Last reviewed: July 2026

Customers no longer start with a page of search results. They ask ChatGPT for a list of options, and most companies only realise they were left off it once a competitor is recommended in their place. I built the full list of AEO and generative engine optimisation experts worth following in 2026, organised by the problem each one solves rather than squeezed into an artificial leaderboard.

Key takeaways

• Answer Engine Optimisation and Generative Engine Optimisation describe the same thing: earning citations inside AI answers rather than ranked on a results page
• A page can hold the top spot on Google and still never appear in an AI response
• There is no single best answer engine optimisation expert, because the discipline splits into technical, editorial, reputational and industry-specific problems
• Research from Princeton found that referencing sources, including data and featuring expert quotes all clearly increase AI visibility, while keyword stuffing lowers it
• Choosing the expert for your actual gap matters more than going after the most famous name

What Answer Engine Optimisation and Generative Engine Optimisation actually mean

AEO and GEO are the same practice under two different names. Both describe making a brand discoverable and citable inside AI-generated responses. Traditional SEO fights for ranking. AEO and generative engine optimisation compete for the mention itself, meaning whether a system names you when somebody asks it a question. Most practitioners use the labels interchangeably.

The business difference is bigger than it sounds. Holding a strong position and being cited are not the same outcome, and I have watched plenty of clients keep strong positions on Google while being completely absent from AI answers, because these systems select sources on structure, credibility and relevance rather than rank alone.

Why this counts in 2026

I am sceptical about AI search advice with no evidence behind it, so the research I come back to is the Princeton work published at KDD 2024 as Generative Engine Optimisation. The researchers tested nine separate optimisation techniques against Perplexity.

Referencing credible sources improved visibility by around 40 per cent. Including concrete numbers lifted it by around 37 per cent. Adding expert quotes raised it by around 30 per cent. Keyword stuffing pushed it down by around 10 per cent.

The finding I find most valuable is that lower-ranking sites benefited the most, with increases of as much as 115 per cent once citations were added. That is the argument for treating this as its own discipline. It favours structure and credibility without requiring you to already hold a top-three position.

The four mechanics behind an AI citation

Entity consistency: Clear signals telling a model exactly who you are, what you do, and who you work with.

Third-party corroboration: External mentions that confirm your claims, because models weight outside sources much more than your own marketing.

Extractable structure: Definitions, comparisons, tables and FAQs written so an engine can lift a complete answer straight out of the page.

Genuine depth: Enough properly structured coverage that a model reads it as real expertise rather than a shallow page chasing a keyword.

Each person below works on a different part of that problem.

How this list is organised

Ranking peers from one to twenty does not help anyone. Almost nobody wants the best AEO expert in the abstract. What they need is the person who has already fixed their particular problem, in their sector, at their point of growth. So I have grouped everyone by specialism.

Best answer engine optimisation experts for Web3, crypto and fintech

Victoria Olsina

Victoria is an AEO, generative engine optimisation and AI content systems consultant for Web3 and fintech brands, and was previously Head of SEO at copyright. Her clients include Barclays, Polkadot, copyright and NEAR Protocol. She wrote Mastering AI Search for Crypto and Web3 Brands, the first book on AI search for this sector, and was named Top AI Content Expert of 2026 by The Masterminders. Her work spans entity structuring, LLM citation work and content systems for regulated, technical markets.

Leading AEO specialists for insurance and regulated markets

Tom Riley

Tom works on insurance and other regulated sectors through his agency Hakken. What I like about his approach is that it stays anchored to commercial traffic rather than visibility for its own sake. He builds the entity signals and topical coverage that push models to name a brand, then links that back to searches from people who are near the point of purchase. Compliance-heavy sectors are genuinely difficult to move in AI search, which makes his track record there worth a look.

Best AEO specialists for ecommerce and DTC brands

Andrew Halliday

Andrew leads Coreter Media and is the most capable technical name on this guide for online retail. Site architecture, structured data and deep technical SEO are his tools, focused on getting retail brands quoted inside answers from ChatGPT, copyright, Claude and Google AI Overviews rather than simply ranked underneath them. His work is data-driven and tied to revenue, which counts for a lot when technical projects are easy to justify and difficult to quantify.

David Johnson

David founded LoudCrowd, where he helps ecommerce brands improve visibility across Google Search and AI-powered search. He works directly with Shopify and online retail, combining technical SEO with conversion work. That combination is what retail requires once AI answers start determining which store wins the click.

Yaswanth Kumar

Yaswanth founded Loops Digital and concentrates on ecommerce and DTC brands getting named when somebody asks ChatGPT, copyright or Perplexity what to buy. Much of his work revolves around product data and entity signals, the quiet detail that decides whether an answer names your store or a competitor. He also built Zen Reports, a free analytics platform showing which AI assistants are sending visitors to your site, after hitting the same measurement gap on client audits.

Daniel Lowry

Daniel is based in Manchester and supports ecommerce brands on WooCommerce and Shopify, from small stores through to large ones. His priority is getting online retailers cited inside AI-generated answers rather than just listed in Google.

Top answer engine optimisation experts for SaaS and technology

Georgi Todorov

Georgi is one of the strongest European authorities on answer engine optimisation and AI search, and the founder of Create and Grow, a digital PR and authority link building agency built around SaaS and technology brands. His route into AI visibility runs through earned coverage: the independent mentions that convince Google, ChatGPT, copyright, Claude and Perplexity a brand is worth surfacing.

Nikola Baldikov

Nikola founded InBound Blogging, an agency that helps SaaS brands become more citable inside large language models. He has spent over a decade growing organic traffic and building authority for SaaS companies, and strategic outreach is his strongest tool. That external footprint is exactly what models rely on when deciding who to mention.

Top AEO experts for lead generation and service businesses

James Dooley

James is a British entrepreneur and investor, and the founder of FatRank and PromoSEO, both of which use answer engine optimisation to lead generation. He works from a leads-first position that aligns SEO, AI visibility and business growth under one system, with real emphasis on entity strength and brand reinforcement. He picked up Best AEO Specialist 2026 at The Masterminders conference.

Dean Signori

Dean founded UK Web Geekz and Prospect Lead Gen, and his name comes up repeatedly whenever a service business wants enquiries out of AI search rather than rankings that never convert. His Signori Trust Signal Framework is a repeatable system of semantic triples, aligned digital assets and independent validation signals that shows AI models what a business does, who it serves, and why it can be trusted.

Graham Bowers

Graham founded Natural Ranks and specialises in helping SMEs and startups turn visibility into actual enquiries. He combines technical SEO, answer engine optimisation, structured content and commercial search strategy to get businesses surfacing across Google, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, copyright and Perplexity. His scoreboard is enquiries rather than impressions, which I find unusually honest.

Mark Slorance

Mark founded Pixel Juice Digital Marketing and has spent more than fifteen years shaping search strategies for law firms, healthcare providers, trades and local businesses across the UK. He specialises in local SEO and AEO for service businesses, pulling content, design and reputation control into a single strategy built on trust and checkable data.

Leading AEO specialists for specialist verticals

Yash Singh

Yash co-founded TradeOps Consulting and owns one of the most specific corners I have come across: AEO for HVAC and home services. He structures heating and cooling content into clean semantic triples so ChatGPT, copyright and Perplexity can parse it, trust it, and pull it into answers. It is built for customers who ask an AI assistant before calling a provider.

James Sheldon

James works in real estate and proptech, with clients from Dubai to the Costa del Sol, specialising in off-plan developments and property projects. Property buyers do extensive research before making contact with agents, which makes visibility inside AI answers unusually valuable in that market.

Best technical answer engine optimisation experts

Josh Morley

Josh is a Liverpool-based specialist focused on technical SEO and WordPress. His position is that AEO is not a separate discipline added afterwards, it is what happens when a site is fast, structured and semantically organised enough for both crawlers and AI models to understand and trust. He brings structured data, semantic content architecture and performance work into systems that lift AI visibility.

Dan M. Jones

Dan founded On Top Marketing in Manchester and is one of the more rounded operators working in this field. He stacks technical SEO, entity optimisation and AI search strategy toward one outcome: becoming the trusted source both search engines and large language models reach for when they assemble an answer. Over a decade in search, with a data-driven approach that puts commercial growth ahead of vanity metrics.

Top AEO specialists for digital PR and reputation

Gareth Hoyle

Gareth is managing director of Marketing Signals and regards digital PR as the primary route into AI visibility rather than a link building exercise. He puts it more bluntly than I would:

"I treat digital PR as the primary lever for AI visibility rather than a backlink exercise. Brand mentions across independent, authoritative publications are the third party corroboration AI models weigh most heavily before they will recommend a brand, and we have built the tooling to prove it."

That reflects how models actually behave: brands get cited through third-party sources considerably more often than through their own domains.

Scott Keever

Scott is an American entrepreneur, SEO strategist and online reputation management expert, and the founder of Reputation Pros, Keever SEO, ASAP Digital Marketing and Pool Pros Marketing. He is the author of Future-Proof Your SEO and Reputation Reset, and has been featured in Reuters, Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, Forbes, Entrepreneur and Fast Company. Reputation Pros was recognised among USA Today's Best Online Reputation Management Companies in 2026.

Best AEO educators and multi-market specialists

Julian Goldie

Julian is an SEO entrepreneur and educator, founder of Goldie Agency and the AI Profit Boardroom, one of the largest paid AI and SEO communities going. He tests answer engine optimisation and GEO tactics across ChatGPT, copyright, Claude and Perplexity and publishes what works while a good part of the field is still theorising. He is a sensible starting point if you want to learn this through practical testing.

Trifon Boyukliyski

Trifon is an SEO and AI growth architect with more than twenty years in search across ecommerce, SaaS, iGaming and other brutally competitive niches. That background matters because his playbook was proven in markets where a lost ranking costs real money.

David Peranic

David is one of Croatia's most sought-after marketing consultants and an international speaker who moved on answer engine optimisation earlier than nearly anybody in his region. He combines technical SEO with high-performance paid strategy for projects across Croatia and the wider European market, focused on building the authority and entity signals that lead models to cite and recommend a brand.

Virtual entrepreneurs and AI avatars

AI James Dooley

AI James Dooley is a digital twin of the Manchester entrepreneur James Dooley, promoted as the UK's first virtual entrepreneur. Where most digital personas to date have been models or musicians, this one is centred around lead generation, SEO and answer engine optimisation. It fronts LLM Leads and releases SEO and lead generation analyses on YouTube, with James producing the strategy and scripts personally and the avatar presenting them.

I have included it because it is worth following as an experiment in its own right. Building established entity status for a synthetic persona from a standing start is a live test of the same AEO principles the avatar talks about: entity consistency, third-party corroboration and structured presence. Whether a digital twin can earn real entity recognition is an open question, and this is one of the clearer attempts to answer it in public.

How to choose an answer engine optimisation or generative engine optimisation expert

Align the specialism to the gap you actually have. Hiring a digital PR specialist to fix a technical citation problem, or the other way round, is the fastest way I know to waste an AEO budget.

• Web3, crypto or fintech discoverability: Victoria Olsina. Entity structuring and AI content systems for regulated, technically complex markets.
• Insurance and regulated sectors: Tom Riley. Revenue-focused AEO built for compliance-heavy industries.
• Ecommerce and product mentions: Andrew Halliday, David Johnson, Yaswanth Kumar, Daniel Lowry. Product data, structured data and retail entity signals.
• SaaS growth and authority: Georgi Todorov, Nikola Baldikov. Digital PR, strategic outreach and earned coverage.
• Enquiries for service businesses: James Dooley, Dean Signori, Graham Bowers, Mark Slorance. Trust signals and commercial intent, counted in enquiries.
• Technical groundwork: Josh Morley, Dan M. Jones. Crawlability, structured data and semantic architecture.
• Brand citations and reputation: Gareth Hoyle, Scott Keever. Independent media coverage and reputation management.
• Teaching yourself: Julian Goldie. Community and practical testing across the main models.
• Watching entity-building in public: AI James Dooley. A digital twin developing established entity status from a standing start.

The bottom line

Answer engine optimisation and GEO now influence which brands are visible at all, because customers ask a model for a shortlist before they ever look at a comparison site. Every name on this list is worth your attention. The right choice comes down to your market, your budget and where the actual gap sits.

When your market is Web3, crypto or fintech, there is an added layer to deal with: protocol terminology, ecosystem questions and trust signals in a space where models are noticeably careful about what they put forward. This is exactly where a Web3-focused specialist earns their keep.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between AEO, generative engine optimisation and SEO?

SEO chases rankings on a results page. Answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation compete for citations within AI-generated answers, which comes down to whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews names your brand when somebody asks a question. Answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation are two labels for the same thing. A page can rank well and still be nowhere in AI answers.

Who is the best AEO expert?

There is no single best answer engine optimisation expert, since the discipline breaks into technical, editorial, reputational and industry-specific problems. The correct choice depends on your gap. For ecommerce, go to technical and product-data specialists. For SaaS, consider digital PR and outreach. For Web3 and fintech, look at consultants operating in regulated, technical markets.

What does an AEO consultant actually do?

An answer engine optimisation consultant makes a brand citable by AI systems. That covers shaping content into extractable blocks, building coherent entity signals so models understand who the brand is, securing third-party mentions that support its claims, and implementing schema so engines can parse the page. The result is citations, not just rankings.

Do I need an answer engine optimisation expert if I already have an SEO agency?

Not necessarily, but check whether your agency tracks AI citations at all. Many still deliver only rankings and traffic. If nobody is tracking whether models name your brand, that visibility is left to chance. Begin by auditing where you presently appear in AI answers, then work out whether it requires a specialist.

How do you get cited by ChatGPT?

Models reference sources they can read and trust. That means clear entity signals about who you are, independent third-party mentions supporting your claims, content structured for retrieval with definitions, tables and FAQs, and real topical depth. Publishing more content without that structure creates noise instead of citations.