Generative engine optimisation for brands that need to be quoted.

Partly. The old keyword habit is fading, but your page still needs to be found. A keyword ranking alone does not reliably put your page in an AI answer. Answer your buyer’s question and keep the page findable. In our Hong Kong checks, most sites linked by Google AI Overviews also ranked in the top ten of regular results. In our 15 Hong Kong topic searches on 29 September 2026, 72 of 102 linked sites (71%) were in the top ten; the US study counted websites the Overviews consulted across different searches. Google calls optimising for its AI features “still SEO” (Google Search Central, May 2026). In our view, that means more than choosing keywords and chasing rankings. A2FF writes pages around buyer questions and checks whether Search can find them.

SEO and GEO results have no fixed timeline, because indexing, page changes and mentions from other sites move at different rates. A2FF’s report shows how each of the three is moving, every round.

SEO aims to make your page findable in search results, while GEO aims for an AI answer to link that page or name your brand. A keyword ranking alone does not reliably put you in the answer. Answer your buyer’s question plainly and keep the page findable. A2FF works on both through the same pages.

Yes. Each round reports mention rate, coverage and first pick against the same question set. We keep every measured answer in full alongside its sources. In a study of US searches published at ACL 2026, only 18% of web pages in AI Overviews were the same when searches were run two months apart. For Google’s organic results, the figure was 45%.

Answer engine optimisation (AEO) aims to make a page useful as a source for direct answers in search and AI assistants. Many practitioners treat it as one body of work with GEO. The same pages feed SEO, GEO and AEO, so it makes sense to run all three together. A2FF runs them as one discipline in Hong Kong.

Answer the searcher’s specific question near the top of the page. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible for a Search snippet to appear as a supporting link. Google also says no special markup is needed (Google Search Central, “AI features and your website”). Google calls optimising for its AI features “still SEO” (Google Search Central, May 2026). In our view, that means more than choosing keywords and chasing rankings. Check that other sites describe your brand consistently with your own site.

Zero-click search is a search that ends on the results page because the answer is already there. Bain & Company reported in 2025 that about 60% of searches end without the user reaching another site. Pew Research Center found that only 1% of visits with an AI summary clicked a source inside it. An answer can still link your page or name your brand when no one visits your site.

Yes, a brand can appear in AI search answers, although its visibility varies by question and by engine. A2FF therefore measures visibility as a share of answers across a fixed set of buyer questions every round.

An AI mention rate is the share of answers on your target questions that name your brand. We put the same questions to the same engines every round, so the number moves for a reason you can see rather than because the sample changed.

llms.txt is a plain text file at the root of a site that points AI software at its important content. Yes, we recommend one. Google Search does not use it (Google Search Central, June 2026), but other services or systems may use it. We also provide llms.txt for clients, listing their important pages.