AI Search / Answer Engines

AI search refers to search experiences that return a synthesized, often cited answer instead of a list of links — including Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot. These answer engines retrieve passages from many sources, rank the evidence, and generate a single response, frequently using a query fan-out technique that runs several related searches at once. The practical shift for marketers is the zero-click answer: users get what they need without visiting a site, so being the cited source matters more than ranking #1. Winning here is the combined job of AEO and GEO.