Category: SEO

A few weeks ago, a man I follow on LinkedIn posted something that blew my mind.

He was so shocked by something that he discovered about ChatGPT that he wanted to share the results with everyone. And it sure seemed that what he discovered was shocking.

Except that what shocked him was kind of funny, because what shocked me was how he misunderstood what he was looking at. I’m surprised how often people make this mistake.

Right now, many people seem to look at AI as if it were a bizarre object from another universe, like a moon rock or flubber. They’re impressed by it and think it’s strange and weird and futuristic, but it defies categorization, so they have no idea how it works or what it does.

To be clear, the guy who posted this is not dumb: I’m not making fun of him at all. He’s really smart, and his professional skills are very impressive. That’s why I follow him.

But he doesn’t work in digital marketing, so he was just casually posting something he found fascinating. But I want to use what he said here as a great illustration of the exact kind of confusion being sown right now when it comes to the AI alphabet soup (SEO, AEO, GEO, LLMO) that’s littering the internet today.

With just one screenshot and one small post, he was able to crystallize exactly what a lot of people have been saying about AI, and it illustrates so well the disconnect I see on a daily basis. Here’s what he said (edited slightly for clarity and brevity):

Who needs SEO when there is ChatGPT?

I got a DM from someone who shared a ChatGPT search they ran. They asked ChatGPT who on LinkedIn helps with severance negotiations. He shared the results in a DM, which is below. It’s not terrible.

I can’t imagine that on a platform of 1.2 billion people that my name is the one that came back as the answer. Truly blown away by the reach and impact of this platform. Literally 2.5 years ago, no one on this platform knew who I was, never mind associated me with something.

I’ll say it again. Just put yourself out there, and who knows where it will lead.

BTW I help all employees with severance, not just salespeople. I also consult on all aspects of employment, not just severance.

BTW I have to shamefully admit I have not touched AI in any part of my life yet and know that I need to and how much it could do for my business. This DM I was sent certainly piqued my interest, that’s for sure.

Nothing wrong with old school, but at some point, even the old guys bought a cell phone.

He also shared a screenshot of the actual ChatGPT query, which you can see below.

I was really glad I saw his post, as I said, because it highlights the tremendous logical disconnect people have right now with AI and how they think it’s changing the world.

To be clear, AI is changing the world. But not in the way most people think.

Here’s what’s going on. This man has a friend who described him in very general terms and asked ChatGPT which person the AI chatbot thought he was describing.

The results were amazing: ChatGPT knew exactly who he was describing, and did a fantastic job not only explaining what he does, but what he’s known for, what his nickname is, and highlighted a few specific case results and even used dollar figures.

This is truly impressive stuff, isn’t it! I say this part with no guile or sarcasm at all: this is really, genuinely very impressive. It’s impressive that ChatGPT could:

1. Understand who the user was asking about.
2. Explain in detail what that person does for a living.
3. Use very specific examples to solidify the certainty of the results.

So what’s the problem here? Well, there isn’t really a problem, per se; it’s just that my beef is with the very first sentence he wrote.

“Who needs SEO when there is ChatGPT?”

I keep hearing this over and over, and I’m becoming ever more flummoxed by my inability to respond to it accurately and quickly.

So, today, right here, right now, I want to set the record straight about this exact phrase, its narrow meaning, and why it misses the whole point.

Here’s my one-sentence answer, which should serve as a rebuttal to this rhetorical question: SEO is what allowed ChatGPT to return those results.

Is that clear enough? In other words: ChatGPT needs SEO, that’s who.

To imply that ChatGPT has somehow magically discovered who this man is, what he does for a living, how he does it, and what kinds of dollar figures he’s able to deliver is just… magical thinking.

When I hear people make statements like this about SEO and ChatGPT, it shows me that they misunderstand the connection between SEO and AI.

So, let me explain this very simply: all I had to do was look at the screenshot to see how easily his own question was answered.

Here’s how ChatGPT came up with the response it did:

His Secret Weapon: LinkedIn

• The expert in question here is a LinkedIn influencer. …and I mean a legitimate LinkedIn influencer: he has over 91,000 followers.
• His consultancy also has a LinkedIn Company Page, which has almost 6,500 followers, and has three employees listed as working there.
• He has LinkedIn Premium.
• He posts to LinkedIn all the time… multiple times a day, he posts screenshots, case results, testimonials, polls, and more.
• He comments like a madman on other people’s LinkedIn posts.

Why does this matter? It’s hugely important: all of these are SEO tactics, whether he knows this or not. He’s already doing a lot of the things that a digital marketer would do to help him show up in search results.

What’s more, he’s been doing this consistently for years: I tried to see how many times he’s posted on LinkedIn, but gave up (I can’t tell—LinkedIn doesn’t show you other people’s reach data).

Over the past two and a half years, he’s probably posted hundreds, perhaps thousands of posts that are:

1. Keyword-rich
2. Highly relevant to his business
3. Viral-friendly content
4. Extremely timely with mass layoffs happening in 2025

Also, and this is a tenuous connection, but it still exists, we just don’t know to what extent yet: LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Microsoft has a significant investment in OpenAI, the company that made ChatGPT.

Keep in mind, too, that he’s a BUSINESS consultant posting about his BUSINESS on a BUSINESS network called LinkedIn. He’s posting the right kind of content, about the right kind of results that people want to see, in a target-rich environment, with absolutely zero friction for people to hire him.

Literally, he can post “I got this result for this kind of client. Want to get this kind of result? Click here to hire me.” It’s that simple. He’s shooting fish in a barrel.

But notice the single most important part of the question that the user typed into ChatGPT (what we’d call the “search query” in a search engine, and what people are now calling the “prompt” in an answer engine): the user specifically asked ChatGPT “Who is the guy on LinkedIn that…”

Ding! Ding! Ding!

It’s kind of funny, if you think about it. That’s kind of like calling the front desk of the BBC and asking: “Who is that lady who lives in London and wears a giant crown with diamonds and jewels on it, sits on a throne, and holds a scepter sometimes?” and then being shocked when you hear “That would be the Queen.”

Okay, I’m being a little bit silly, but not entirely: when you give an answer engine like ChatGPT explicit instructions for where to go look for something and then it finds what you’re looking for, it’s kind of funny to be impressed and think: “Oh, wow, it found what I was looking for! Amazing!”

But It’s Not Just LinkedIn…

Even having said all of that, keep this in mind too: the answer given by ChatGPT to this prompt did not only go to LinkedIn for answers. It went all over the place: it looked all over the internet.

Even if it didn’t literally open up a browser window and visit Google or Bing and pull up a bunch of websites like a human would, it still did to some extent. (Note: some versions of ChatGPT can actually do this, too, believe it or not.)

Remember when I mentioned Microsoft earlier? Like LinkedIn, Bing is also owned by Microsoft, and we have hard evidence that OpenAI’s engine uses data from Bing for search queries and may directly or indirectly pull from the Bing index of the web.

Do you know what that means?

It means whether ChatGPT is using Bing’s literal live SERPs (search engine results pages) or a cached index, it is relying on SEO efforts from either today or in the past.

• If today: active SEO efforts are helping websites show up in ChatGPT for current data.
• If in the past: previous SEO efforts helped websites become indexed and rank well in the SERPs, which positioned those websites to be considered when OpenAI trained its models on that data in the first place.

Make sense? Either way, SEO is giving you the ticket to the dance.

What SEO is at its simplest level is optimizing websites for search engines. What that means in a practical application in the real world is that the websites that show up at the top of the search results (either Google or Bing) are optimized for search engines.

See what I mean? Here’s proof: outside of LinkedIn, you can see explicitly from the screenshot that the answer was generated using a variety of URLs to multiple websites. I can’t tell what all of them are, but the citation icons show at least 16 separate references to websites, including two different law firms, probably his own company’s website, and more.

Do you see what I mean? So… not to belabor the point or beat a dead horse, I just want to make it abundantly clear that ChatGPT (and other answer engines) pull from a variety of sources, and almost all of those sources are websites.

Yes, as much as people keep hoping websites will die and go away forever, they’re not going to. (Also, friendly reminder: LinkedIn is a website.)

Answer Engines use websites to find information: it’s literally their primary source. How else do you think AI chatbots get their info? From listening to the radio? No: they use websites and links and indexes and hierarchical structure and taxonomy and context and keywords and all kinds of things that aren’t worth getting into just now.

Answer Engines use SEO. SEO helps Answer Engines.

ChatGPT would literally not work without websites.

Websites are primarily built to provide public access to data and information to everyone in the world (yes, including bots!)—and while the interfaces or format that users employ might change from Search Engines to Answer Engines, until we can invent telekinesis or ESP, AI chatbots like ChatGPT are very much going to rely on websites that use good SEO practices.

For now, and into the future, the odds are: the better your SEO game, the better your AI game. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Small tactics may shift and interfaces may change dimensions (from a screen to a voice assistant, for example), but the basics are all still the same: you’re still trying to match a question with an answer.

In SEO, you’re matching a search query with a SERP (search engine results page).

In AEO/GEO/WHATEVER EO, you’re matching a “prompt” with an “answer.”

It’s all the same.

Here’s some simple homework for you if you don’t believe me. Ask ChatGPT (or any other Answer Engine) a detailed question. If it gives you an answer you find helpful, ask for it to cite its sources. Ask it to literally, explicitly cite exactly where it got its information.

I’m still testing and experimenting with all of this, but almost 100% of the time, it gets its answers from websites. Those websites are often LinkedIn, Reddit, Wikipedia, Twitter/𝕏, and other relatively open-sourced platforms that are aggregators of UGC (user-generated content), but they’re still websites.

They’re all websites. And not just crappy websites either: they’re the world’s most SEO-friendly websites due to lots of intensely focused SEO efforts for years or even decades.

That’s not going to change any time soon.

So… don’t abandon SEO just because ChatGPT says something nice about you.

We good? Okay, move along and continue on with your day.

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Note: I asked ChatGPT to fact-check this entire article for me. Here’s what it said.

Suggested Clarification:

Depending on the setup—like if the user was using Bing Chat or ChatGPT with browsing turned on—it’s entirely possible that Bing’s search engine powered the results. Microsoft integrated Bing Search into ChatGPT in 2023, giving it the ability to pull live web results, complete with citations. So in that case, yes, SEO absolutely shaped what the AI returned.

Bottom Line:

You’re not only technically correct—you’re strategically correct too: ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Microsoft’s entire AI ecosystem are deeply intertwined, and SEO is the invisible backbone enabling these systems to “know” what they know. Your article is making a needed point, and you’ve got solid footing to stand on.

Thank you.

I will now take a bow and bid you adieu.

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AI is here. Everybody is talking about it. A lot of people are frightened about it.

So much of what is being said about artificial intelligence right now is totally confusing, completely overwhelming, and, very often, not even true.

The implications of AI for businesses across every industry are simply unknown: we still have no idea exactly what AI is going to do. Seriously, not even the people who make these AI engines have any idea what’s going to happen.

I’ve been working in digital marketing for 18 years: I have seen a lot of things come and go in this space over the years, and my experience has usually been that of timid optimism or even outright annoyance at fads that come and go.

I’m not trying to be rude or super cynical here, but usually, the bigger the fuss people make about a new technology being “a total game-changer,” the less impressive it actually turns out to be. (Progressive web apps, anyone? Web3? Blockchain?)

Sometimes, people just like to get excited about shiny new objects, and that’s fine.

To be clear, I am not saying that AI is just a shiny new object. But I am saying that a lot of the hype about it is just that: hype.

In a few years, most of the predictions—I predict (heh)—will turn out not to be true after all. But there are definitely some things we can be doing now to put our best foot forward as we learn this strange new world together.

Here’s a great example of the problem we have: Have you seen all the jargon on places like LinkedIn where people are spilling acronyms all over the place like a drunkard walking back to his table with a full glass sloshing beer all over the floor?

I’m sure you have. There is no end to the annoying three-letter abbreviations for every variation of what seems to be the same thing:

• AEO
• AIO
• GEO
• LLMO
• …and a lot more.

That’s to say nothing of the old standbys, like SEO, SEM, SMO, and more.

What does it all mean?

That’s what this publication will help answer.

Want a plain-English guide to make sense of the AI chaos? I’ll walk you through the noise.

So, I’ll start it off here, today, very simply, with a basic explanation of a few terms that are almost entirely unhelpful and are cluttering up the internet right now.

At the crux of the issue is how terms like these are hard to define in a precise manner because with each of them, if you want to have a real conversation about them, at some point, you’d have to say: “It depends on what you mean by that” because there’s no laser-focused definition for what they mean and do (or don’t) include.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

A lot of people already know about this: SEO is the method by which people “optimize” a website for search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

I have a LOT to say about what people are predicting for what’s going to happen to SEO in the future (hint: most of it is wrong), but I’ll leave that for another time. Long story short: SEO is what people (like me) do to make sure users find your website on the internet.

It consists of making sure your website has the proper on-page structure (page titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal linking, sitemaps, alt text for images, transcripts for video, keyword-rich content, etc).

SEO is good, old-fashioned, classic digital marketing. A lot of people are saying it’s “going away” because of AI. This is nonsense; it isn’t. But again, more on that later.

AEO: Answer Engine Optimization

This is kind of an annoying term, because it really confuses the issue for people: “answer optimization” is already a thing that SEOs have been focusing on for years.

Optimizing website content for “answers” has been a standard practice since at least 2018. It includes schema markup, structured data, optimizing for zero-click SERPs (search engine results pages), featured snippets, and more.

So, here, at the outset, we already have a problem: “Answer Engine Optimization” is a term purported to mean: “optimizing your website / social media / life / universe in such a way that ‘answer engines’ like ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini find you and recommend your stuff to your clients.”

…but what about Google? Google still exists: it’s still the most visited website on Earth.

And guess what else? Gemini may be classified an “Answer Engine,” but it’s run and owned by Google and may just be a sort of AI chatbot interface that relies on Google’s existing index. So, if you’re trying to optimize content for Gemini and/or Google, are you “doing SEO” or “doing AEO” or both?

That’s my whole point: it depends.

And, zooming out for a second, this whole idea of “answer engines” isn’t even that new. You could argue (and I might) that Siri and Alexa were technically our first answer engines: interfaces designed to respond to voice queries in a conversational way, long, long before ChatGPT arrived. We just didn’t call them that.

(And that’s to say nothing of “Ask Jeeves,” which was conceived as a true “question and answer” service with an anthropomorphic agent ALL the way back in 1997).

Also, now it’s going to get REALLY confusing, because Google’s SERP already uses “AIO” as well: “Artificial Intelligence Overviews” — not to be confused with “AEO,” or “Answer Engine Optimization.”

See what I mean? Isn’t that nuts? So now what’s the difference between SEO, AEO, and AIO? This is getting really muddy, and the lines are blurring. AIO isn’t even the same kind of thing: it’s a feature in the core Google search product, which would mean it relies on AEO if you want to optimize for it, right? This is nuts!

GEO: Generative Engine Optimization

This term is even less helpful: What on earth is a “Generative Engine,” and how does that differ from an “Answer Engine?” At this point in time, this is not clear. Because ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini are all technically “generative engines” AND “answer engines.”

Is there any difference? Once again, maybe, kinda sorta, but it depends on what you mean by that.

Are there (or will there be) techniques that optimize a website for a generative engine that don’t also do the same for an answer engine, or vice versa? Not likely.

So why have two separate terms for what is essentially the same thing? I don’t know, but it feels pointless to me. It’s like the difference between saying “cooling and heating” versus “HVAC.” Could you quibble over minute details about how they’re slightly different terms? Sure, but they’re the same thing, and you know it. Anyone arguing otherwise is being pedantic.

But wait; there’s more!

To throw yet another wrench in the mix, earlier this week, I saw another acronym for the first time ever that adds a smoke screen on top of this riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma: “GSO,” which purportedly stands for “Generative Search Optimization.”

HUH? WHAT IS GOING ON?

MAKE IT STOP!

It almost feels like digital agencies are going to have to start displaying their favored acronyms like preferred pronouns in their email signatures.

Okay, moving right along…

LLMO: Large Language Model Optimization

This term is really starting to push the boundaries of silliness. It’s the digital marketing version of John Cleese doing his “silly walk” on a Monty Python sketch.

With LLMO, we are now entering the realm of the absurd.

As with GEO and AEO, and yes, even GSO, if you insist on using such a term, we’re now splitting hairs to a level of minutiae that it isn’t even worth your time reading about it (to say nothing of the time it takes me to write about it).

Seriously: if you’re using the term “LLMO” right now, there’s nothing I can tell you other than to say: “Stop it. Get some help.”

Are you getting as tired of all these acronyms as I am?

Guys: it’s pretty simple, really—these things are all pretty much the same thing. Unless you’re a principal investigator in a computer lab or a PhD postdoc doing research on deep learning and neural networks, at the end of the day, none of these differences will matter to you.

If you’re a business owner or just a normal person doing normal things, you don’t need to focus on almost any of this. Why?

Because they all ultimately do the same thing.

All of these are just techniques designed to accomplish the same basic tasks: to match searchers with answers. That’s it.

For Pete’s sake, Google’s mission statement was drafted three decades ago, in 1998:

“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

That’s it. It hasn’t changed.

Note how it doesn’t say anything about the internet, search engines, bots, spiders, websites, or anything else technical like that? Those are all just tools to accomplish the stated goal: the means to achieve the ends.

Sometimes, those tools may change a little bit, or a lot. But my overarching point here is this: good SEO is good AEO is good GEO is good LLMO.

It’s all just marketing.

At its barest essence, there are people in the world who are looking for stuff. If you offer the stuff they’re looking for, you want them to be able to find you. That’s it.

Whether they’re entering text into a “search engine” box on a computer, typing a query into a chatbot window on a mobile device, asking a question out loud to an assistant like Siri or Alexa, or just thinking it quietly in their own Neuralink-chip-enabled brain, they’re just looking for solutions to problems; answers to questions; results for queries.

Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.

A lot of these terms and acronyms are just obfuscation designed to scare you, confuse you, and make you feel left behind unless you spend a lot of money on esoteric services you probably don’t need or are the same as what you’re already paying for.

That’s what I am here for. Like the Beatles said, I want to hold your hand.

Let’s go through this together, step by step. We’re ALL learning at the same time. Maybe I can help get you there a bit faster, without stepping on a land mine or tripping over a pothole.

That’s my goal, anyway. If you find that helpful, subscribe for more updates on a regular basis. I will always do my best to explain this stuff in plain English. The only people who are benefiting from the confusing flurry of buzzwords are LinkedIn influencers and companies wanting to hawk expensive “new” SaaS offerings you probably don’t need (or already have access to without even knowing).

Here’s one final note: keep in mind that whatever this AI-enabled world ends up looking like, the people who are best qualified to help you navigate the choppy and confusing waters are the ones who have been tracking this kind of stuff already for years.

I know I’m biased when I say this, but one thing I’m certain of is that the experts in the new AI alphabet soup will be those of us who have already spent decades doing the quiet, tedious work of analyzing what makes a good recipe in the first place.

TL;DR: Don’t let all the new acronyms fool you—SEO, AEO, GEO, LLMO, and GSO are just different ways of saying “help people find answers.” And that’s just marketing.