Everyone wants to rename SEO.
AEO.
GEO.
Whatever the next acronym is.
But the thing underneath has not changed.
I have been watching this happen for almost 30 years.
When I was at Yahoo in the late 1990s, we were building search features at the same time Google was building similar things. A lot of people think search is about some secret algorithm, but the reality is much simpler.
The system is trying to figure out what deserves to be shown.
That was true then, and it is true now.
Jason Barnard and I talked about this at Kalicube Summit 2026 because we are both looking at the same problem from different angles.
How do you prove that you are who you say you are?
How do you prove that you actually do what you say you do?
That is the signal.
The Content Trap
The biggest mistake I see people making with AI search is thinking the answer is more content.
More pages.
More blog posts.
More AI-generated articles.
But if nobody sees it, nobody interacts with it, and nobody takes action, what signal did you really create?
The algorithms do not just need words. They need proof.
They watch what people do.
Do people click? Do they stay? Do they engage? Do they become customers?
Those are the signals.
This is why the work Jason has been doing around entities, reputation, and trust matters. You can tell a machine anything about yourself. The harder part is getting the world to confirm it.
The Sal Sciorta Example
Sal Sciorta is a plumber in eastern Pennsylvania. He built a recognizable brand in his community. He has Superman branding on his vans, and he wears a Superman costume.
People know him.
That matters.
When we amplify Sal’s content to people in his area, the engagement is different because the audience already understands who he is. They watch the videos, leave real comments, and recognize the person behind the business.
We are not creating attention.
We are amplifying proof that already exists.
AI Agents Are Another Audience
The other thing Jason and I discussed was AI agents.
A lot of people think this is a completely different game. I do not think it is.
An AI assistant is another audience you need to earn trust from.
A human assistant can recommend a restaurant, choose a service provider, or make a purchase decision. AI agents will do the same thing.
I saw this myself in Seoul. I asked an AI assistant for the best Korean barbecue. It did not send me to the tourist street. It sent me to a restaurant hidden in a back alley on the fourth floor of a building.
It looked like the wrong place.
But it was incredible.
That restaurant did not win because it had the biggest storefront or the biggest advertising budget.
It won because the signals were real.
The reviews were real.
The experience was real.
The reputation was real.
Location used to be everything.
Now it is signals.
AEO, GEO, and SEO are not three different disciplines.
They are different names for the same thing.
Do what you say you do.
Create real experiences.
Then make sure the machines can see the proof.