I used to spend a lot of time on Google. Today, not so much.
These days, when I have a question, I ask ChatGPT or Perplexity instead of typing it into a search box. I get an answer right there. No clicking required. More and more people are doing the same.
For writers, that changes the game. It’s no longer enough to rank on Google. You also need your content to be the kind of source AI systems quote and synthesize when they answer questions.
There’s a name for this shift. Generative Engine Optimization. GEO for short, or AEO if you prefer “Answer Engine Optimization.”
When someone asks an AI a question, the system will search and retrieve information from multiple websites, then synthesize its own answer. Your site might get a mention. It might not.
So how do you optimize your site to get quoted in these AI answers?
I’ve been teaching this for over 20 years. Just with different words.
Here’s the part that makes me smile. I’ve spent a big chunk of my career telling writers to stop writing in business or marketing speak. Write conversationally. Answer the real question a real person is actually asking. Skip the throat-clearing. Get to the point.
Turns out, that’s exactly what AI engines want too. They don’t reward padding, or five paragraphs of scene-setting before you finally answer the question. They reward clarity, stated plainly, near the top of the page.
Everything I’ve been coaching for years suddenly fits remarkably well with the way AI search works. I’d love to take credit for predicting this. I didn’t. I just happened to already be teaching something that turned out to matter.
So what do you actually do about it?
A few things. None of it complicated.
Answer the question in the first two sentences. Not the fifth paragraph. AI engines are skimming for the answer. So is everybody else.
Write like a person talking to a person. Formal, stiff copy makes it harder for AI to identify the good stuff. The same goes for copy stuffed with keywords.
Say something specific. A number. A real example. An actual opinion. Generic advice doesn’t get cited. Nobody quotes “communication is important.” They quote the writer who says something nobody else said quite that way.
Structure it so a machine can lift it out cleanly. Short paragraphs. Clear subheads. A sentence that could stand alone if someone yanked it out of context, because that’s exactly what’s about to happen to it.
Don’t confuse long with thorough. There’s advice going around telling people to write very long content because that’s supposedly what AI wants. It’s not quite right. Word count by itself isn’t the goal. A 4,000-word article isn’t automatically more quotable than a 900-word article. What matters is whether the page contains useful, relevant sections that answer specific questions well.
The clients who’ll pay for this
Here’s the part that matters most to you, as a freelancer.
Your clients are starting to notice their traffic dropping, and most of them have no idea why. They just know something’s wrong, and they’re a little rattled by it.
That confusion is your opportunity. Not because you need to reinvent yourself overnight as some kind of AI-search technician. But because you already know how to write the way these engines reward. You’ve been doing it, or learning to do it, all along.
Somebody is going to explain this shift to your clients, calmly and clearly, and get paid well for it. It might as well be you.
Concluding thoughts…
Google search isn’t going away. But it’s no longer the only door into your writing. And for a growing number of readers, it isn’t a door at all.
The writers who do well over the next few years won’t be the ones who panic about this. They’ll be the ones who realize they were already halfway there.
Write like a human, talking to a human, answering a real question. That’s always worked. It still does.
And don’t stop thinking about Google. Traditional search visibility and AI visibility increasingly overlap.
