The Way We Search…

Think about the last time you genuinely didn't know something.

You didn't walk to a library. You didn't call a friend. You typed or spoke into a box, and an answer came back in seconds. This feels completely ordinary now. It wasn't, not very long ago.

The beginning: organised chaos

In 1990, the internet was still in its infancy. The first search tool, called Archie, simply indexed file names so people could locate documents online. There was no Google, no algorithm, no ranking. Just a list of files and a lot of hope.

By 1994, WebCrawler became the first search engine to index the full text of web pages, meaning you could search for any word that appeared anywhere on a page, not just in its title. Within months of launching, it had served its one-millionth query. People were hungry for this. They just didn't know how to ask for it yet.

Then came Google — and the rules changed

In 1996, two PhD students at Stanford, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, worked on a research project called BackRub. Their key insight was borrowed from academic publishing: a paper cited by many others is generally more important. A link from one page to another worked the same way: an implied vote of confidence. This became the PageRank algorithm.

Search stopped being about finding files. It became about earning trust.

For the next two decades, brands learned to play this game. Keywords. Backlinks. Content volume. SEO became a discipline, a department, an industry.

Then people stopped clicking

Here's where it gets interesting. AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews are changing how search discovery works entirely. Ahrefs found that AI Overviews reduced click-through rates for top-ranking content by 58%. Why? Because Google now gives users the information they need without requiring them to leave the search page.

The searcher got what they wanted. The website got nothing.

Three terms worth understanding

This is where three words enter the picture. They sound technical. They aren't.

SEO — Search Engine Optimisation. You write content so Google ranks your page when someone searches for it. Think of it as putting your shop on the right street.

AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation. AEO earns the position of the answer. Instead of optimising for rankings, you structure your content so answer engines can extract and deliver it directly to the user as the definitive response. You're not the shop anymore. You're the answer on the sign outside.

GEO — Generative Engine Optimisation. GEO shapes how AI models talk about your brand inside generative responses, summaries, comparisons, and recommendations when a user asks a question. GEO focuses on context and association rather than rigid keywords. Think of it as being the brand an AI naturally recommends, the way a trusted friend would.

So is SEO dead?

No. GEO and AEO do not replace SEO. They extend it. The AI citation surface still leans on traditional organic ranking. The foundation matters more than ever; what's changed is what you build on top of it.

The brands winning today aren't choosing between SEO, AEO and GEO. They're building content that is findable, extractable, and trustworthy enough to be recommended by a machine.

Search has always rewarded the clearest answer. It still does — the machine asking the question has just gotten a lot smarter.