Stop Optimising for AI Search Like it's 2025
Every marketing blog is currently publishing the same six AEO tips in a different order.
Most of it is noise.
The four things that actually work are small, dull, and doable this week.
What actually gets you cited by AI in 2026?
Your brand needs to be unambiguous as an entity; your content has to add something the model hasn’t already eaten ten thousand times, and other sources describe you the same way you describe yourself. Everything else is decoration.
What To Do
Write the sentence once. Paste it everywhere.
“Empowering modern teams to do their best work” is not positioning.
Write an actual sentence: “Acme is a payroll API for European fintechs.”
Then put it, verbatim, on your homepage, LinkedIn, G2, Crunchbase, About page, meta description, and the first line of every podcast you do this year.
If your site says one thing and LinkedIn says another, you’re increasing ambiguity.
Models hedge on ambiguity. Hedging means you don’t get named.
Put one number, one quote, or one named framework in every post.
Princeton’s GEO research found expert quotes lifted citation probability by 41%, statistics by 30%, inline citations by 30%. The model is looking for things that look like evidence.
Numbers. Attributed quotes. Named methodologies. Things with edges.
Most “AI-optimised content” being produced right now says the opposite: FAQ-stuffed and structurally polite.
Models can extract from it. But they have no reason to.
Fix Your Third-Party Profiles.
Open every profile that ranks for your category — LinkedIn, G2, Capterra, Crunchbase, Wikipedia if applicable.
Paste in your one sentence.
Teams underinvest in this because there’s nothing to show for it at the end. But it’s where the model decides whether you’re one company or three.
For developer tools, GitHub and Stack Overflow are the real homepage.
For founder-led brands, it’s your LinkedIn posts and every interview you’ve given.
Write llms.txt and Walk Away.
Host a file at yourdomain.com/llms.txt. State what you do in plain language, and link to your most authoritative pages.
Adoption is uneven across providers, but it’s one of the only places you get to speak directly to the system.
While you’re there, add Organisation schema with sameAs links. Then leave it alone.
Anyone selling “schema audits” as an ongoing service are mostly selling peace of mind.
What’s Actually a Waste of Money
Buying “AI visibility” tools before you’ve written the sentence. The dashboard will tell you you’re invisible. You already knew.
Rewriting your existing pages with “AI-friendly” filler. The model can already extract from them. You’re only adding extra noise.
Paying anyone who guarantees AI placement. No one can guarantee it.
What to Takeaway
Pick a sentence, repeat it everywhere, give people a reason to quote you.
The old job was to make the page rank. The new job is to make sure everyone else is describing you the same way you describe yourself.
Pony Studio is the Emerging-Tech Brand Studio — a London-based branding and creative design agency specialising in strategic brand development for tech companies worldwide. If you’re building something bold and want a brand that moves at the same speed as your ambition, let’s talk.