In a duration of 18 months, a head of engineering has selected three vendors for a contract of Rs 4 crore without even visiting one website of any vendor.
The head of engineering relied on ChatGPT for vendor screening and compliance check along with information about the service network of three vendors in Western India. He was already 60% through the decision when he started searching online and had the other two already shortlisted.
If you do not belong to one of these three, you may not even know of the existence of this contract.
What alarms GEO and AEO is the fallout of the above-mentioned issue. Most B2B marketers in India think that this is a challenge they would face in 2027 only.
What GEO and AEO Actually Mean
Today, most people are overwhelmed by the many acronyms in the industry, and that’s why I will be brief in my explanation of the terms.
AEO means the improvement of the product you are selling so that machines are able to decipher it. AEO in the B2B sector has less significance in terms of quantity of information and rather focuses on its presentation that is machine-friendly, that means having defined titles and definitions, structured data, having frequently asked questions, and ensuring that important information is not hidden from the user.
GEO is more sophisticated than just structuring a web page; it uses the linguistic models to brand the company in the process of communication between the seller and the buyer, and the volume of discussion about the company is also of utmost importance in case of GEO.
SEO is defined as what helps one’s web page be discovered, AEO is what helps to answer one’s question, while GEO is about clearing one’s company’s name from smear. Thus, it is necessary to have all three services working without the possibility of replacing one with another. Businesses that were able to obtain guarantees from AI had a good SEO background. Anyone claiming generative optimization as a replacement for SEO in B2B cannot be deemed honest and should not be listened to.
The Numbers Look Small. Look Closer.
It would be intriguing to note that a great deal of marketers neglect or overlook the aspect of AI traffic and may not appreciate it. According to research carried out by Conductor, the current contribution of AI traffic to total traffic, is just 1%. Why should one, therefore, be concerned about it when they think of drawing up their quarterly plan?
However, it would be interesting to analyze this 1% and see what kinds of traffic it produces. In a study of valuable keywords, Semrush states that traffic produced through AI performs 4.4 times better than traditional organic traffic. According to Seer Interactive, the conversion rate of ChatGPT traffic is 15.9%, which is impressive in contrast with the conversion of organic traffic. However, Ahrefs writes that AI-generated traffic constitutes only 0.5% of all traffic but accounts for much more signups
What is the difference? The fact is that AI has already done some of the qualification work for you. This means that visitors that come to your site through the AI link have already had their questions answered, doubts clarified, and choices made. According to SE Ranking, AI-based traffic spends 68% more time on your site than traditional traffic.
When arguing in favor of businesses in B2B and creating the right noises about why they must focus on the AI traffic issue, it is vital to keep in mind that the traffic does not imply the quantity of traffic, but rather traffic density. While most industry studies say that traffic bears the highest intent, only a small percentage of marketers know about it.
What Actually Earns a Citation
The next element is the practical component.
Provide a discussion regarding the topic of artificial intelligence. Explain why it is important. Algorithms used in AI can process data without understanding it. An AI system will not understand the phrase, “In light of industrial automation developments…”. If the phrase is clear and straightforward, it will be quoted.
Provide clarifications about the companies involved in the research. The companies are categorized by the criteria such as specialization, geographical location or others. Consistent presentation of information regarding the companies informs the model about them.
Provide citable sources when searching for information on the companies’ websites. This is the major distinction between effective B2B SEO and simple adherence to some check-list. Whenever language models are involved in information retrieval, they pay attention to third-party information, including comparative articles, insights from the industry, reviews, forums and specifications.
Provide only the materials you could produce. In B2B sphere, it is clear that such a criterion is impossible to satisfy, since most of the content is just a reformulation of the same eight points.
Producing content related to alternatives and comparisons is desirable. People tend to keep asking questions regarding artificial intelligence “who is an alternative to X,” no matter what they hold in their minds. In case you do not produce such content someone will do it for you and you may either be listed in results or not.
Check whether the crawlers are going to find you. In particular, check robots.txt, whether you used JavaScript for writing some important content or whether you used schema markup. A number of B2B companies cannot be reached by crawlers.
Measuring This Without Fooling Yourself
Two Must-Have Practices You Should Do Prior to Spending any Money
First of all, the channel group when creating tracking for AI platform traffic needs to be created. Otherwise, the AI traffic will be interpreted as a regular referral or direct traffic, which portrays this channel as weak in practice. The good thing is that this step is done within a day.
Secondly, it is necessary to generate the list of prompts. The list should contain 40-50 questions from future buyers to an AI. One should use ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude every month to track how often the company name and competitors’ names are mentioned and whether the description given by the competitors of your company is accurate.
In that case, the citation count is the most vital metric. The traffic will come in about a month. This can be done by a good GEO or AEO service instead of made up “AI visibility scores,” having no methodology behind them.
One thing to keep in mind is that many AI responses do not cite any sources or references. It is difficult to track this channel entirely. Additionally, you might want to determine whether your B2B methods are based on influence rather than metrics, just like trade shows without full attribution. Those who succeed in this obtain AI visibility as on share of voice side and not that of traffic.
How Oxper Approaches GEO and AEO
We mainly operate in collaboration with industries producing chemicals, industry, B2B technology — where people have to do deep research and take time to finalize transactions. This is exactly where AI-driven research has made the biggest progress in terms of complex questions arising and big stakes involved.
We begin with a prompt audit: what specific issues the buyers from your industry are raising, what does AI bring up in this regard, what competitors are there, etc. That usually leads to some disappointing discoveries such as appearing old descriptions of your services, recommendations etc.
We proceed at both levels: AEO on site — the structure, schema, question-led content and concise answers; GEO — a presence on third-party resources, original content, comparative content, SEO basis for everything else aforementioned. This is where our B2B demand generation and account-based marketing comes in, since the target account is presently putting questions on the issue to AI and whether you are mentioned in its reply or not.
The effectiveness of disciplined search work is illustrated by the fact that our cooperation with Ion Exchange resulted in our ability to generate 200% more leads from the website than before, push up organic traffic by 90%, and land 300% more keywords on the first page. This achievement is underpinned by the content authority that fuels AI engines.
Don’t Wait for the Volume to Justify It
The legitimate reality about GEO and AEO in 2026 suggests that while traffic is still low and there are discrepancies in measurements, companies that assure AI ratings are relying on pure speculation only.
Actually, traffic from this source is the topmost quality, which presupposes that companies that operate GEO and AEO nowadays will hardly lose their positions within a few months. Citation benefit is accumulating – this is basically a single idea here.
If you consider waiting until the values are high enough to take action, the delay will mean that you will arrive when your competitors have already taught the model.
Book your GEO and AEO audit with Oxper today – we will conduct an analysis of your buyer prompt across the most popular AI platforms and find out what they think about you now.
