From search to answers: the evolution of SEO and AEO.
Customers used to search and click. Now Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity often answer for them. This guide explains how we got here and what local businesses should do now to be found, trusted, and recommended.
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Twenty-five years of search, and the shift happening now.
Each chapter ends with what carried forward, so you can see why yesterday’s SEO work still matters in AI search.
The first era
Keywords, links, and PageRank, and the idea that still shapes AI search.
Local and mobile
Maps, the local pack, and how Google says it ranks local businesses.
The quality era
Panda, schema.org, the Knowledge Graph, BERT, helpful content, and E-E-A-T.
Zero-click search
Featured snippets and why most searches now end without a click.
The answer engines
AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, and what they do to clicks.
How AEO works
Entities, structured data, citations, reviews, and Reddit and Quora presence.
SEO and AEO side by side
What overlaps, what changes, and how success is measured.
A 90-day action plan
What to fix first, what to build next, and how to track AI answers.
Owners and marketers of local businesses.
Storefronts that live in the Google Map Pack, and service-area businesses that need to be named when someone asks an AI who to hire.
- Understand why calls and clicks behave differently than they did a few years ago
- Learn what AI tools look for before they recommend a business
- Get a checklist you can start on this month, with or without an agency
Written by Near Me Boost
Near Me Boost helps local businesses get into the Google Map Pack and inside AI answers, with Map Pack SEO, AEO, Reddit and Quora authority, and websites.
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Book a free 15-minute call. We’ll look at how your business shows up in Google and in AI answers, and tell you plainly what we’d fix first.