Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
As the web transforms as a medium for humans to a place for humans and bots, AEO is becoming critical to ensure your customers can find you. More and more people search using AI, even at traditional search engines. So what does this transformation mean for you?
Hear from AEO and SEO expert Ethan Smith (CEO of Graphite) and Adrian Rosenkrantz (CRO of Webflow) as they discuss the rise of answer engines, where the future of search is headed, and what you can do today to ensure answer engines cite your website.
00:00 - Introduction
00:30 - History of search
01:37 - What is AEO actually?
01:59 - What are some common misconceptions about AEO?
02:42 - Which acronym is correct? SEO, AEO, AI SEO, or GEO?
04:31 - Is SEO dead?
06:49 - How do you see expectations changing for a user in SEO?
07:30 - What are the key things that you see in SEO and how that you believe are true today for both?
08:41 - What are the levers we have to influence SEO and AEO?
08:48 - Lever #1: Topics
09:38 - Lever #2: Good content
10:00 - Lever #3: Authority
10:25 - Lever #4: Technical
11:58 - What is schema?
13:26 - Lever #5: Measurement
15:17 - If I'm starting an answer engine optimization strategy, where do I start?
17:18 - How do we optimize our site to show up more in answers?
18:38 - What are things that are difficult, but are really impactful to drive SEO and AEO?
19:34 - What are the common things that are low hanging fruit that people just miss when we're talking about how to be discoverable?
21:06 - What's cross-linking versus backlinking?
22:04 - Do you need to have clean code on your website to be found?
22:52 - How do CMOs need to think about how the funnel is changing today with these changes going from SEO and now adding AEO?
24:18 - Should I focus on showing up in more AEO or SEO results? Or should actually focus just on conversion?
28:03 - How do you think a CEO or CMO should look at what's happening in the world today? And what would you say are the most important principles that they should operate with?
Take the full AEO course on Webflow University → university.webflow.com/courses/aeo-from-webflow
----------
Get started with Webflow: wfl.io/2r7cVUW
Join the Webflow Community: webflow.com/community
webflow.com
twitter.com/webflow
instagram.com/webflow
facebook.com/webflow
As the web transforms as a medium for humans to a place for humans and bots, AEO is becoming critical to ensure your customers can find you. More and more people search using AI, even at traditional search engines. So what does this transformation mean for you?
Hear from AEO and SEO expert Ethan Smith (CEO of Graphite) and Adrian Rosenkrantz (CRO of Webflow) as they discuss the rise of answer engines, where the future of search is headed, and what you can do today to ensure answer engines cite your website.
00:00 - Introduction
00:30 - History of search
01:37 - What is AEO actually?
01:59 - What are some common misconceptions about AEO?
02:42 - Which acronym is correct? SEO, AEO, AI SEO, or GEO?
04:31 - Is SEO dead?
06:49 - How do you see expectations changing for a user in SEO?
07:30 - What are the key things that you see in SEO and how that you believe are true today for both?
08:41 - What are the levers we have to influence SEO and AEO?
08:48 - Lever #1: Topics
09:38 - Lever #2: Good content
10:00 - Lever #3: Authority
10:25 - Lever #4: Technical
11:58 - What is schema?
13:26 - Lever #5: Measurement
15:17 - If I'm starting an answer engine optimization strategy, where do I start?
17:18 - How do we optimize our site to show up more in answers?
18:38 - What are things that are difficult, but are really impactful to drive SEO and AEO?
19:34 - What are the common things that are low hanging fruit that people just miss when we're talking about how to be discoverable?
21:06 - What's cross-linking versus backlinking?
22:04 - Do you need to have clean code on your website to be found?
22:52 - How do CMOs need to think about how the funnel is changing today with these changes going from SEO and now adding AEO?
24:18 - Should I focus on showing up in more AEO or SEO results? Or should actually focus just on conversion?
28:03 - How do you think a CEO or CMO should look at what's happening in the world today? And what would you say are the most important principles that they should operate with?
Take the full AEO course on Webflow University → university.webflow.com/courses/aeo-from-webflow
----------
Get started with Webflow: wfl.io/2r7cVUW
Join the Webflow Community: webflow.com/community
webflow.com
twitter.com/webflow
instagram.com/webflow
facebook.com/webflow
