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AI SEO and AEO: What Changes for Indian Businesses
Written by Chayan Sarkar, founder of Boost It Junior
AI SEO, AEO (answer engine optimisation) and GEO (generative engine optimisation) are names for the same goal: getting your business found, cited and recommended inside AI answers, from Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini.
The good news is that most of it is still SEO. Google says there are no special requirements or markup needed to appear in its AI features. What changes is where your attention goes.
What AI SEO, AEO And GEO Mean
AI SEO is the broad term for making your site and business visible in AI-generated search answers. AEO focuses on being the source an answer engine quotes when someone asks a direct question. GEO focuses on being included and recommended in longer generated answers.
Different vendors draw the lines differently, and for most businesses the distinction doesn’t matter. The work underneath is the same: be easy to find, easy to understand and worth citing.
What Google Says About AI Overviews
Google’s guidance for site owners is direct. There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, no special optimisations needed and no special structured data to add. A page has to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet, and the usual SEO fundamentals apply.
Those fundamentals include letting Google crawl your pages, including through your hosting and CDN, linking to important pages from elsewhere on your site, keeping key content in text, making sure structured data matches what’s visible on the page, and keeping your Business Profile up to date. Traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in Search Console’s Performance report under the Web search type. You can read the guidance in Google’s documentation on AI features and your website.
How AI Answers Choose Their Sources
AI answers are built from pages the system can find and trust. Google’s AI features draw on its search index. ChatGPT and Perplexity run their own searches and crawlers, so your site needs to be reachable by those too.
Answers also lean on what the rest of the web says about you. A business that appears in trusted directories, local news, reviews and well-kept ‘best of’ lists gives AI systems more to go on than one that only talks about itself on its own site.
What To Actually Change
Answer the question first. Use the questions people type as headings and answer each in two or three plain sentences before going into detail.
Make facts easy to lift. Tables, clear definitions, dated ‘updated’ lines and specific details such as the areas you serve are easier for AI systems to quote accurately.
Be clear about who you are. A proper about page, named authors, and identical business details on your site, Business Profile and listings.
Earn mentions. Listings, local media coverage, partnerships and genuine reviews all add to what AI systems know about you.
Let the crawlers in. Check your robots.txt and any firewall or bot protection on your hosting. Some security settings block AI crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot without you noticing.
What Not To Waste Money On
Special AI files and markup. Google says you don’t need new machine-readable files, AI-specific text files or special schema to appear in its AI features.
Mass-produced AI content. Publishing large numbers of unreviewed AI-written pages is what Google’s spam policies call scaled content abuse.
Bought list placements. Paying to be ranked first on someone’s ‘top agencies’ list is a short-term trick that readers and search systems are learning to discount.
Guaranteed AI citations. Nobody controls what an AI system says. Treat any guarantee the way you’d treat a guaranteed Google ranking.
How To Measure It
Search Console includes AI Overview and AI Mode traffic in its Web performance data. In Google Analytics, look for referral visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and similar sources.
Once a month, ask the same set of questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google, the kind your customers would ask, and note whether your business is mentioned or cited. Watch your brand searches too: more people searching for you by name is often the first sign that AI answers are recommending you. Our SEO services in India page explains how we build this into ongoing work.
| Traditional SEO | AI search (AEO and GEO) | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank a page in the results | Get cited or recommended in an answer |
| What it rewards | Relevance, quality, links | The same, plus direct answers and mentions elsewhere |
| Special markup | Structured data where relevant | None required, according to Google |
| Crawlers to allow | Googlebot, Bingbot | Also OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot |
| How you measure it | Rankings, clicks, enquiries | Search Console Web data, AI referrals, prompt checks |
| Biggest risk | Thin content | Scaled AI content and invented claims |
The Bottom Line
AI SEO isn’t a separate discipline you need to buy on top of SEO. It is good SEO with sharper answers, cleaner facts and more mentions around the web. Fix the fundamentals, make your pages easy to quote, and check that AI crawlers can actually reach your site.
Boost It Junior builds AI search visibility into its SEO work for businesses in Kolkata and across India.
FAQ
Questions before we cook.
AEO, or answer engine optimisation, is the part of SEO focused on getting your content quoted when someone asks a search engine or AI assistant a direct question.
Mostly not. Google says no special optimisation is needed for its AI features. AEO puts more weight on direct answers, clear facts and mentions across the web, but it rests on the same SEO fundamentals.
Make sure its crawlers can reach your site, publish clear answers to the questions your customers ask, keep your business details consistent everywhere and earn mentions on trusted sites. No one can guarantee a mention.
Not for Google. Google says you don’t need AI-specific text files to appear in its AI features. Other AI systems haven’t made it a requirement either.
Google counts it in Search Console’s Performance report under the Web search type. For ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, check referral traffic in Google Analytics.
Want your business to show up in AI answers?