AI SEO is the work of making sure that when somebody asks an AI tool about the kind of thing you sell, the answer mentions your business and describes it correctly. The tools are the ones people now ask instead of searching, or as well as searching: Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot.
Most of the work is the same work that has always got a business found on Google. The part that is new is smaller than the advice going around suggests, and we can show why: in August 2026 we read 31 Google results pages for Oxford marketing searches and kept every answer Google’s AI wrote above them.
What Is AI SEO?
An ordinary search lists pages and leaves the choice to you. An AI answer reads pages for you and writes a few paragraphs, often naming businesses and linking to the pages it drew on. AI SEO is the work of being one of the businesses it names, for the questions your buyers ask, with the facts right.
You will see it called several things: SEO for AI, generative engine optimisation (GEO), answer engine optimisation (AEO), LLM SEO and AI search optimisation. In our view they describe the same aim from slightly different angles, and nobody needs to buy them as separate services.
It is not the same as AI ads, which are adverts written or targeted with AI, Google’s own tools included. Those are paid for. AI SEO is about being named in the written answer itself, which is not sold as an advert.
The answers are written from pages on the web, so the real question is how much of the old work still decides which pages get used. Our own readings, below, suggest most of it.
Where Did Google Write an AI Answer for Oxford Searches?
Our readings cover 23 Oxford searches for marketing, SEO, web design and ads, some of them read twice or three times, on 25 and 26 August 2026. They were run from London in a normal browser, which shapes what Google shows, so read what follows as one careful reading rather than a rule.
Google wrote an AI Overview above the results on 12 of the 31 pages, and on 8 of the 22 searches whose pages were copied whole. Whether it did depended mostly on the words in the search. When a search named a kind of business, Google drew a map; when it named only a service, as seo oxford does, Google more often explained the service instead. It showed both on only 2 of the 29 pages where we could see both, and none of the six searches about websites or design showed an AI answer at all.
| The search named | Searches | Showed a map | Showed an AI answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| A kind of business | 10 | 10 | 1 |
| Only a service | 12 | 6 | 7 |
What Did the AI Answers Say About Oxford Agencies?
Most of the twelve answers explained the service, then listed agencies with a line on each. The same agency appeared in 9 of the 12, and it describes itself as a specialist SEO and GEO agency. It was also on the first page of the ordinary results for those searches, which is the pattern the rest of our numbers repeat.
One answer, for seo oxfordshire, listed five agencies. One of them was there for its prices: Google said it offered “transparent monthly packages starting from £300”. By the usual measures it was the weakest website we looked at, with three other websites linking to it. A plain, specific fact on its own pages was enough to be quoted.
The answers can also be wrong. For local seo oxford, Google’s answer said that the city’s universities push commercial sites down the results, yet none of the 31 pages we read held a university website. An answer is only as good as the pages it read.
Does AI SEO Replace Ordinary SEO?
Not on what we measured. On 25 August 2026 we took two scores from Semrush, an SEO tool, for 13 Oxford agency websites: its Authority Score, which is its own estimate of a website’s strength in ordinary search, and its AI visibility, its own measure of how often AI tools mention a site.
The two websites Semrush scored zero for AI visibility had Authority Scores of 14 and 18. Nine of the 11 it scored above zero had higher authority than both, and the most visible had the highest authority of all, 41. Strength in ordinary search and presence in AI answers went together.
The clearest exception is the agency quoted for its prices, with an Authority Score of 6. It is why we would not call AI SEO exactly the same as SEO: a small site with clear facts can be quoted ahead of stronger ones. And no single measure sees everything: one of the two sites Semrush scored zero was mentioned in 4 of the 12 Google answers we read ourselves. Thirteen websites is a small sample, so read this as a direction, not a measurement.
What AI SEO Advice Is Worth Acting On?
Most of what works is ordinary good practice, done with an AI reader in mind. In our judgement, these are the steps worth paying for:
- State your facts in plain sentences on your own pages: what you do, where, for whom and from what price. That is what got the small agency quoted.
- Keep your business name, address and services the same everywhere they appear, so an answer stitched from several pages still agrees with itself.
- Answer the questions your buyers ask, in their words, near the top of the page that should answer them.
- Be mentioned on other websites people trust: reviews, local press, partners and the directories in your trade.
- Keep doing the ordinary SEO, because the sites strong in ordinary search were the ones AI tools mentioned most.
What Can You Safely Ignore?
Some of the advice going around costs money and changes little. We would leave these alone:
- A promise of a guaranteed place in ChatGPT or an AI Overview. Nobody controls what these tools write.
- A second version of your website written for machines. The answers we read drew on the same pages people read.
- Buying GEO, AEO and AI SEO as three services. They are one job with three names.
- Rewriting every page each time a new tool appears. The tools change faster than your services do.
How Do You Check What AI Tools Say About You?
Ask them, the way a buyer would. Write down five questions your customers ask before they buy, such as your service and your town, and put them to Google, ChatGPT and one other tool on the same day each month. Note who is named, what is said about you and which pages are linked.
Use the same wording each time and note where you were, because the answers change with place and over time: we read local seo oxford twice on the same day and saw an AI answer only the first time. If an answer describes you wrongly, find the page it drew on and fix that page, or ask for it to be fixed.