Three years ago, if you wanted your business to be found online, you had one main place to focus on: Google search results. Get your site in front of someone searching for what you do, in the area you do it. That's still important. But it's no longer the whole picture.
Millions of people now use AI tools to answer questions they previously typed into a search box. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's own AI Overviews. When someone asks one of these tools "who are the best accountants in Leeds" or "what should I look for in a web designer in Birmingham," those tools generate an answer. The businesses that appear in that answer didn't get there by accident.
That's what ASEO — AI Search Optimisation — addresses. It's the set of practices that affect whether your business gets found, mentioned, and recommended by AI tools, not just traditional search engines.
How AI tools decide what to say
Traditional SEO is about ranking well in a list of ten blue links. ASEO is about being the source an AI system trusts enough to cite or reference when it generates a response. The two aren't the same, though they overlap significantly.
AI tools source their answers from several places: their training data (which includes anything that was publicly available on the internet up to a certain point), live web searches that some tools run before answering, and the sites that consistently appear as authoritative sources in their results. A business that appears frequently in credible third-party sources, whose website is well-structured and clearly describes what it does and who it serves, and whose content is fresh and specific, has a better chance of appearing in AI-generated answers.
The research is consistent on one point: brands are 6.5 times more likely to be cited in AI answers through references elsewhere on the web than through their own website. What other sites say about you matters as much as what your own site says.
What's different about ASEO compared to SEO
Traditional SEO focuses heavily on where you rank on the results page. ASEO shifts the question to: does this AI tool know my business exists, trust it, and choose to mention it?
The practical differences show up in a few areas:
- Structured data becomes more important. Schema markup tells AI systems what your page is about in precise terms. Pages with proper schema are significantly more likely to be cited in AI-generated answers. Most small business websites have none.
- Content structure matters differently. AI tools disproportionately pull from the beginning of an article. Key claims, answers, and credentials should appear early, not saved for a conclusion.
- Third-party mentions carry more weight. Reviews, press mentions, forum references, trade directory listings, and editorial links all contribute to an AI system's understanding of whether your business is credible. A business with a good website but no external footprint is much less visible to AI search than one with consistent mentions across multiple sources.
- Freshness matters. 85% of content cited in Google's AI Overviews was published in the last two years. Websites that haven't been updated recently are less likely to appear as sources.
Where UK small businesses currently stand
The honest picture is that very few UK small businesses have done any ASEO work at all. The conversation is newer here than in the US, the tools are still rolling out their UK coverage, and most SEO advice still focuses entirely on traditional ranking signals.
That makes it an early-mover opportunity. The businesses that sort their structured data, build out their off-site mentions, and create content that AI tools can cite clearly are positioning themselves ahead of competitors who haven't started thinking about this yet. The window isn't infinite, but it's still open.
It's not separate from SEO. Almost everything that helps with traditional SEO also helps with ASEO: a well-structured site, clear content, consistent business information, good reviews, and a credible online presence. The additional work is specific: adding structured data, improving content structure, and building external mentions deliberately rather than leaving them to chance.
A business that does both well is better positioned for both kinds of search. A business that ignores both is increasingly invisible across the board.
For more on the specific signals that affect AI search visibility, the ASEO page covers the detail. For the data behind how AI search has affected traffic and click rates, the AI search statistics page has the research.