The Search Landscape Has Been Reloaded
If 2023 was the year search got weird, then 2024 was the year it broke open. Google rolled out AI Overviews (source: blog.google), OpenAI moved into consumer search with SearchGPT, and Perplexity rose from niche to household name-reshaping how people find, trust, and consume answers.
Most marketing teams are still playing SEO checkers while search engines have moved on to AI chess.
Generative search now interprets your content, summarizes it, cross-checks it, and decides whether you’re worth citing. If your content isn’t directly answerable, topically coherent, technically clean, and supported by credible authority signals, AI will simply rewrite you-or skip you entirely.
That’s why we built RankAbove.ai: to help brands survive and thrive in this post-SEO world.
Below is the definitive AEO/GEO Readiness Quiz. Use it to understand where your brand stands today, and then download the scorecard to start improving tomorrow.
Take The AEO/GEO Readiness Quiz!
How to use it: Score each question 1 to 5 (1 = we aren’t there yet, 5 = we’re dialed in)
Download the scorecard here: AEO/GEO Readiness Scorecard | Optimize for AI Search Engines – RankAbove.ai
1. Content Quality & Structure
LLMs cite content they trust. That means clean structure, clear answers, and predictable formatting.
▢ Are you delivering concise, direct answers that AI can quote accurately?
▢ Do your pages use definitions, bullets, tables, and semantic headers?
▢ Is your content written for humans but optimized for AI summarization?
2. Authority & Source Strength
AI engines prefer credible, verifiable sources.
▢ Do external sites reference your brand?
▢ Do you include citations, data, examples, and expert commentary that signal credibility?
▢ Are you building entity-level authority instead of relying on basic SEO signals?
3. Technical Hygiene
Technical clarity = easier AI parsing.
▢ Does your site load fast and render clean?
▢ Are you using schema markup (FAQ, How-To, Organization, Product, Author)?
▢ Is your page architecture crawlable by LLM-powered spiders and vector indexers?
4. Multi-Format Answerability
AI engines prioritize content that answers quickly.
▢ Do you provide answer formats: FAQs, lists, definitions, stats, comparison tables?
▢ Are your product and service pages designed to be “quote-ready”?
▢ Does your content make it simple for AI to extract meaning without hallucination?
5. AI-Ready Keyword Strategy
Search intent is shifting from “keywords” to “questions, tasks, and goals.”
▢ Have you mapped content to explanatory, advisory, and procedural intent?
▢ Do you track your visibility in AI Overviews and generative engines-not just Google rankings?
▢ Are you optimizing for zero-click visibility (citations, summaries, references)?
6. Topical Depth & Coverage
AI engines rank entities, not keywords.
▢ Do you maintain deep topical clusters and internal link networks?
▢ Are you updating content frequently to satisfy LLM recency bias?
▢ Does your content demonstrate depth across your niche-not just isolated articles?
7. Competitive Differentiation
Generative engines prefer the best source, not the oldest one.
▢ Do you know how competitors are cited in AEO summaries?
▢ Have you identified citation gaps where competitors appear weaker than they look?
▢ Are you creating content that closes those gaps?
8. Conversion Resilience
AI search often reduces organic traffic by 15–64% for many sites (source: Forbes).
▢ Can your funnel survive a 30–60% traffic dip?
▢ Are you capturing first-party data consistently?
▢ Are you building communities and direct channels, not just audiences?
9. Performance Monitoring
AI engines require new KPIs.
▢ Are you monitoring brand presence inside generative answers?
▢ Do you track citations, summaries, and AI-pulled snippets?
▢ Have you built dashboards that surface AI rewrites and content drift?
10. AI-Integrated Operations
AEO/GEO is not a marketing project-it’s an organizational capability.
▢ Are SEO, PR, content, product, and AI teams aligned?
▢ Are you using AI agents or platforms (like RankAbove.ai) to accelerate optimization?
▢ Do you have quarterly AEO/GEO readiness reviews?
What Your Total Means:
40–50: You’re Built for the Future – AI engines trust you. Competitors should be nervous.
25–39: You’re on the Right Path (But Exposed) – Strong foundation-vulnerable to AI search shifts. Fix before Q2.
0–24: You Need an AI Search Reboot – Your content is easy for AI engines to rewrite-and they already are.
Download the AEO/GEO Readiness Scorecard https://solutions.fulcrumdigital.com/rankabove-aeo-geo-readiness-scorecard
Use this to audit your site, your content, and your entire digital footprint.
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)?
AEO is the practice of optimizing content so AI search engines-like Google AI Overviews, SearchGPT, and Perplexity-can extract accurate, high-trust answers directly from your website. It focuses on clarity, structure, citations, and authoritative formatting.
What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?
GEO ensures your content is favored by generative engines that summarize and create answers (source: arXiv paper on GEO, 2025). It emphasizes topical depth, entity-based authority, and multi-format answerability.
Why is AI search reducing organic traffic?
Generative search engines provide answers directly in the interface, reducing click-through rates by 15–64% depending on industry (source: Forbes).
How do I improve my AEO/GEO score?
Strengthen authority, update content frequently, use schema, build topical clusters, and add clearly structured definitions, bullets, and citations.
Is GEO replacing SEO?
Not replacing… expanding. SEO gets you indexed. AEO/GEO gets you cited, summarized, and trusted by AI platforms and systems.
About the Author
Don Pingaro is the Regional Director of Marketing, North America at Fulcrum Digital, where he leads enterprise marketing strategy across AI, digital transformation, and platform innovation for clients in insurance, financial services, higher education, and consumer commerce. He is also the Co-Creator of RankAbove.ai, a next-generation AEO/GEO platform built to help organizations achieve high levels of brand visibility inside AI search systems like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, among others.
