For twenty years the job was to rank on a page of ten links. A buyer scanned the page, opened three tabs and made up their own mind. An assistant does that reading for them and hands back one answer with two or three names in it.
What stays the same
Pages still need to load fast, be crawlable and say something true. Assistants lean on sources that already rank, so the technical work you did for search is not wasted. It is the ground floor.
What changes
The unit of success moves from a position to a mention. You are either in the answer or you are not, and there is no page two.
- Write the answer first, then the explanation
- Put numbers and names where a model can lift them in one sentence
- Earn mentions on the sites assistants quote, not only links to your own
What to stop doing
Long introductions written to hold a keyword. Thin pages that exist for one phrase. Reports that only show rank and traffic.
If a model cannot quote you in one clean sentence, it will quote someone else.
Where to start
Pick the twenty questions your buyers really ask before they buy. Ask each one to three assistants and write down who gets named. That list is your first AEO report, and it usually takes an afternoon. Most teams find two surprises in it: a small competitor who is named everywhere, and one of their own pages that is quoted without being linked. Both tell you what to fix first, and neither shows up in a rank tracker.
