The era of "10 blue links" is fading. With nearly 65% of Google searches now ending without a click, and AI-powered engines like Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, and Google's AI Overviews delivering synthesised answers directly, user intent has fundamentally shifted from "finding a resource" to "getting an answer."
This shift demands a new approach to digital presence: Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO).
What is AEO?
Traditional SEO focuses on discovery, getting your page to rank in a list of results. AEO focuses on citation, ensuring your content is understood, trusted, and synthesised by Large Language Models (LLMs) as the authoritative answer to a user's question.
When an AI agent (or a human using an AI tool) asks, "What are the eligibility criteria for the X grant?", it does not want to browse three different government PDFs. It wants a concise, accurate summary. AEO ensures your data provides that summary.
Why It Matters Now
1. The "Zero-Click" Reality
More searches are ending without a click. Users get their answer directly on the search results page or within a chat interface. Research indicates that searches triggering an AI Overview have an 83% zero-click rate, compared to around 60% for traditional queries. If your content is not machine-readable enough to generate that answer, you become invisible.
2. Authority Verification
AI models hallucinate. To combat this, newer models aggressively weigh "trusted sources" using signals like E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). Government and enterprise platforms have high inherent domain authority, but only if their data is structured in a way that confirms that authority to the machine.
3. Voice and Agentic Search
As we move towards autonomous AI agents that perform tasks (booking appointments, filing forms, comparing services), they rely entirely on structured data. They cannot "read" a complex visual layout; they read code and schema.
The Technical Pillars of AEO
Optimising for this future is not about keyword stuffing. It is about technical clarity:
- Structured Data (Schema.org): Explicitly telling the machine "This is a Service," "This is a Deadline," "This is a Fee." Schema types like
FAQPage,HowTo, andSpeakablehelp AI systems parse and cite your content accurately. - JSON API Availability: Providing raw, clean data access alongside HTML views, allowing AI bots to ingest facts without parsing UI noise.
- Semantic HTML: Using proper heading hierarchies and semantic tags to outline the logical flow of information.
- Context Retrieval: Grouping related information (FAQs, policies, definitions) so Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems can grab the complete context in one request.
The TrueCMS Approach
We view AEO not as a marketing add-on, but as a core platform capability. By structuring your Drupal content effectively today, you secure your visibility in the AI-driven search landscape of tomorrow.
It is about turning your static web pages into a dynamic knowledge graph that automated systems can trust.