AEO? GEO? The New SEO Might As Well Be Rocketship Building. Week 1

Olark here. We’ve spent 17 years perfecting website chat that converts. We just launched Olark AI (what we think is the best sales-focused website chatbot for the price!)

But now that AI has arrived on the scene, the game has changed. Getting recommended by an AI is a whole new discipline: apparently AEO (Agent Engine Optimization) is hot stuff and we should know what to do with it.

But here’s the truth: we’re clueless about AEO.

Perhaps our advantage is that we’re willing to admit it, yeah? We figured if we’re feeling this pain, others may be too. So, we’ll be documenting our journey from clueless to expert, one lesson a week, starting now.

This week’s lesson: admit you’re clueless. Then call your friends. Ben, our CEO, talked to three AEO experts:

• One watched ChatGPT wipe out 50% of his SEO software company’s revenue in a year. Wowza.
• One wrote a kind-of-intimidating-but-good AEO guide. Best insight so far: AEO is a company-wide, cross-functional problem, not a marketing checkbox.
• One is hosting a Sept 2 webinar on how his company boosted a client’s AI referral traffic 78%. We’re skeptical and attending. Join us.

Next week: how does Olark actually rank when an AI goes looking for us? We’ll show you exactly what we found, and what we’re doing about it.

See you next week (nervously),
Team Olark (Ben, Mandy, Rhi, Atinder, Logan)