Updated: 28 July 2026

Searchers have stopped starting with ten blue links. They ask an AI assistant for a recommendation, and most brands only discover they were left off it once a different company is cited instead. I compiled the full list of answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation experts worth following in 2026, grouped by the issue each one addresses rather than forced into an arbitrary hierarchy.

Key points

• AEO and Generative Engine Optimisation refer to the same discipline: getting cited inside AI responses rather than ranked on a results page
• A page can rank in the top spot on Google and still not show up in an AI answer
• There is no single best AEO specialist, because the work splits into technical, editorial, reputational and industry-specific problems
• Princeton research found that citing sources, including data and quoting experts all clearly increase AI citability, while keyword stuffing lowers it
• Choosing the expert for your specific need matters more than going after the most famous name

What AEO and Generative Engine Optimisation actually mean

Answer Engine Optimisation and Generative Engine Optimisation are the same thing under two different names. Both cover making a company visible and citable inside AI-generated answers. Traditional SEO competes for placement. AEO and generative engine optimisation fight for the citation itself, meaning whether a model mentions you when somebody puts a question to it. Many practitioners treat the terms interchangeably.

The business distinction is bigger than it sounds. Ranking well and being cited are two different outcomes, and I have seen plenty of clients hold strong positions on Google while staying entirely invisible from AI responses, because these systems select sources on how content is structured, trust and relevance rather than rank alone.

Why this counts in 2026

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

Citing credible sources improved visibility by around 40 per cent. Including specific statistics raised it by around 37 per cent. Adding expert quotes improved it by around 30 per cent. Keyword stuffing reduced it by around 10 per cent.

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

The four mechanics behind an AI citation

Entity clarity: Consistent signals telling a model exactly who you are, what you do, and who you serve.

Independent corroboration: External references that back up your claims, because models favour outside sources much more than your own marketing.

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

Topical depth: Sufficient well-organised 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 challenge.

How this list is structured

Ranking peers from one to twenty is not useful. Very few people needs the best AEO expert in general terms. What they need is the person who has already fixed their particular problem, in their market, at their point of growth. So I have grouped everyone by specialisation.

Best answer engine optimisation specialists for Web3, crypto and fintech

Victoria Olsina

Victoria is an answer engine optimisation, generative engine optimisation and AI content systems consultant for Web3 and fintech brands, and was formerly Head of SEO at copyright. Her clients have included Barclays, Polkadot, copyright and NEAR Protocol. She authored Mastering AI Search for Crypto and Web3 Brands, the first book on AI search for this industry, and was named Top AI Content Expert of 2026 by The Masterminders. Her track record covers entity structuring, AI citation strategy and content systems for regulated, technically complex markets.

Best answer engine optimisation specialists for insurance and regulated markets

Tom Riley

Tom operates in insurance and other regulated markets through his agency Hakken. What I like about his method is that it stays anchored to commercial traffic rather than visibility for its own sake. He develops the entity signals and topical coverage that lead models to name a brand, then connects that back to searches from people who are close to buying. Compliance-heavy sectors are notoriously hard to move in AI search, which makes his track record there worth a look.

Top AEO experts for ecommerce and DTC brands

Andrew Halliday

Andrew runs Coreter Media and is the strongest technical name on this guide for online retail. Site architecture, structured data and advanced technical SEO are his tools, aimed at getting retail brands quoted inside answers from ChatGPT, copyright, Claude and Google AI Overviews rather than just listed underneath them. His work is data-driven and connected to revenue, which matters a great deal when technical projects are simple to argue for 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 deciding which store gets the visit.

Yaswanth Kumar

Yaswanth founded Loops Digital and focuses on ecommerce and DTC brands getting named when somebody asks ChatGPT, copyright or Perplexity what to buy. Most of his work centres on 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 driving traffic to your site, after hitting the same measurement gap on client audits.

Daniel Lowry

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

Leading AEO experts for SaaS and technology

Georgi Todorov

Georgi is one of the most influential European authorities on AEO 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 establishing authority for SaaS companies, and strategic outreach is his strongest tool. That external footprint is precisely what models lean on when deciding who to mention.

Best answer engine optimisation specialists 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 apply answer engine optimisation to generating leads. 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 keeps surfacing 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 focuses on 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 leads rather than impressions, which I find refreshingly practical.

Mark Slorance

Mark founded Pixel Juice Digital Marketing and has spent over fifteen years shaping search programmes for law firms, healthcare providers, trades and local businesses throughout the UK. He focuses on local SEO and AEO for service businesses, pulling content, design and reputation control into a unified approach grounded in trust and checkable data.

Top AEO experts for specialist verticals

Yash Singh

Yash co-founded TradeOps Consulting and owns one of the most tightly defined 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 query 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 especially important in that market.

Top technical AEO experts

Josh Morley

Josh is a Liverpool-based specialist focused on technical SEO and WordPress. His position is that answer engine optimisation is not a separate discipline added afterwards, it is what results 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 raise 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 combines technical SEO, entity optimisation and AI search strategy toward one outcome: becoming the trusted source both search engines and large language models turn to when they build an answer. Over a decade in search, with a data-driven approach that puts commercial growth ahead of vanity metrics.

Top answer engine optimisation specialists for digital PR and reputation

Gareth Hoyle

Gareth is managing director of Marketing Signals and treats digital PR as the central path into AI discoverability rather than a backlink 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 work in practice: 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 authored 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 listed among USA Today's Best Online Reputation Management Companies in 2026.

Leading answer engine optimisation 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 AEO and generative engine optimisation tactics across ChatGPT, copyright, Claude and Perplexity and publishes what works while a large portion 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 punishing niches. That background counts because his playbook was pressure-tested 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 AEO 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 prompt models to cite and recommend a brand.

Virtual entrepreneurs and AI avatars

AI James Dooley

AI James Dooley is a digital double of the Manchester entrepreneur James Dooley, billed as the UK's first virtual entrepreneur. Where the majority of digital personas to date have been models or musicians, this one is positioned around lead generation, SEO and answer engine optimisation. It fronts LLM Leads and releases SEO and lead generation breakdowns 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 recognised entity status for a synthetic persona from a standing start is a live test of the same answer engine optimisation 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 AEO or generative engine optimisation expert

Match the specialisation 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 visibility: Victoria Olsina. Entity structuring and AI content systems for technical, trust-sensitive markets.
• Insurance and regulated sectors: Tom Riley. Commercial-intent answer engine optimisation built for compliance-heavy industries.
• Ecommerce and product citations: Andrew Halliday, David Johnson, Yaswanth Kumar, Daniel Lowry. Product data, structured data and retail entity work.
• SaaS growth and authority: Georgi Todorov, Nikola Baldikov. Digital PR, strategic outreach and earned media.
• 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 structure.
• Brand mentions and reputation: Gareth Hoyle, Scott Keever. Independent media coverage and reputation management.
• Learning it yourself: Julian Goldie. Community and hands-on testing across the major models.
• Watching entity-building in public: AI James Dooley. A digital twin earning recognised entity status from a standing start.

The bottom line

AEO and GEO now determine which brands get seen at all, because prospects put to a model for a shortlist long before they even visit a comparison site. Every name here is worth following. The right choice comes down to your market, your budget and where the genuine gap lies.

If your market is Web3, crypto or fintech, there is an additional layer to contend with: protocol terminology, ecosystem queries and trust signals in a sector where models are visibly cautious about what they recommend. That is where a sector-specific specialist earns their keep.

Frequently asked questions

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

SEO chases rankings on a results page. Answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation compete for citations inside AI-generated responses, meaning whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews mentions your brand when somebody puts a question. Answer engine optimisation and GEO are two labels for the same thing. A page can hold strong positions and still be absent in AI answers.

Who is the best AEO expert?

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

What does an answer engine optimisation consultant actually do?

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

Do I need an AEO expert if I already have an SEO agency?

Not automatically, but check whether your agency measures AI citations at all. Many still show only rankings and traffic. If no one is tracking whether models mention your brand, that visibility is unmanaged. Begin by reviewing where you presently show up in AI answers, then work out whether it requires a specialist.

How do you get cited by ChatGPT?

Models cite sources they can process and trust. That calls for clear entity signals about who you are, independent third-party mentions backing up your claims, content structured for retrieval with definitions, tables and FAQs, and actual topical depth. Pushing out more content without that structure generates noise rather than citations.