How to Dominate AI Search Results in 2026 (ChatGPT, AI Overviews & More)

is transforming how users find

information. And by the end of this

video, you'll know how AI search works

and why it's so important, practical

ways to structure your site to get

picked up in AI search results, and why

traditional SEO is not dead, but in fact

is more important than

ever. My name is Matt Canyon, and I work

as a growth partner helping businesses

get more traffic, leads, and sales from

organic search. and I've partnered up

with Surfer to help demystify AI search

once and for all. See, the TLDDR version

of this video is that ranking in AI

search pretty much just boils down to

doing good SEO with a few important

nuances that can make it easier for

tools like chat GPT to index and present

your website. You've probably seen

people claim that GEO, generative engine

optimization, or AEO, answer engine

optimization, is the new

SEO. We just love our acronyms here in

digital marketing and sales, apparently.

In fact, drop your favorite corporate

acronym in the

comments. I think mine's probably

KPI. Just kind of rolls off the tongue.

Anyway, some even say that GEO is

effectively making Google obsolete. But

is that true? Let's look at the data.

According to Exploding Topics, Google

sees roughly 16.4 billion searches per

day. That's compared to ChatGpt's 1

billion queries per day. And a lot of

those chat GBT messages are probably not

traditional search queries like we would

think of. This figure presumably

includes all the stuff like, you know,

please respond to this email in a polite

way or please give me a step-by-step

guide on how to like this video on

YouTube, which I'm just saying be super

cool if you did. According to a 2025

study by the digital marketing agency

Higher Visibility, 79.8% of Americans

still prefer traditional search engines

for their queries. Most folks just tend

to stick with what they know, and that

happens to be good old Google. But make

no mistake, AI search is definitely on

the rise, but we have some time before

it's fully adopted into the mainstream.

And if you're targeting millennials or

Gen Z for your products or services, you

still have time, but maybe a little bit

less because according to this study,

those generations are much more likely

to fold AI tools into their search

behaviors. The good news is that GEO is

less of a new discipline you have to

master and more of an additional layer

that you add onto your existing SEO

foundation. So, as a smart, beautiful,

futurethinking marketing leader or

business owner that you are, you see the

writing on the wall and you know that

getting into AI search tools now before

they become mainstream is probably a

good idea, which is why you're watching

this video. Thanks. By the way, it's

important to note when we say AI search,

we're referring to appearing in results

from generative AI tools like ChatGpt as

well as Google's own AI overviews. And

although both are technically powered by

different large language models under

the hood, the tactics we discuss in this

video are very much applicable to both.

Speaking of AI overviews, Surfer

released a comprehensive study looking

at AI overview insights from over

400,000 searches, and the data is pretty

eye opening. So definitely check that

out after this video. The link will be

in the description. Here's the bottom

line. Generative AI platforms often pull

from the top ranking search results and

trusted sources to compose their

answers. So strong traditional SEO is

the foundation. You likely won't show up

in AI responses if you don't first rank

well organically. That said, there are

some specific things you can do to make

your website a prime candidate for LLM

consumption. We'll tackle these in a few

categories. The first is writing content

that AI loves. The second is technical

considerations for getting picked up by

AI. The third is the role of schema

markup and AI search. And lastly, we'll

look at authority and trust signals. But

before we get into this stuff, one of

the biggest things that's driven

marketers absolutely bonkers about GEO

is that there hasn't really been a

reliable way to track it. And if we

can't generate reports and fancy graphs

that go up and to the right, well, what

is all this for? Tracking clicks from

large language models isn't always

helpful also because most folks will get

the answer in a more conversational way

and not end up clicking any links. So

tracking brand mentions by AI, at least

right now, is the best way to measure

success. Surfer recently launched an AI

tracker that monitors mentions of your

brand or product across popular language

models. So, if you're a Surfer user, you

can take a minute before implementing

the tactics in this video to add your

company or product name and a short

description of your category. Surfer

will create relevant prompts for you,

and within a few minutes, you'll get a

full report that updates daily. Soon,

you'll be able to edit those prompts

manually, and Surfer plans to add

support for all popular large language

models in the coming months. Okay, so

now that we have a way to know where we

currently stand in AI search, let's talk

about writing content that AI loves.

Unsurprisingly, AI gravitates toward

natural language and question focused

content. AI models like chat GBT and

Claude and Grock and all the rest are

built on conversational text. So they

naturally prefer content that sounds

like a human expert explaining

something. AI prioritizes comprehensive

coverage following EEAT principles.

That's experience, expertise,

authoritiveness, and trustworthiness.

One 2024 study found that well organized

authoritative content like with clear

sections and FAQ entries increased

inclusion in AI generated answers by up

to 37% on platforms like Perplexity.

Now, we don't exactly know how Google or

these AI models evaluate EAT. that's a

little bit mysterious, but we do have

some concrete ways to demonstrate EAT in

our content. And those are sharing

firthand experiences or case studies

wherever possible, including statistics

and citing reputable sources, showcasing

your credentials or industry expertise,

or if you interview an industry expert,

showing their industry expertise,

presenting multiple perspectives on

complex topics, and addressing potential

objections or limitations. Third, AI

loves semantic richness and context.

Rather than repeating the same keyword,

use a natural variety of related terms,

concepts, and entities that create a

semantic web around your content. This

is where I really love using Surfer's

content editor. Instead of guessing

which related terms to include, Surfer

analyzes the top performing content and

gives you a comprehensive list of

semantically related keywords, NLP

terms, and questions to cover. Here are

a few other content formatting

considerations. First, both humans and

AI appreciate well ststructured content.

So, make sure you're using a clear

hierarchy of headings to break content

into logical sections. See, if someone

asks AI a specific question that you

answer in a particular section of your

page, a proper heading can direct the AI

to that part. Also, utilize bullet

points or numbered lists for steps,

tips, or lists of items. These are not

only really good and and scannable for

user experience, but they're easy for

the AI to quote verbatim and ensure no

key points are lost in a paragraph. In

fact, structured content formats like

lists and tables have been shown to

improve the chances of being featured in

AI answers. Next, use frequently asked

questions where appropriate to capture

succinct information that can be easily

parsed and repeated by AI search tools.

For example, does your software

integrate with Salesforce? Answer, yes.

Our software offers a native Salesforce

integration. It seems obvious, but

anytime we can really hold the hand of

these tools and direct them to clear

answers, we're going to increase our

likelihood of being featured in these AI

results. Lastly, use tables for

structured information. If you have data

that compares features, specs, pricing,

etc., a table is an excellent way to

present it. Again, not only for user

experience, but also for AI as well.

Structured tables can be parsed by AI,

and an AI might even quote a specific

cell. Okay. Next, let's talk about some

technical considerations for making sure

Chad GPT and other AI search tools can

actually access your site because it'd

be a shame if you did everything I just

mentioned and they can't even get to

your content. So, that leads us to

talking about crawability. Start by

double-checking your robots.txt file,

usually found just by typing

robots.txt at the end of your domain. AI

search tools typically pull information

from web indexes or use their own

crawlers. So, make sure you're not

disallowing OpenAI's GPT bot, Google's

crawlers, and Microsoft's Bingbot. By

the way, did you know that Chat GPT

search actually uses Bing's index?

That's right, humble old Bing is making

a comeback. That means it's all the more

important that you're indexed in Bing

and that you submit a site map to Bing's

web master tools, which by the way is a

super underrated SEO tool. Bing web

master tools. Check it out. To adjust a

robots.txt txt file, you'll typically

access it through your website's control

panel, a plug-in, or a server level text

editor. If you have a developer, they'll

know what to do. Second, ensure your

most important content is in HTML text

rather than hidden behind JavaScript or

buried in images or videos. While

traditional search engines have gotten

better at rendering JavaScript, AI

systems primarily read your raw HTML. If

your key information only appears after,

say, a JavaScript interaction or it's

embedded within images, AI might miss it

entirely. For the same reason, always

include descriptive alt text for images

and transcripts for videos. This makes

your multimedia content accessible to AI

systems. Third, optimize your site

structure and speed. A clear, logical

site hierarchy helps AI understand

what's important on your site. Keep your

most valuable content within a few

clicks of your homepage and use

descriptive internal linking. You see

what I mean? We're just we're talking

about good SEO best practices here. Now,

let's talk about the role of schema

markup. If you're unfamiliar with the

term schema markup is a vocabulary that

tells AI and search engines in general

precisely what type of information

you're presenting. It's code that humans

can't see, but that robots can use to

quickly determine what a page is about.

Now, it's been used by SEOs for years,

but according to Google, it's especially

important in the age of AI. Schema

markup also powers many of what Google

calls rich results, which are things

like knowledge panels, carousels, and

any other fancy non-extual things that

appear in Google search results. There

are several types of schema that are

particularly valuable for AI search

ranking. First, you've got your

organization schema that tells AI about

your brand, including your name, logo,

and social profiles. You know those

little knowledge graphs that will

sometime appear in Google search

results, those rectangles with all that

really handy information about a

company. Most of the time, Google is

pulling that from organization schema.

Now, article schema is probably the next

most popular for search optimized

content like blog posts. It explicitly

signals the publication date, the

author, the headline, all factors that

help AI determine relevance and

credibility. To make sure you have the

appropriate schema on your pages, I'd

recommend checking out the official

documentation for the types of rich

results that Google supports and making

sure that any of the relevant tags are

applied to your pages. More often than

not, these are the same types of schema

that AI tools are using to identify your

content. Now, implementing schema

markup, of course, does not

automatically guarantee that you're

going to show up in rich results or in

AI search results, but it does increase

your odds significantly by letting these

AI search tools know exactly what your

content is and how they ought to present

it. So, if we look at all these things

from a high level, really our goal here

is to make every important piece of

information on your site unambiguous to

machines. If an AI can easily parse that

your company is a cyber security company

founded in 2020 based in New York City

from your schema, it's more likely to

use those facts in an answer about say

cyber security startups in New York

City. And not only should that

information be clearly accessible from

your website, but also broadcasted

across the internet in as many places as

possible. See, AI models love to sample

data across large knowledge sources like

Wikipedia, business directories, and

industry databases. Even if you don't

have a full Wikipedia page, consider

adding your business to Wiki data, the

structured database behind Wikipedia.

These are prime candidates for Google's

knowledge panels and often sampled by

LLM training data. Beyond that, make

sure you have a presence on any and all

appropriate aggregation sites like

Google My Business, Bing Places, Yelp,

Apple Maps, LinkedIn Company Pages,

IMDb, PubMed, Crunchbase, or any other

industry database in your niche. So, to

wrap up this section, Google has

explicitly confirmed that there is no

secret AI tag or code or trick to help

you rank in Google's SGE. That's the AI

overviews at the top of the SER. These

tools rely on the wellestablished

structured data types that we should all

be using anyway as part of our SEO

strategy. Now, let's talk about how

building authority and trust signals

directly plays into boosting your AI

rankings. So, we already talked about

EAT signals a while back, and that's an

excellent way to build trust signals and

expertise from within your content. But

that's not enough. You also need to

build off-site authority signals. AI

doesn't just evaluate your content in

isolation. It considers what the rest of

the web says about you. That means

quality backlinks from respected sites,

mentions in industry publications,

positive reviews, and inclusion in best

of lists all send powerful trust signals

to AI and increase your likelihood of

showing up in results. For instance,

let's say you run a travel blog. If you

were to be listed in an article or

several articles titled top 10 travel

blogs of 2025, these are roundup

articles that go out and curate

resources for their users. If you were

to be featured in one of these on a

well-known site, that is pure gold. AI

answering what are some good travel

blogs might very well include yours if

it saw that list, especially if that

list is on a high ranking authoritative

site. So proactively reach out to

bloggers, journalists or industry sites

that do best of roundups and pitch your

inclusion. Even if you can't get a

proper do follow backlink from them,

just getting your brand mentioned is

still very valuable because large

language models are going to be sampling

that data most likely and serving it up

to users. Now, third, and perhaps most

importantly, is to develop comprehensive

topical authority. Because when you do

this, the other pieces of the puzzle

tend to just fall into place. This means

creating content that thoroughly covers

all aspects of your niche, answering the

full spectrum of questions your audience

might ask. Honestly, I have found that

just going out to achieve topical

authority is the best way to build brand

mentions and backlinks because when you

look like you're an authority on a

particular niche and you've covered it

from every angle, that motivates people

to naturally link back to your site.

Anyway, this is where Surfer's topical

map comes in absolutely clutch. Topical

map visually maps out your current

content coverage and identifies gaps

that might be undermining your

authority. Remember that study on AI

overviews I mentioned earlier in the

video? Well, Surfer found out that AI

overviews mention an average of five

sources per query, and 90% of the time,

Google lists eight or fewer sources. But

here's the cool part. These sources can

come from multiple pieces of content on

the same domain, meaning you can

significantly increase your chances of

showing up as a source in the answer

when you cover the topic from all

angles. So to summarize this section and

really as an overarching theme for this

video, it's important to build your

website and your content as if you're

trying to impress an expert human

reviewer because AI is essentially an

aggregate of many such reviewers.

Establishing your expertise and

trustworthiness not only helps

traditional SEO via quality raider

guidelines, influences, and things like

that, but directly affects whether an

LLM likes your content enough to repeat

it to users. So, I'm curious now that

you know that the big secret to GEO

ranking is really that there's no secret

at all, just the basics of good SEO. How

does that make you feel? For me, it's

encouraging because it's one less thing

to learn. And with tools like Surfer in

your tool belt, you can tackle whatever

the future of search holds without

getting overwhelmed. Surfer gives you

everything you need to increase your

rankings in both organic and AI search.

From keyword planning with topical map

to creating perfectly structured content

with content editor, you can identify

underperforming pages through content

audit. Strengthen your site structure

with automated internal linking and now

even track your AI search performance

with our AI tracker. At the end of the

day, as Ryan Law from HFS put it in his

insightful article, whether you call it

GEO, LLM O, or AEO, it all boils down to

just doing good SEO. So, if you want to

give Surfer a try, click the link in the

description to start increasing your

organic search ROI today. Feel free to

check out my channel for more SEO tips.

And if you want to continue leveling up

your SEO knowledge, subscribe to the

Surfer Academy YouTube channel and check

out this video next. Happy ranking.