AEO: Why Getting Recommended by ChatGPT Matters as Much as Google Now

For twenty years, getting found online meant one thing: ranking on Google. That's still true, but it's no longer the whole picture. More people are now typing questions straight into ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot instead of a search bar, things like "who's a good plumber in Coventry" or "recommend an electrician near me who does EV chargers." Those tools don't give the asker a list of links to click through. They give a straight answer, usually one or two named businesses.

That's a new kind of visibility, and most trades' websites aren't built for it at all. SEO is about keywords, backlinks and page speed. AEO is about something slightly different: making sure an AI reading your site can actually understand and trust what your business does, where it operates, and that it's real. That means clean, accurate information in a format machines can parse properly, not just humans, things like structured data that states your business type, your service area and your reviews in a standard format, rather than burying it in a paragraph of marketing copy or a hero image.

A website that's just a nice looking homepage with a phone number in the header doesn't give an AI system much to work with. A website with proper structured markup, real reviews pulled through, and clearly stated service areas gives it exactly what it needs to say "yes, recommend this one."

This isn't a future trend to keep an eye on, it's already changing where enquiries come from today, and almost nobody in the UK trades space is doing anything about it yet. Every site we build at Nero Engine has this handled from day one, proper page structure, local business markup, a real sitemap and an llms.txt file that tells AI crawlers exactly what your business is and does. It's not an add on, it's just part of being found properly in 2026, on Google and everywhere else people are starting to ask instead of search.