Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and similar tools are increasingly where people ask questions instead of typing a search into Google. This is usually called AEO or GEO (Answer Engine Optimisation / Generative Engine Optimisation), and it runs on different rules to traditional ranking.

These systems favour content that answers a question clearly and directly, near the top of the page, in plain language, with the kind of structure a machine can lift cleanly: proper headings, direct answers before the elaboration, FAQ sections, and clean schema markup. Vague, padded, adjective-heavy content, the kind most SEO writing still is, gets skipped over in favour of whoever answered the question straight.

Practically, this means:

• Answering the question first, explaining second. Burying the actual answer three paragraphs into a page might still work for traditional ranking; it doesn’t work for getting quoted by an AI Overview.
• Structured content and schema markup, so machines can parse what your page is actually saying, not just what it looks like.
• Genuine expertise on the page, since these systems increasingly favour sources that demonstrate real knowledge over ones that just repeat what’s already ranking.

This is built into how we write content and structure sites now, not treated as a separate, newer service bolted on afterwards.