Zero‑click search has crossed the chasm from novelty to new normal. Increasingly, consumers have conversations with answer engines like Google’s AI Mode and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to satisfy curiosities, comparison-shop, and get recommendations — without needing to click through to brands’ websites. Twenty-six percent of US online adults used ChatGPT in the past month to search for products they were interested in buying, per Forrester’s latest Consumer Pulse Survey. That traffic barely shows up in brands’ Google and Adobe Analytics — it’s view-through, not click-through, traffic, but it’s very high-quality traffic that’s likelier to convert than traffic from traditional search engine links.

As answer engines divert discovery and squeeze the funnel, B2C marketing leaders across industries ask a difficult question: What’s the fastest, most durable way for brands to become more visible and authoritative across answer engines

AEO Is Becoming Make‑Or‑Break

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is significantly — but not fundamentally — different from SEO. Both disciplines demand succinct content, excellent site health, and deep customer understanding. But AEO is attuned to the seismic shift in search behavior. Consumers increasingly expect engines to synthesize answers, not rank links. That reshapes where influence occurs, how demand forms, and brands’ content, technical, and measurement strategies and tactics.

The stakes are rising quickly. Answer engines are becoming ever more capable of generating qualified demand while pulling from a broader, more unpredictable set of sources than traditional search results. Simultaneously, answer engines’ expanding monetization and zero-click shopping experiments aim to further compress discovery, evaluation, and commerce.

AI Spreads Faster Than Organizations Can Adapt

Most organizations are unprepared for AEO due to the variety of roles required for AEO success. AEO cuts across content, IT, paid media, social, PR, and corporate communications teams — functions that historically collaborated only loosely in SEO. Without centralized governance of AEO, brands struggle to consistently earn citations, optimize site health, and understand the true value of customers influenced by answer engines.

With AEO, marketing leaders must rethink both what they optimize and how they organize to mature their competencies. Content must be structured for crawlability and specificity. Offsite authority, entailing how brands appear across social media and premium publications, must be mutually supportive of onsite authority. And measurement should move well beyond traffic and clicks to convey authority, consideration, and downstream impact in a zero‑click world.

Join Us To Learn The New Rules Of Discoverability

At Forrester’s CX Forum East from June 16–17 in New York City, Emily Collins will interview Bridgestone Americas’ Peggy Costabile, VP of digital and demand marketing, about how her team is growing Bridgestone’s visibility across answer engines. At CX Forum West from June 29–30 in San Francisco, Emily will interview PetSmart’s Bradley Breuer, SVP of marketing, about the company’s AEO journey.

Both fireside chats will unpack what the rise of answer engines means for marketing leaders and how CX, digital, and marketing teams should adapt. Attendees will grasp how changing search behaviors reshape the funnel and redefine the roles of websites; hear applicable best practices spanning content, technical foundations, and measurement; and gain perspective on where answer engines are heading — including how monetization and commerce will alter visibility and performance expectations.