers for your key topics;
- direct and referral traffic from AI assistants;
- conversions from the pages that are cited.
Where AI helps
AI tools can speed up AEO work: finding the questions your audience asks, drafting FAQ sections for experts to refine, checking structured data and auditing heading structure across a site. The expertise itself has to come from people with experience, or there is nothing worth citing.
The takeaway
Being found in 2026 means being useful to people and legible to machines. Answer questions clearly, show genuine expertise, structure your pages properly and make sure the right crawlers can reach them.
SEO and AEO foundations are built into our website development work. For page speed, see Core Web Vitals for marketers.
