Showing up across AI is a communications challenge
Knowing your GEO and AEO from your SEO
Communications teams have just become a lot more important.
It's because AI isn't just indexing your business' website, but forming an opinion about your organisation from everything that's written about you online.
And that changes how organisations need to think about positioning and visibility.
Most AI citations (85% of them according to an AirOps research report) come from third-party sources i.e. reviews, forums, media coverage, analyst reports, expert commentary and Wikipedia, rather than company-owned content.
This means showing up across AI isn't just an SEO challenge. It's a communications challenge.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) are about making sure AI can find, trust and accurately recommend your organisation. Whether it's a Google AI Overview, a voice assistant, or a large language model like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, the quality, consistency and credibility of your digital footprint really matter.
Given this, organisations should be:
💡 Defining a clear and consistent brand narrative so your purpose, products / services and leadership team are described consistently across your website, social channels and other digital touchpoints, supported by original insights, named experts and evidence-backed data.
💡 Creating content that's easy for AI to understand and cite, with concise copy, clear headings, direct definitions and FAQ-style content that makes key facts easy to extract and verify.
💡 Building credibility beyond owned channels by looking to earn coverage through PR, client reviews, analyst reports, podcast appearances, industry publications and communities such as Reddit, because AI places significant weight on trusted third-party sources.
💡 Making sure websites are technically accessible to AI, with crawlable, text-based content (not just JavaScript) so AI can easily access and understand important information.
💡 Regularly testing how an organisation appears across AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity to identify gaps, inconsistencies and opportunities to improve how the brand is represented.
AI visibility is becoming as much a communications challenge as a search challenge.
Reputation, consistency and credibility matter just as much as technical optimisation.
How is your organisation showing up across AI today, and are the answers actually the ones you'd want customers, clients and partners to see? Get in touch if you’d like to discuss.
