SEO Isn't Dead. The Name Is. Tell Me I'm Wrong.

SEO isn't dead. The name is. Tell me I'm wrong in the comments. The name of the job has always followed the machine. Search engines gave us search engine optimisation. Answer engines gave us answer engine optimisation. Now AI agents shortlist, decide and often complete the booking for us. Agents don't search. They choose. So what do we call the job now? In this episode of Will AI Recommend You? I go through the names already in circulation (AEO, GEO, LLMO, AI SEO, AAO and AX), what each gets right and where it falls short, and why I think we should stop naming the machine and start naming the outcome. I also cover: The ladder: cited, recommended, chosen, and what each step asks of you Why rankings can rise while clicks fall Five questions an agent asks about your business Why I'd put digital PR ahead of old-school link building The honest counterweight: Google says this is "still SEO", and AI referrals are still a small share of traffic A test you can run today: ask an AI to book someone in your trade for next Tuesday. Is it you? Sources mentioned Pew Research Center, clicks with and without AI summaries (July 2025): https://www.pewresearch.org/short-rea... Google Search Central, optimising for generative AI features (May 2026): https://developers.google.com/search/... GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, Aggarwal et al. (2023): https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735 Jason Barnard and Kalicube on AEO and Assistive Agent Optimisation: https://kalicube.pro/methodologies/as... Conductor, AI referrals about 1% of website traffic (2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report, May to Sept 2025 US data): https://www.conductor.com/academy/aeo... Cloudflare blocks AI crawlers by default for new domains (July 2025): https://www.cloudflare.com/press/pres... Research on ChatGPT and search behaviour is split: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_... and https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-u... Research on AI referral conversion is split (Visibility Labs via Search Engine Land; Kaiser and Schulze, Marketing Science): https://searchengineland.com/chatgpt-... and https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/fu... Simon Young, Question.Marketing https://question.marketing   / aeo   Chapters 00:00 Is SEO dead? 00:27 "Find me a reliable roofer and book me a quote for Tuesday" 01:20 The name always follows the machine 02:44 The names already in circulation 05:45 Being seen stops mattering. Being chosen is the whole game 11:50 The ladder: cited, recommended, chosen 13:39 What each step asks of you 16:33 The honest counterweight 18:32 Credit where it's due 21:05 Five questions an agent asks about you 25:51 Stop naming the machine. Start naming the outcome 30:18 Try this today