Episode 1: Getting to Grips with AEO - Answer Engines Are Here to Stay
This is the first episode in the Epic series, Answer Engine Optimisation (the future of SEO). Today’s guests are Andy Drinkwater, Barry Schwartz, Craig Campbell.
Jason likes the idea that search engines are kind of vertical and answer engines are kind of horizontal. With a search engine, you type in and it gives you a list. A vertical list that you can scroll down and choose. But just one format of result - the blue link. With an answer engine, however, whether it’s typed or voice, the playing field is much more horizontal, i.e. you need to optimise for different formats so that you can be present on all these different devices.
Here are some considerations for businesses and marketers…
- Can you answer the question?
- Is your answer in a suitable format?
- Can you feed that answer to the service (Google, Alexa, Bing) i.e. through Yelp, Google, Bing or whatever?
- Ensure the service understands you. Whichever service that might be.
- Ensure the service sees you as the most credible. That was the E-A-T idea that Craig mentioned.
- Provide the content in a format they need. Otherwise, you can never be presented as the best answer because they cannot present you if the format is wrong.
The first episode of the #SEOisAEO series had a specific job to do: convince a largely sceptical search marketing audience that the shift from search engines to answer engines was real, already underway, and worth building a strategy around.
In September 2018, AEO was a concept Jason Barnard had been developing since 2017 - first in a whitepaper co-authored with Chee Lo at Trustpilot, then in a January 2018 webinar, then in a February 2018 article for Search Engine Watch. The SEMrush series was his attempt to make the argument at scale, with peers who could interrogate it rather than just receive it.
Andy Drinkwater, Barry Schwartz, and Craig Campbell were exactly the right guests for an opening episode. Barry Schwartz’s long-running coverage of Google through Search Engine Roundtable gave the episode credibility with the mainstream search community. Andy Drinkwater and Craig Campbell brought the practitioner lens - what does this mean for the actual work of optimising sites and campaigns?
The core argument the episode made was structural. A search engine’s output is a ranked list. Every position on that list has value, and the SEO discipline evolved to compete for those positions across thousands of queries. An answer engine’s output is a single answer, or a small set of direct answers, and the competitive dynamic is fundamentally different. If you’re not the answer, you’re not present. There’s no position two in a voice response. There’s no second Knowledge Panel.
The horizontal metaphor Jason introduced - search engines are vertical (scroll down the list), answer engines are horizontal (be present across formats, devices, and surfaces) - framed the optimisation challenge that the remaining 14 episodes of the series would unpack in detail. It also framed the challenge that the industry is still working through in 2026, now that AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and every other generative platform has made AEO’s core argument impossible to ignore.
The series started here. This is where the argument was first made publicly, with evidence, and with experts willing to debate it.
Watch here >>
Slideshare: AEO Series: Getting to Grips with AEO - Answer Engines Are Here to Stay
Published by: Semrush. Host: Jason Barnard. Guests: Andy Drinkwater, Barry Schwartz, Craig Campbell. September 4, 2018
