AI SEO is the practice of making your brand and your pages visible in AI-powered search: getting mentioned, recommended and cited when ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude or Google AI Overviews answer a question. The same phrase is also used for something different, using AI tools to do SEO work faster. This guide is about the first meaning, with a short section on the second.
The distinction matters because the two meanings lead to opposite to-do lists. One is about where your buyers now get answers, the other is about your team’s tooling. Below you’ll find a plain definition, what Google has officially said on both topics, how AI search finds sources, and a six-step method you can start this week.
Key takeaways
- “AI SEO” has two meanings: optimizing for AI search engines, and using AI tools for SEO tasks. They are separate projects.
- SEO for AI search is the same work that others call GEO, AEO or LLMO. The label matters less than what you measure.
- Google says optimizing for its generative AI features is “still SEO”, so crawlability, indexing and helpful content remain the foundation.
- Assistants with web search pick sources at answer time, which means third-party pages about you can matter as much as your own site.
- Using AI to write content is allowed by Google, but mass-producing pages without added value falls under its scaled content abuse policy.
- You can only judge AI SEO by checking the answers themselves, repeatedly, in each assistant your buyers use.
The two meanings of AI SEO
When someone says “we need to do AI SEO”, ask which one they mean. The table below separates them.
| SEO for AI search | AI tools for SEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | Does AI recommend us? | Can AI speed up our SEO work? |
| Where it happens | AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude | Your content and keyword workflow |
| Typical work | Pages that answer clearly, third-party mentions, crawler access, prompt tracking | Drafting, clustering keywords, writing briefs, auditing pages |
| Main risk | Being absent from the shortlist an assistant gives | Publishing inaccurate or low-value pages at scale |
| Success metric | Mentions, citations, share of voice | Time saved, quality held |
Most of the search volume, and most of the change in buyer behavior, is about the left column. A buyer who asks an assistant “what’s the best CRM for a 20-person startup?” gets a short answer naming HubSpot, Pipedrive and maybe two others. If you sell a CRM and you’re not in that paragraph, you weren’t part of the decision.
Using AI tools for SEO: what Google allows
Since the second meaning comes up constantly, here is the short version. Google’s guidance on using generative AI content says generative AI “can be particularly useful when researching a topic, and to add structure to original content.” It also warns that models “don’t retrieve facts, but predict a likely sequence of words”, and that it is critical to fact-check and review AI-generated content before publishing.
The line you shouldn’t cross is in Google’s spam policies: one listed example of scaled content abuse is “using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users.” Use AI to work faster on pages a human stands behind, not to multiply pages.
SEO for AI search: one discipline, several names
The rest of this article covers the first meaning. You’ll see it called:
- GEO, generative engine optimization. Our guide to what GEO is is the full playbook.
- AEO, answer engine optimization. See our AEO guide.
- LLMO or LLM SEO, which puts more weight on how the model itself describes you. See LLM SEO and how models pick brands.
Our glossary defines each term. They describe largely the same work with different emphasis, and arguing about the name rarely helps anyone.
What Google says about it
Google’s guide to optimizing for generative AI features addresses these labels directly. Its position: “optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.” The same guide lists things you can ignore for Google Search, including llms.txt files and other “special” markup, chunking content, rewriting content just for AI systems, seeking inauthentic mentions and overfocusing on structured data.
That’s Google speaking for Google Search only. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude run their own systems. But since many of them search the web before answering, the same foundations carry over.
How AI search finds and cites sources
You don’t need every internal detail, just the mechanics that shape your to-do list.
- Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google’s AI features documentation says a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet, with no additional technical requirements. Both features may use query fan-out, running several related searches to build one answer.
- Assistants with web search. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude can search the web at answer time, read some of the results and cite the pages they used. Our explainer on how AI assistants choose sources walks through that pipeline.
- The model’s own knowledge. When an assistant answers without searching, it relies on what it learned in training. You can’t edit that directly, which is why the LLM SEO side of the work is slower.
The practical consequence: an assistant reads several pages and summarizes them. If review sites, comparison articles and forum threads in your category favor a competitor, the answer probably will too, however well your homepage ranks.
An AI SEO method in six steps
This is the order we recommend for a B2B team starting from a working SEO program.
- Write down the prompts your buyers ask. Aim for 10 to 30 full questions with context, such as “CRM with good email automation for a small B2B agency”. Mix category, comparison and problem questions, and keep branded prompts to a minimum since they almost always mention you. Our guide on choosing prompts to track and the free AI prompt generator help here.
- Measure a baseline in each assistant. Run every prompt several times in each assistant your audience uses, because answers vary between runs. Note whether you’re mentioned, at what position, which competitors appear and which sources are cited.
- Check crawler access. Make sure robots.txt doesn’t block the search crawlers you care about, such as OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search or PerplexityBot, and that key pages render as text without heavy client-side JavaScript. Our article on AI crawlers and robots.txt lists the user agents.
- Make your key pages easy to quote. Put plain facts near the top of your homepage, pricing, product and comparison pages: who the product is for, what it costs, what it integrates with. Our guide to writing content AI cites goes further.
- Work the third-party sources. List the domains assistants cite most for your prompts. Make sure you’re present on them and described accurately, through real reviews, customers and PR. See getting cited through review sites.
- Re-run, compare, repeat. Track the same prompts every week or two. Compare your share of voice against competitors per assistant, and look for sources that appear or disappear.
AI SEO mistakes to avoid
- Chasing shortcuts Google says to ignore. For Google Search, llms.txt, chunking and special markup aren’t required. They may have other uses, but they don’t replace content and access.
- Generating pages for every query variation. Google’s guide warns this can violate its scaled content abuse policy.
- Testing a prompt once. One answer is an anecdote. Patterns show up over repeated runs.
- Only checking ChatGPT. Assistants use different sources and habits. A brand visible in one can be missing in another.
- Dropping classic SEO. Our comparison of SEO vs GEO explains why rankings still feed AI answers.
Measure your AI SEO with Citegram
Rank trackers don’t see answers. Citegram is a free Chrome extension, with a dashboard, built for that side of the work:
- Add your buyer prompts from step 1 and the competitors you want to compare against.
- Run them in the real apps. Citegram asks each prompt in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Grok and Google AI Overviews, in background tabs, using the accounts already signed in to your browser. No API key is needed, and questions count toward your own plan usage.
- Read mentions, positions and sources. Each answer is saved with whether your brand was mentioned, its position and the sources and links it cited.
- See the searches behind the answers. For ChatGPT, Citegram records the web searches it ran. For Google, it records whether an AI Overview appeared and which sources it cited.
- Follow the trend. Reports show share of voice per brand and per assistant and the most cited domains, with trends over repeated runs. First results arrive in about 10 minutes.
FAQ
What is AI SEO?
AI SEO usually means optimizing your brand and content to be mentioned, recommended and cited in AI-powered search, such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. The term is also used for using AI tools to do SEO tasks. The first meaning is the same discipline often called GEO or AEO.
Is AI SEO different from regular SEO?
It builds on it. Google says optimizing for its generative AI features is still SEO, and many assistants search the web before answering. What changes is the goal (being named in an answer, not just ranking), the weight of third-party sources and the metrics, which shift to mentions, citations and share of voice.
Can I use AI to write SEO content?
Yes, Google allows it, as long as the content is helpful and accurate. Google recommends fact-checking and reviewing AI-generated content before publishing, and lists using generative AI to create many pages without added value as an example of scaled content abuse.
How long does AI SEO take to show results?
Changes that affect retrieval, like fixing crawler access or getting covered on a page assistants already cite, can show up as soon as those pages are crawled and read again. Changes in what a model learned in training take much longer. Track a fixed prompt set over several weeks before drawing conclusions.
Start with one prompt
AI SEO starts with knowing what assistants say today. The free plan tracks 1 prompt and 1 competitor across all major assistants, forever. Pro is $10 per seat per month with unlimited prompts and competitors. See pricing.
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