People are talking about agentic engine optimization, but what should brands actually be doing? Bryn Dodson at Code and Theory explains how to think about AEO at a moment when everything is changing.
It’s impossible to overstate how quickly search is changing. LLMs and social search are accelerating so quickly that the classic search playbook is already obsolete.
But it’s a strange moment. Marketers are hearing a lot about agentic engine optimization (AEO). We can see change happening, but haven’t fully felt its impact.
Google still handles 14bn search-like queries per day while ChatGPT fields a ‘mere’ 66m. But in a time of transition, how do you separate fact, fiction, and fad when evolving your search strategy?
Marketers understandably want the certainty of tactics to pursue, metrics to chase, and tools to buy. And all those things are coming. But if you want to succeed in a time of fundamental change, you need to understand the fundamentals of what’s changing. Marketers must understand these three trends underpinning the search revolution.
Google has been so successful, for so long, that it has become a verb. But Gen Z doesn’t Google like the rest of us.
When 72% of Gen Zs say ‘Google,’ they actually mean ‘search on TikTok.’ Gen Z treats social media platforms as search platforms. More than any prior generation, they discover trends on social media and validate them the old-fashioned way – through Google.
This isn’t only behavioral change. Social media has become more discoverable in search, especially video. Headings, captions, voiceover narration, and hashtags are now crawlable, making social video a store of knowledge, not just a source of entertainment.
And for many searches, the new entry point isn’t Google at all, but a large language model (LLM). In July 2025, referrals from AI chat to shopping websites increased an incredible 4,700% year-over-year. (There’s a generational aspect to this too: if ChatGPT did your term paper, trusting it with your holiday shopping is less of a stretch.)
For traditional search, this is a perfect storm. For brands with active imaginations, this is a perfect opportunity.
YouTube Shorts, Instagram, TikTok, and ChatGPT – all search platforms. What do people do on these platforms? One thing they do is close a massive trust deficit.
When you chase Black Friday deals these days, trying to find solid information can feel like wading through Jell-O.
If you can even decide what to buy, which brand is the best quality, value for money, or best for your needs, you need to figure out whether you’re getting a good deal. Discounts are one big game of chicken. Pricing shenanigans are everywhere. You need a PhD in game theory just to feel comfortable hitting the buy button.
Reviews and recommendations can help, but that just pushes the problem a step back: which reviews and recommendations do you rely on?
Too much information, not enough trust.
LLM and social search are on the rise partly because each promises to cut through information and cultivate the scarce resource of trust. Social media replaces information overload with social proof. And LLMs replace information overload with clear, crisp, confident answers.
In this world, brand trust is a precious resource that can be easily squandered.
When done right, search has always been about providing information to meet a user’s intent. And understanding intent is an exercise in applying empathy to data to infer what people need to know, what they care about, and what makes them hesitate to buy.
With the rise of LLM-based search, that’s only getting more fine-grained.
If I want a portable speaker for a pool party, I can Google ‘portable speaker pool party.’ I’m unlikely to search: ‘I’m having a pool party and I need a portable speaker that can survive getting thrown in the pool because my friends are irresponsible and looks awesome because I’m feeling insecure about hosting and I need these people to think I’m cool.’
But I might absolutely ask an LLM that. And that’s a key difference.
Much of advertising aims to close the distance between a product’s functional benefit and its emotional resonance. Increasingly, brands will succeed in search when they understand their customers’ hopes, passions, needs, fears, and vulnerabilities well enough to understand how information meets people’s deeper needs – and make that information available and intelligible to LLMs.
Technology will evolve, tactics will change, and Googling is far from dead. But these fundamentals will stand you in good stead as search evolves:
Stick with this formula, and you’ll be equipped to handle the inevitable changes of the new year. Your customers will love you for it. Your CFO, too.
