Updated: 28 July 2026

Buyers have stopped starting with the traditional results page. They now ask ChatGPT for a shortlist, and plenty of brands only discover they were excluded once a rival is cited instead. I put together the complete guide of AEO and generative engine optimisation experts worth following in 2026, sorted by the challenge each one handles rather than forced into an artificial ranking.

Key points

• Answer Engine Optimisation and GEO refer to the same practice: getting cited inside AI answers rather than ranked on a results page
• A page can hold position one on Google and still not show up in an AI response
• There is no single best answer engine optimisation expert, because the discipline splits into technical, editorial, reputational and industry-specific challenges
• Princeton research found that citing sources, adding statistics and featuring expert quotes all measurably lift AI visibility, while keyword stuffing reduces it
• Matching the specialist to your specific need counts for more than hiring the biggest name

What Answer Engine Optimisation and Generative Engine Optimisation really mean

Answer Engine Optimisation and Generative Engine Optimisation are the same thing under two different names. Both describe making a brand visible and citable inside AI-generated answers. Traditional SEO fights for placement. Answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation compete for the reference itself, meaning whether a model names you when somebody puts a question to it. Most specialists use the terms interchangeably.

The commercial difference is sharper than it sounds. Ranking well and being cited are not the same outcome, and I have watched plenty of clients hold top rankings on Google while being completely absent from AI responses, because these systems select sources on structure, trust and relevance rather than rank alone.

Why this counts in 2026

I am sceptical about AI search advice that comes with no data, so the research I come back to is the Princeton work published at KDD 2024 as Generative Engine Optimisation. They 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. Including expert quotes improved it by around 30 per cent. Keyword stuffing pushed it down by around 10 per cent.

The finding I find most useful is that lower-ranking sites gained the most, with increases of up to 115 per cent once citations were added. That is the argument for treating this as its own specialism. It rewards 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 mentions that back up your claims, because models weight outside sources much more than your own marketing.

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

Topical depth: Sufficient well-organised coverage that a model reads it as genuine expertise rather than a thin page chasing a keyword.

Every specialist below works on a different part of that problem.

How this guide is organised

Ranking peers from one to twenty is not useful. Almost nobody wants the best AEO expert in general terms. What they need is the person who has already fixed their specific problem, in their sector, at their stage. So I have grouped everyone by specialism.

Top AEO 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 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 work covers entity architecture, AI citation work and content systems for trust-sensitive, technically complex markets.

Leading AEO experts for insurance and regulated markets

Tom Riley

Tom operates in insurance and other regulated markets through his agency Hakken. What I rate 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 notoriously hard 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 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 cited inside answers from ChatGPT, copyright, Claude and Google AI Overviews rather than simply ranked underneath them. His work is data-driven and connected to revenue, which counts for a lot when technical projects are simple to argue for and hard to measure.

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 pairing is what retail requires once AI answers start determining which store wins the click.

Yaswanth Kumar

Yaswanth founded Loops Digital and focuses on ecommerce and DTC brands getting cited 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 sending visitors to your site, after hitting the same measurement gap on client audits.

Daniel Lowry

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

Best AEO experts for SaaS and technology

Georgi Todorov

Georgi is one of the most influential European voices 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 persuade 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 sharpest tool. That external footprint is precisely what models lean on when deciding who to mention.

Best AEO 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 lead generation. He works from a leads-first position that lines up 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 scalable system of semantic triples, aligned digital assets and independent validation signals that teaches 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 real leads. 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 unusually honest.

Mark Slorance

Mark founded Pixel Juice Digital Marketing and has spent more than fifteen years building search programmes for law firms, healthcare providers, trades and local businesses across the UK. He specialises in local SEO and answer engine optimisation for service businesses, drawing content, design and reputation control into a single approach grounded in trust and verifiable data.

Best AEO experts for specialist verticals

Yash Singh

Yash co-founded TradeOps Consulting and occupies one of the most specific corners I have come across: AEO for HVAC and home services. He structures heating and cooling content into tidy 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.

Top technical AEO 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 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 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 build an answer. Over a decade in search, with a data-driven approach that puts commercial growth ahead of vanity metrics.

Best answer engine optimisation experts for digital PR and reputation

Gareth Hoyle

Gareth is managing director of Marketing Signals and treats digital PR as the central path into AI visibility rather than a link building exercise. He puts it more directly 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 far more frequently 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 appeared 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 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 answer engine optimisation 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 hands-on experimentation.

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 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 in-demand marketing consultants and an international speaker who moved on answer engine optimisation earlier than almost anyone 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, described as the UK's first virtual entrepreneur. Where most digital personas so far have been models or musicians, this one is positioned around lead generation, SEO and answer engine optimisation. It fronts LLM Leads and puts out 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 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 more visible attempts to answer it in public.

How to choose an AEO or generative engine optimisation expert

Match the specialisation to the gap you really have. Hiring a digital PR specialist to fix a technical citation problem, or the other way round, is the fastest way I know to burn through an answer engine optimisation budget.

• Web3, crypto or fintech discoverability: Victoria Olsina. Entity structuring and AI content systems for technical, trust-sensitive markets.
• Insurance and regulated markets: Tom Riley. Commercial-intent answer engine optimisation designed for compliance-heavy sectors.
• Ecommerce and product citations: 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, measured 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 control.
• Learning it yourself: Julian Goldie. Community and practical testing across the main models.
• Following entity-building in public: AI James Dooley. A digital twin earning recognised entity status from a standing start.

The bottom line

AEO and generative engine optimisation now influence which brands are visible at all, since prospects ask a model for a shortlist before they even visit a comparison site. Each name on this list is worth following. The right choice comes down to your sector, your budget and where the real gap sits.

When your market is Web3, crypto or fintech, there is an additional layer to contend with: protocol terminology, ecosystem questions and trust signals in a sector where models are visibly cautious about what they suggest. This is where a sector-specific specialist matters most.

Frequently asked questions

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

SEO competes for rankings on a results page. Answer engine optimisation and GEO chase citations within AI-generated responses, meaning whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews mentions your brand when someone puts a question. AEO 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 answer engine optimisation expert?

There is no solitary best AEO expert, because the discipline divides into technical, editorial, reputational and industry-specific problems. The correct choice comes down to your gap. For ecommerce, look at 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 answer engine optimisation consultant actually do?

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

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

Not necessarily, but confirm whether your agency tracks AI citations at all. Many still report only rankings and traffic. If nobody is watching whether models cite your brand, that visibility is running unattended. Begin by checking where you currently appear in AI responses, then work out whether it needs a specialist.

How do you get cited by ChatGPT?

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