Answer engine optimization: 6 AI models you should optimize for

AI search engines are revolutionizing the way people get information. Ranking high on Google and Bing search engines has been the cornerstone of search visibility for years.

But with the rise of AI-driven search, is this ranking priority changing?

We are in an age of uncertainty, and we have never seen such a situation since the early days of SEO, the rise and fall of search engines in the dispute over relevance.

Time will tell which AI answer engine will win. SEO is still important, but AI is rewriting the rules.

This article will analyze:

• Six AI search participants worth paying attention to and their content sources.
• Market share and usage trends, showing the direction of the shift of search behavior.
• How AI answer engines still rely on traditional search engines.
• How should enterprises optimize for AI-driven search now?

Here are what you need to know.

AI models and real-time search

Before we proceed, a quick look at how these AI platforms usually work. The training data deadlines for AI models vary.

For example, Google's Gemini 2.0 Pro's knowledge deadline is August 2024, while OpenAI's GPT-4o's training data deadline is June 2024. Yes, this can change every day.

This means that for recent events or emerging trends, etc., these models rely on real-time data retrieval rather than their internal knowledge base.

In other words, their ability to provide accurate and up-to-date results is directly associated with their ability to access and process new information from the network. This is the key.

Another thing to note is that AI search engines can build their own network indexes.

For example, Perplexity AI's PerplexityBot crawls the network directly and creates its own content database instead of relying on Google or Bing's indexes. But even so, AI search engines can and do rely on search engine results.

Website owners who want to control how AI search engines access their content can manage these crawlers in their robots.txt settings.

Now let's discuss the different relevance of AI search engines in today's SEO.

Google: AI Overview

AI overview represents a huge shift in Google search.

Google's AI-generated reply—powered by Google's Gemini AI model—is designed to provide fast and comprehensive answers by extracting information from multiple sources.

For SEO professionals, this brings opportunities and challenges.

AI overviews rely on Google's search index to determine what information to present, but they also change how users interact with search results.

How AI Overview Works

• Google's Gemini 2.0 AI model provides support for AI overviews, generating instant summary for certain queries.
• AI-generated replies appear at the top of Google search results, usually before traditional organic search results.

Market share and adoption rate

• Google still dominates the search market, accounting for about 87.28% of the U.S. search market.
• With billions of searches per day, AI overviews have the potential to reshape organic search traffic and user behavior.

What does this mean for SEO

• Ranking is still important in Google – AI overviews extract information mainly from search results.
• A study by Rich Sanger and Authoritas found that 46% of AI overviews cited natural search results from the top 10.
• My anecdotal data from SEO agencies suggests that you need to rank in the top 20 to have a better chance of being included in the AI ​​overview. There are exceptions, with some resources cited in the AI ​​overview rankings beyond what we traditionally call “any ranking.”
• Inclusion in the AI ​​overview can increase click-through rates and, according to some studies, for those results that do not appear, it will hurt their performance. For example, for transactional queries, the number of clicks on a web page included in the AI ​​overview is 3.2 times that of non-contained web pages. For informational queries, the number of clicks on web pages included in the AI ​​overview is 1.5 times that of non-contained web pages.
• If your content is not ranked high in Google, it is unlikely to appear in the AI ​​overview, which reinforces the need for a strong SEO. There are many opinions on what strategies you need to successfully adopt. I advocate continuing to stick to a strong SEO program that includes a balanced combination of technical SEO, in-page optimization and excellent content.
• Website owners can control whether their content is included in AI-generated answers. Google-Extended is an exit setting that allows websites to block Google from using its content for AI models like Gemini, while still allowing Googlebot to crawl its website for search rankings. Blocking Google-Extended won't affect your ranking in Google searches, but it will prevent Gemini from using your content in responses generated by its AI.
• Note: Research shows that content included in the AI ​​overview may be more volatile than organic search results.

Key points: AI overviews are not replacing traditional searches, but they are changing the way search results are consumed. Currently, the strategy remains the same: optimized for Google Search, and an AI overview will follow.

(The following content will be output in segments because the article is too long. Please be patient.)

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