At Google I/O 2026, Google announced the biggest overhaul of Search in 25 years — redesigning its search interface to treat every query as an opportunity for AI to synthesise an answer rather than simply return a list of links. AI Overviews now appear in roughly 48% of tracked queries, up from 30% a year earlier. Alongside offering faster information for searchers, this has led to a drastic drop in the number of searches that result in a click to a website. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) has become a new form of marketing that did not exist previously, optimising content for discovery by AI-powered searches or voice assistants.

So, what does this new SEO paradigm mean for your content creation efforts?

Read on to discover what you need to do regarding AEO vs SEO and how Rose & Cactus is already taking steps to ensure its efforts align with this.

Understanding AEO vs SEO When Search Gives Zero Clicks

Traditional SEO, while still relevant, drives organic traffic via search keyword rankings and links back to your site from trusted sources. However, they now have a competitor.

Mid-2024 data from Search Engine Land already showed that almost 60% of Google searches didn’t end with a click to a third-party website. Current estimates put that figure over 60% and rising. You should expect this trend to continue.

AEO instead focuses on structuring content for direct answers in AI assistants. An answer search engine uses natural language tools to pull data from a block of text, so formatting your content similarly will ensure it is more likely to be seen as a source of good information.

AI parroting your information does not necessarily mean losing that click, either. Various LLMs, such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, often cite data sources via a link, but do not always offer context and are sometimes inconsistent. They can provide ways for people to find your content for more information, but they should do much more.

So, you must create hyper-focused answers in natural language for AEO alongside existing SEO efforts. Rose & Cactus walks this tightrope with precision and ensures they use all the tools at their disposal to get you noticed by both users and AI platforms.

Update Your Content Strategy for the Google AI Overview

Simple AI summaries, such as Google’s overview, pull from content to answer a question only once.

As such, you must ensure the answer is yours, not anyone else’s. You can then drive your brand’s authority when your site appears in the AI overview.

However, while sources may differ, AEO does tend to have a bias. Tools like ChatGPT and Alexa offer instant and conversational answers, often pulling them from simple, structured data and FAQs. People just ask ChatGPT a question, and it appears instantly, pulled from the easiest place to read it.

Did you know that a whole structured format exists to help both humans and crawlers find the information they want? These schemas are what the AI often uses. Developing content using this tool can boost the chances of your website being the source the algorithm pulls from.

Some of the key steps you can take include:

• Formatting your pages to support snippets
• Auditing existing FAQs and How-To pages
• Adding clearer content headers
• Using concise answers of around 50 words
• Leveraging bullet points to focus crawler attention
• Refreshing content quarterly — not because AI tools retrain on it, but because freshness is a real signal in the live index that AI Overviews draw from. Stale, uncrawled content is less likely to be selected as a citation source

You can also use internal links that anchor on questions to guide both users and the AI. After all, nothing says you can’t help both simultaneously.

What Does Combining AEO and SEO Look Like?

While zero-click content may reduce the number of visits to your site, you may need to pivot a little harder toward developing a unified strategy instead.

One thing worth knowing: in 2026 the field has further differentiated into AEO (optimising specifically for Google’s AI features — Overviews and AI Mode) and GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization (optimising for third-party LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude). The tactics overlap significantly, but the surfaces are different. When you hear either term, they are both pointing at the same underlying challenge: making your content easy for AI systems to find, trust, and cite. We use AEO as the working umbrella throughout this post.

First, determine your audience’s top questions, especially those that get you clicks from ChatGPT, and look at your analytics related to your traffic sources. You can then ensure the answers there are detailed and well-structured enough to serve the needs of both AI answer engines and search users.

You should then optimise your content structure for both voice and chat. Use conversational headers and jargon-free answers to blend these efforts to make appearing in chatbot or voice assistant responses easier. If you need to use longer answers, provide a summary or bullet points that allow people and crawlers to understand the basics earlier.

You can also continue to use traditional SEO metrics like SERP rankings and backlink analysis alongside AEO-specific stats. While no “Google Search Console” equivalent exists yet for AI citations, you can track how often someone visits your site using a link from the AI’s UI via Google Analytics or other tools. GA4 now has a dedicated AI assistant traffic channel that automatically groups visits from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude — making this easier to measure than it was even six months ago.

AEO vs. Traditional SEO Effectiveness at Click Capture

With AI scraping so many sites for data, updating that content to be more valuable will result in crawlers noticing you as a source of good, relevant data. Similarly, if a user notices your name repeatedly appearing, they may discover it is better to go straight to the source. When they then find more information and depth, people will have a reason to stay on your site.

While this is a slower process than a single, direct link, it reinforces your authority and trustworthiness as a source of good information even more clearly before a user visits your link.

At the same time, if your writers use AI for any part of their content production, ensure it is not used to the detriment of their writing. Hire a writer with proven success and ensure that what they produce is relevant and valuable to your target audience to maintain your position as a source of good information.

Aim to Win at Both AEO vs SEO

In truth, it’s not AEO vs SEO. You need to focus on both.

Google has made this official: in its first-ever formal AI optimization guide, published in 2026, the company states that from Google Search’s perspective, optimising for generative AI features is still SEO. The signals that earn AI citations — quality, structure, authority, E-E-A-T — are the same signals that earn traditional rankings. The tactics converge; only the surfaces differ.

As AI rewrites the rules of search visibility, many of the old metrics still matter alongside the new ones. For this reason, Rose & Cactus SEO continues to update its methods to ensure its clients remain an authority, no matter who is searching for their services.

Contact Rose & Cactus for a free audit and learn what they could do for your website. We will take steps to ensure we understand your business and its needs, then offer you advice matching your unique nature.

Laura Pulling Laura is a content strategist, SEO consultant, and lover of quiz nights. She works with global clients to turn great ideas into well-ranked, high-converting content.