Assistive Agent Optimization focuses on tailoring content and digital experiences so AI assistants and conversational agents can easily understand, retrieve, and recommend your information. It involves structured data, clear intent-driven content, and conversational formatting to improve visibility in AI-powered responses and voice-based search results.

Search Engine Land contributor Jason Barnard has published an article highlighting why assistive agent optimization is the next evolution of SEO.

He says, “Incomplete terminology leads to incomplete strategy. Here’s a clearer framework for optimizing when AI systems recommend and act.

Search engine optimization (SEO) — be found. Answer engine optimization (AEO) — be the answer. AI engine optimization (AIEO) — be the recommendation. Assistive agent optimization (AAO) — be chosen when no human is in the loop. Four stages where each clearly absorbs the last.

The word that stays constant across the last two is “assistive,” and that’s important because it names the purpose: what the system does for the user. The word that changes is just one: engine becomes agent — a single pivot that tracks the real shift in our industry, from systems that recommend to systems that act.

For me, everything else in the naming debate is a distraction. The SEO industry is fractured across at least six competing terms for what’s functionally the same discipline. Each term has a constituency, each constituency is spending energy defending its label, and while we argue about what to call the work, we’re not doing the work.”

AAO: Why assistive agent optimization is the next evolution of SEO

Search Engine Land