Jostein (Joe) Unhammer
AI search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity cite specific websites not because those sites rank highest, but because their content is structured as extractable answers. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of formatting your content so AI systems can retrieve, interpret, and cite it — turning your pages into sources that appear in AI-generated responses.
Your healthcare website ranks on page one. Organic traffic looks solid. Click-through rates meet industry benchmarks. But something’s changing. Patients are finding information without clicking through to your site, and your traditional metrics can’t explain what’s happening.
Patients are changing how they search for health information. Instead of typing keywords into Google, they’re asking AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews for direct answers. This shift means healthcare organizations need to rethink their content strategy.
AI Overviews are Google’s AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of search results for certain queries. Introduced in May 2023, these overviews synthesize information from multiple sources to provide comprehensive answers to user questions. Unlike featured snippets that pull content from a single source, AI Overviews draw from multiple websites to create a more complete response.
