What is Artificial Intelligence Optimisation (AIO)?
Artificial Intelligence Optimisation (AIO) refers to preparing and tuning your website’s content so that it’s easily understood and favoured by AI-powered platforms. In simple terms, AIO is about making your content “machine-friendly” for the new generation of AI search tools. It’s a natural evolution of SEO, born from the rise of artificial intelligence in search. In fact, industry experts describe AIO as a blend of traditional SEO and AI – a “brand new discipline” that’s a real game changer for the search ecosystem.
Just as SEO focuses on pleasing search engine algorithms, AIO focuses on ensuring AI systems (like chatbots and AI search results) can find, interpret, and even directly use your content. This doesn’t mean SEO is obsolete – far from it. Think of AIO as SEO’s smarter sibling. Traditional SEO aims to get your page ranked so a human will click the link, whereas AIO aims to have AI read and leverage your information in its responses. In other words, SEO gets you in front of people, AIO gets you in front of AI. Both work hand in hand: without solid SEO fundamentals, your content may never be seen; without AIO, your content might be invisible to the algorithms driving tomorrow’s search results.
It’s no surprise that AIO has burst onto the scene now. The public launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 was a wake-up call, showing millions what AI can do. Businesses have since accelerated adoption of AI in all areas – marketing included. By 2023, 70% of marketers said generative AI is essential to their content strategy, and 45% were already using AI to produce content. SEO is one of the fields most impacted, with over half of marketers planning to use AI in their SEO content creation process. This widespread embrace of AI in content and marketing has set the stage for AIO. Rather than a temporary trend, experts see AIO as a “gradual, inexorable shift” – the next stage in the evolution of optimisation practices. For businesses, it means adapting now to how AI and SEO intersect, so you don’t get left behind.
AIO vs Traditional SEO: Complementary, Not Competing
It’s important to understand that AIO is not a replacement for traditional SEO, but a complementary extension of it. All the classic SEO best practices – from keyword research and on-page optimisation to backlink building and technical tweaks – remain relevant. In fact, without a strong SEO foundation, your site won’t have the content quality or authority that both search engines and AI algorithms look for. AIO builds on those foundations, adding new layers of optimisation for the AI age.
So what exactly is different? In practice, AIO involves two broad dimensions:
- Leveraging AI to improve your SEO: This means using AI tools to do SEO tasks more efficiently – for example, generating optimised content, analysing user behaviour, or automating routine tasks. Many SEO professionals are already doing this; AI can crunch data and provide insights far quicker than a human. With AIO, your marketing team (or agency) might use AI to identify new long-tail keywords, create better meta descriptions, or predict upcoming search trends. All of this supercharges your traditional SEO efforts with AI’s speed and precision.
- Optimising content for AI-driven platforms: This is the newer aspect that truly defines AIO. It’s about presenting your content in a way that AI systems can easily digest and recommend. For instance, whereas classic SEO might focus on getting to the #1 spot on Google’s first page, AIO focuses on getting your information featured in an AI-generated answer or recommendation. An AI chatbot or Google’s AI Overview might not “click” your page at all – instead, it will read your content, pick out key points, and show them to the user. If your content isn’t structured for AI to understand, it may get ignored no matter how great it is. As one AI expert put it, traditional SEO is about chasing clicks, but “AI doesn’t just find content – it builds answers”. Your goal with AIO is to ensure the AI can use your content in those answers.
In summary, SEO and AIO go hand in hand. AIO can be seen as SEO 2.0 – an evolution, not a revolution. It retains the core principle of creating valuable, relevant content for users, but adds the mandate of structuring and presenting that content for AI consumption. For business owners, this means you don’t abandon what you know about SEO. Instead, you adapt your strategy to include AI considerations. Done right, AIO amplifies your SEO: you still aim to satisfy human searchers (in fact, Google’s advice remains “write for people, not bots”), but you also make sure AI “bots” can easily interpret your site and deem it worthy to showcase.
How AI is Changing Search Behaviour
The way people search for information online is undergoing a seismic shift. Gone are the days when a user would simply type a query and click through multiple links. Today, an increasing number of users are turning to AI-powered tools to answer their questions or find products – and this has big implications for businesses.
AI-powered search results are increasingly doing the heavy lifting for users. Google’s experimental SGE feature, for example, uses generative AI to automatically produce a summary at the top of the search results. Instead of the user scrolling through several websites to piece together an answer, Google’s AI Overview can synthesize the most relevant information into one digestible answer – with no clicks required. For users, this is incredibly convenient. For website owners, however, it’s disruptive. Publishers have reported significant traffic drops (in some cases up to 90% loss of traffic) when Google’s AI overview provides the answer and users no longer need to visit the site. Even large sites that traditionally dominate the rankings have felt the pinch: the Daily Mail (Mail Online) observed that when an AI summary is present, their click-through rate from Google results fell by over 50% on desktop (even if they were the top organic link). In short, Google’s AI summaries can siphon away the traffic that would normally come to your site, because the user’s query is answered before they ever click a result.
It’s not just Google. AI chatbots like ChatGPT have become alternative search tools for many users. ChatGPT famously amassed 100 million users within two months of launch – a testament to how rapidly people have embraced AI for finding information. Instead of performing multiple searches, a user might ask ChatGPT a complex question (“What’s a good gift for a 5-year-old who loves science?”) and get a detailed answer compiled from information across the web. Similarly, Microsoft’s Bing now integrates AI chat, and other platforms are following suit. This means some of your potential customers might bypass search engines entirely and consult an AI assistant. If that AI assistant doesn’t “know” about your brand or content, you effectively don’t exist in that interaction.
Google’s own dominance in search is starting to erode as AI rises. In 2023, Google’s share of global search engine usage fell below 90% for the first time in a decade. Why? Users are exploring new AI-driven search experiences – whether it’s AI-enhanced Bing, dedicated QA bots like Perplexity, or simply spending more time on platforms like YouTube/Reddit whose content is now being scraped by AI answers. The habit of search is changing: people expect faster, more conversational answers, and they trust what the AI presents.
For e-commerce searches specifically, the changes are profound. Google’s SGE, for example, doesn’t just spit out an answer – it can aggregate product listings and even make side-by-side comparisons directly on the search page. A shopper searching for “best running shoes for marathons” might see an AI-generated snapshot listing top-rated shoes from multiple brands, complete with images, prices, and pros/cons – all before any organic results. Your product could be right next to your competitor’s, curated by Google’s AI. In this new environment, you’re not just vying for a ranking; you’re vying for inclusion in an AI-curated showcase.
Crucially, searchers are clicking fewer links. As Google rolls out SGE to more users (it’s been testing in the US, and global expansion is expected), studies indicate a “big shift in search behavior where fewer people click through to websites”. If the AI overview gives them enough information, many won’t feel the need to continue to a third-party website for more details. This “zero-click search” trend isn’t entirely new (featured snippets have been doing it for years), but AI takes it to another level by answering more complex queries and including more content in the answer. For e-commerce, Google has stated that currently these AI summaries aren’t replacing the need to visit a site to transact – yet. Users still generally need to click through to actually buy a product, since Google isn’t a retailer. The good news for online stores is that, so far, e-commerce sites have been “spared” the drastic traffic loss that content publishers experienced. People still click through to read reviews, compare prices, and make purchases.
However, this respite may be temporary. The direction is clear: search results are becoming richer and more AI-driven, and future AI assistants might handle even more of the buying journey (imagine an AI that can place an order on your behalf). Google’s AI overview already advises and guides users in product selection. It’s not hard to envision a near future where an AI shopping assistant can check stock or even initiate a checkout via integrated tools. When that time comes, if your site isn’t prepared to work with AI agents, you could be left out of the loop entirely.
The takeaway is that AI is becoming a new kind of intermediary between you and your customers. Whether it’s providing instant answers, curating product options, or soon possibly handling transactions, AI will play a role at multiple stages of the customer journey. Your brand’s visibility and success will depend on how well you cater to this intermediary – which is precisely what AIO is about.
