AI SEO vs SEO: what changes and what doesn't

Most of SEO carries over

Search engine optimisation (SEO) has always been about three things: pages that crawlers can reach, pages that search engines understand, and pages that answer what people search for. AI answer engines need the same three things.

Google says so directly for its own AI features. To appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, and the usual SEO practices apply: crawl access, internal links, readable text and structured data that matches the visible page (Google Search Central). There is no separate AI index to submit to.

The searcher sees one answer instead of ten links

In a list of results, being fifth still gets you seen. In a written answer, the engine names a few businesses and the rest are invisible. That raises the value of being the clearest, best-supported option for a specific question, and lowers the value of ranking somewhere on page one for a broad term.

Google also describes a technique it calls query fan-out, where AI Mode runs several related searches to build one answer. A single question can pull from pages that rank for different sub-questions, which is another reason to answer each sub-question clearly on its own page or section.

Side by side

There are more crawlers to let in

Each answer engine runs its own crawler for search, and blocking it keeps you out of that engine's answers. OpenAI uses OAI-SearchBot, Perplexity uses PerplexityBot and Anthropic uses Claude-SearchBot. Each company also runs separate crawlers that collect training data, such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot. Those are independent settings: OpenAI says blocking GPTBot does not remove a site from ChatGPT search (OpenAI).

In practice this is rarely the problem. Across the local business sites we checked, only a small share blocked any AI search crawler. The figures for each area are on our location pages.

Pages need to answer, not just rank

A page can rank well with its answer buried in the fourth paragraph. An answer engine looking for a sentence to quote will usually find a better one elsewhere. The practical change is small and worth making on every page that matters: put the answer first, define the terms you use, and keep one page or section per question.

Measurement gets harder

Search Console still reports impressions and clicks from Google, including from AI features. What it cannot tell you is what ChatGPT or Perplexity said about your category this week. AI SEO reporting adds a regular check of those answers: which businesses are named, which pages are linked, and whether that changes as your pages improve. Visits that do come from answer engines show in your analytics as referrals from their domains.

What to do differently

1. Keep doing the SEO basics. They are the entry ticket for every engine.
2. Check robots.txt allows the AI search crawlers you want to appear in.
3. Open every service and area page with a direct answer in the first two sentences.
4. Add structured data that matches what the page says. Our LocalBusiness guide covers the type most local businesses need.
5. Add a monthly check of what the main answer engines say about your category and area.

For the definitions behind all of this, read What is AI SEO?