The search shift: How AI is powering the rise of “AEO” startups like Profound
The swift rise of answer engine optimization is a leading indicator of the key role that AI chatbots will play in marketing and commerce. Get exclusive expert insights into how AEO works, who the top vendors are, and how to build a successful search strategy in the age of AI.
AI is transforming the SEO playbook
Making it to page one of Google search results is no longer the only holy grail.
For over two decades, search engine optimization (SEO) has been the backbone of digital visibility. Brands fought for “10 blue links” spots on results pages, tailoring keywords and backlinks to win traffic. Even as the game changed with sponsored results eating up more space, SEO remained critical. It still is today, but it’s changing — fast.
A new front door to the internet is opening, and it doesn’t look like a list of links peppered with sponsored results. It looks like a single answer.
From ChatGPT and Claude to Google’s AI Overviews, AI “answer engines” are changing how people find — and act on — information. Instead of clicking through a list of links to find the best sushi spot or the top project-management software, you can now get a synthesized answer from AI. Half of consumers use AI-powered search today, according to McKinsey research.
That’s led to the rise of what some call AEO, or answer engine optimization, and it signals a major tactical shift for companies. Case-in-point: business adoption of AEO companies more than doubled over the past year, our new Ramp Rate dataset shows.
“Compared to how SEO evolved, AEO is moving much faster,” says Eric Wu, senior director of AEO & SEO at Ramp.
There’s no question that the search game is changing. The real question is how fast… and who will ultimately benefit.
What’s the difference between AEO and SEO?
“AEO is an evolution of SEO,” Wu says, explaining that AEO currently relies on sources from SEO search indexes. “From a first principles standpoint, they aren’t all that different. Ultimately, they both revolve around solving an information retrieval problem for the consumer.”
But there are key differences in how they operate. Traditional search engines like Google rank pages using signals like authority, trustworthiness, and expertise. While AI engines also weigh these to determine what sources to cite, they don’t rank results linearly: they synthesize to generate one response.
“AI-enabled search will definitely be the new norm in the relative near term.” —Eric Wu, head of AEO & SEO at Ramp
In AEO, the key metric isn’t traffic: it’s how often a brand gets cited (aka “share of voice”).
“The biggest misconception is that AEO is just SEO with a new coat of paint,” says Trevor Pyle, head of marketing at AEO platform Profound, which recently hit a $1 billion valuation. “It's not. Traditional SEO is keyword-centric and Google-centric. AEO is prompt-based, conversational, and platform-specific.”
Despite these differences, Pyle says that AEO and SEO are complementary. “The brands that win will treat AEO as an extension of their SEO strategy, not a replacement,” Pyle says, adding that SEO teams are the best equipped to drive AEO strategy.
Right now, AEO is still so new that the acronym hasn’t even been universally agreed upon (some refer to it as GEO or AI SEO). But whatever it’s called, marketers are paying attention.
“The brands that win will treat AEO as an extension of their SEO strategy, not a replacement.” —Trevor Pyle, head of marketing at Profound
“AI-enabled search will definitely be the new norm in the relative near term, especially compared to how long it took Google,” Wu says. “Whether AEO becomes the new acronym is debatable, but I do believe that optimizing for ‘information retrieval’ will be a thing that we're still talking about in five years.”
AI search raises tracking challenges for marketers
As consumers increasingly use AI to make purchasing decisions, McKinsey projects that by 2028, $750 billion in U.S. sales will funnel through AI search
This is posing new questions for marketers. If someone discovers your brand inside ChatGPT and later buys from you, how would you know? How do you get your brand surfaced in AI answers?
“Attribution is one of the most difficult things in AEO,” Wu says, comparing it to hard-to-track marketing channels like TV, radio, and direct mail. He says there’s already been a meaningful disruption in click-through rates and overall traffic, since users can get answers more directly from AI. “However, many of these AI search surfaces still are not very helpful when users want to take an action. So regular SEO traffic is still prevalent.”
Wu observes that consumers often use AI to gather information, but will then navigate to Google to take an action. He says that savvy marketers can see if users are seeking out their brand after chatting with AI by monitoring these searches in Google Search Console.
“In a low-information channel like AEO, every bit of insight is valuable”
The new tracking challenges posed by AI search — coupled with the fact that so many consumers are now relying on it — have fueled the rise of AEO services, which provide insights into metrics like visibility and share of voice for specific prompts.
“In a low-information channel like AEO, every bit of insight is valuable,” says Wu, noting that AI answer engines currently lack the analytics provided by search engines. Wu says that partnering with AEO services helps companies like Ramp understand what customers see — and seek — from answer engines.
Pyle says that early adopters of AEO are already seeing significant revenue lift: “AI search traffic tends to convert at a much higher rate, up to 4x, because users arriving via AI are already deep in consideration mode.”
Adoption of AEO tools takes off, led by Profound
The new Ramp Rate dataset, which tracks the leading and fastest growing software vendors across 15 categories, shows that paid adoption of AEO vendors more than doubled over the past year to 1.3% of businesses (Ramp Rate is based on anonymized, aggregated transaction data from businesses using Ramp).
Profound is the most-adopted AEO tool with a 40% adoption rate in the category — about double the rates of the next most-adopted vendors, AirOps and Clearscope. Profound is also the fastest-growing vendor, followed by PeecAI, and is the most popular with first-time AEO buyers.
Profound, which has over 1,000 customers that include about 50 Fortune 500 firms, attributes its success partly to its top-tier talent, speed of execution, and large dataset.
“Profound analyzes over 150 million new user AI prompts monthly, the largest dataset of its kind, and allows brands to track topics that matter to them,” says Pyle, noting this is crucial for companies to know how they're showing up (or not) in AI-generated answers. ”With this data, our customers make decisions with a precision no competitor can offer.”
While AI-native platforms like Profound may have an AEO advantage, it’s not a zero-sum game. Ramp Rate data shows that AEO buyers appear to be layering on top of existing SEO tools, and SEO category adoption stayed roughly flat at 9% of businesses.
Zooming out on the wider engine optimization market, SEO incumbent Semrush dominates with 71% adoption in the SEO category. Semrush has also introduced AEO-focused features as established players set their sights on AI engines.
How to build a successful AEO strategy
AEO is still a murky territory, partly because it’s so new. Optimization strategies are far less defined than with SEO, which has had decades to mature.
“The tactics on how to optimize for an AI chatbot are constantly changing, and this is where testing is needed,” Wu says. His advice: gain a technical understanding of how LLMs and chat surfaces are built, then develop a disciplined testing methodology.
“Our goal is to create the best customer experience with the context that the customer is using one of these engines as a starting point,” Wu says. “You want to provide the right search signals and structure your site experience to reflect what those AI systems are favoring at the moment.”
“The brands that get real visibility into what AI is saying about them and take consistent action on it will compound their advantage over time, just like early SEO leaders did.” — Trevor Pyle
On a practical level, Pyle says AI engines tend to consistently favor:
- Authority and trustworthiness: Consistently recognized brands across the web.
- Structured, parseable content: Formats that are easy to extract and summarize (clear headings, bullet points, FAQs).
- Depth and topical authority: Comprehensive answers supported by specific data. Citations in reputable third-party lists (e.g., “Top 10 tools for X”) are a big amplifier.
- Cross-platform presence: Companies often focus too much on owned content and overlook third-party sources that are frequently cited by AI. Consistent brand descriptions across platforms like Reddit and Substack reinforce recognition and trust.
“The companies winning at AEO have broken down silos and unified their teams around common goals,” Pyle says, underscoring the need for alignment across SEO, content, PR, paid, and social.
“The brands that get real visibility into what AI is saying about them and take consistent action on it will compound their advantage over time, just like early SEO leaders did.”
The bottom line:
If search is the doorway to commerce, AEO is the new key… Search engines are a gateway to the internet, and the internet is a gateway to trillions in annual commerce. AEO is becoming critical in marketing, and Ramp data shows that AEO-focused companies are growing fast. This trend is a leading indicator of the increasingly important role that AI engines will play in business, marketing, and commerce.
