In progress "answer engine optimization" · 1,900/mo
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
The older label that survived. What AEO still means now that featured snippets share the stage with AI Overviews and chat responses.
Content cluster · AI Search
AI Search: GEO, AEO, LLM SEO, and Agentic Search
The four optimisation disciplines for an AI-mediated web. Pillar explainers, a live tool radar, and field experiments run on real brands by the CTAIO Labs team.
Live pillars
Pillar 14 min
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
The discipline of shaping what generative answer engines say about your topic. The Princeton paper that named it, the tactics that actually move citation rates, and field evidence on real brands.
Read → Pillar 12 min
Agentic Search
Marie Haynes' term for the next shift in search: AI agents that browse, read, and synthesise on the user's behalf. Two meanings, five engines to watch, and what publishers can do about it.
Read → Radar 16 min
6 GEO Tools the Radar Actually Recommends
Twelve generative engine optimisation platforms scored across 18 metrics. Six earned a Radar recommendation. The full vendor map, with prices, coverage, and what the pitch decks leave out.
Read →Pillars in progress
Four explainer pillars publish under this hub through Q2 2026. Each one targets a single discipline, with a working definition, a market overview, a tactical checklist, and links to the live experiments in CTAIO Labs.
In progress "llm seo" · 880/mo
LLM SEO
Umbrella term for getting your content cited inside LLM outputs at all. What it covers, where it stops, and how it differs from the disciplines next door.
In progress "geo vs aeo" · 390/mo
GEO vs AEO vs LLM SEO vs Agentic Search
Four terms, one disambiguation page. When a vendor pitches you one of them, this is the article you send back.
Field evidence from CTAIO Labs
CTAIO Labs is the practitioner side of our network. The team runs each experiment with real budget on real brands, then publishes the methodology and the citation numbers. Treat these as the empirical layer underneath the pillars above.
Season 3 hub
CTAIO Labs · Season 3 hub
All three field experiments below in one place, with methodology, scoring rubric, and the joint scorecard published when the podcast wraps the season.
Read on ctaio.dev → CTAIO Labs · S3E1
10 LLM Visibility Tools on 3 Real Brands
Profound, Peec AI, AthenaHQ, Otterly, Scrunch, Evertune and four more — scored on coverage, accuracy, pricing, and freshness against three real brand portfolios.
Read on ctaio.dev → CTAIO Labs · S3E2
GEO vs AEO vs LLM-SEO — Same Content, Three Playbooks
One identical article rewritten under each of the three optimisation frameworks. Citation rates measured across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
Read on ctaio.dev → CTAIO Labs · S3E3
llms.txt — 30-Day Citation Experiment
llms.txt, schema markup, and FAQ optimisation rolled out on three sites. Citation delta measured weekly across the major engines.
Read on ctaio.dev →Common questions
What is AI Search?
AI Search is the umbrella term for any way of finding information that runs through a large language model. It covers generative search (AI Overviews, Bing Copilot Search), agentic search (ChatGPT Agent, Perplexity Pro, Gemini Deep Research), and the everyday case of users typing questions into ChatGPT or Claude instead of Google. The optimisation disciplines split along the same lines: GEO, AEO, LLM SEO, and agentic search optimisation.
What is the difference between GEO, AEO, LLM SEO, and agentic search?
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) targets the synthesised answers that search engines now show alongside or instead of links. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the older term, originally aimed at featured snippets and People-Also-Ask. LLM SEO is the broadest label — getting your content into LLM outputs of any kind. Agentic search optimisation is the most demanding case, because the reader is an autonomous agent, not a person scanning a SERP. The four overlap on most tactics. The disambiguation pillar treats them in detail.
Where should a team start if they have never optimised for AI Search?
Start with the Agentic Search pillar — it covers the entire surface in plain language. Then read the Radar's GEO tools comparison to understand the measurement layer. From there, work through the three CTAIO Labs experiments to see what the playbook produces on real brands. That sequence covers the theory, the tooling, and the practitioner evidence in roughly two hours of reading.
Is AI Search going to replace traditional SEO?
No. It changes what SEO measures. Click-through on informational queries falls because agents answer in place. Brand co-occurrence in trusted sources, citation count inside AI engines, and conversion from AI-referred sessions become the new KPIs. The craft survives: match intent, earn trust, make content machine-readable. The reporting changes.
How does WeTheFlywheel cover this topic?
Three surfaces. This hub publishes long-form pillar explainers (GEO, AEO, LLM SEO, agentic search). The WTF Radar publishes scored tool comparisons in the category. And CTAIO Labs — the practitioner side of our network — runs hands-on experiments with real brands and publishes the methodology and the numbers.