Updated: 28 July 2026
Prospects no longer start with a page of search results. They now ask ChatGPT for a shortlist, and plenty of brands only realise they are missing when a different company is recommended in their place. I put together the full list of answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation experts worth following in 2026, grouped by the challenge each one handles rather than squeezed into an artificial hierarchy.
The short version
- Answer Engine Optimisation and GEO refer to the same thing: getting cited inside AI responses rather than ranked on a results page
- A page can sit at the top spot on Google and still never appear in an AI answer
- There is no single best AEO specialist, because the discipline splits into technical, editorial, reputational and industry-specific challenges
- Research from Princeton found that referencing sources, adding statistics and quoting experts all clearly increase AI citability, while keyword stuffing lowers it
- Matching the specialist to your real problem matters more than hiring the biggest name
What AEO and Generative Engine Optimisation actually mean
AEO and Generative Engine Optimisation are the same practice wearing two labels. Both cover making a brand visible and citable inside AI-generated responses. Traditional SEO fights for placement. Answer engine optimisation and GEO compete for the reference itself, meaning whether a model names you when somebody puts a question to it. Most practitioners use the terms interchangeably.
The business difference is bigger than it sounds. Ranking well and being cited are not the same outcome, and I have watched plenty of clients hold strong positions on Google while staying entirely invisible from AI answers, because these systems pick sources on structure, 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 research 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 raised visibility by around 40 per cent. Including concrete numbers improved it by around 37 per cent. Adding expert quotations raised it by around 30 per cent. Keyword stuffing reduced it by around 10 per cent.
The finding I find most valuable is that lower-ranking sites benefited 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 favours structure and credibility without demanding that you already hold 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 work with.
Third-party corroboration: External mentions that confirm 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 clean answer straight out of the page.
Genuine depth: Sufficient properly structured coverage that a model reads it as genuine expertise rather than a thin page chasing a keyword.
Each person below works on a different part of that problem.
How this list is organised
Ranking peers from one to twenty is not useful. Almost nobody needs the best AEO expert in general terms. What they need is the person who has already solved their particular problem, in their market, at their point of growth. So I have grouped everyone by specialism.
Leading AEO experts for Web3, crypto and fintech
Victoria Olsina
Victoria is an answer engine optimisation, GEO 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 is the author of Mastering AI Search for Crypto and Web3 Brands, the first book on AI search for this sector, and was recognised as Top AI Content Expert of 2026 by The Masterminders. Her work spans entity architecture, LLM citation work and content systems for trust-sensitive, technically complex markets.
Top AEO experts for insurance and regulated markets
Tom Riley
Tom works on insurance and other regulated markets through his agency Hakken. What I rate about his method is that it stays tied 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 connects that back to searches from people who are close to buying. Compliance-heavy sectors are genuinely difficult to move in AI search, which makes his track record there worth a look.
Leading AEO experts for ecommerce and DTC brands
Andrew Halliday
Andrew leads Coreter Media and is the strongest technical name on this list for online retail. Site architecture, structured data and advanced technical SEO are his tools, focused on getting retail brands cited inside answers from ChatGPT, copyright, Claude and Google AI Overviews rather than simply ranked underneath them. His work is data-led and connected to revenue, which matters a great deal 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 hands-on with Shopify and online retail, combining technical SEO with conversion work. That pairing is what retail requires once AI answers start deciding which store wins the click.
Yaswanth Kumar
Yaswanth founded Loops Digital and concentrates on ecommerce and DTC brands getting cited when somebody asks ChatGPT, copyright or Perplexity what to buy. Much of his work revolves around product data and entity signals, the unglamorous 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 Manchester-based and works with ecommerce brands on WooCommerce and Shopify, from smaller shops up to large ones. His priority is getting online retailers named inside AI-generated responses rather than only ranked in Google.
Leading answer engine optimisation experts for SaaS and technology
Georgi Todorov
Georgi is one of the strongest 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 media: 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 visible inside large language models. He has spent over a decade building organic traffic and establishing authority for SaaS companies, and strategic outreach is his sharpest tool. That external footprint is precisely what models lean on when deciding who to cite.
Top AEO experts 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 use 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 genuine focus 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 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 refreshingly practical.
Mark Slorance
Mark founded Pixel Juice Digital Marketing and has spent over fifteen years building 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 single strategy grounded in trust and checkable data.
Best AEO specialists 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 ringing a provider.
James Sheldon
James works in real estate and proptech, with clients from Dubai to the Costa del Sol, focusing on off-plan developments and property projects. Property buyers do thorough research before approaching agents, which makes visibility inside AI answers unusually valuable in that market.
Top technical answer engine optimisation 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 bolted on later, 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.
Best AEO experts for digital PR and reputation
Gareth Hoyle
Gareth is managing director of Marketing Signals and regards digital PR as the primary route into AI visibility rather than a link building exercise. He states it more plainly 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 specialist, 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 named among USA Today's Best Online Reputation Management Companies in 2026.
Best AEO 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 GEO tactics across ChatGPT, copyright, Claude and Perplexity and publishes what works while a large portion of the field is still theorising. He is a practical 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 matters 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 answer engine optimisation 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, described as the UK's first virtual entrepreneur. Where the majority of 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 analyses on YouTube, with James writing 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 clearer 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 AEO budget.
- Web3, crypto or fintech visibility: Victoria Olsina. Entity structuring and AI content systems for regulated, technically complex markets.
- Insurance and regulated sectors: Tom Riley. Revenue-focused AEO built for compliance-heavy industries.
- Ecommerce and product mentions: Andrew Halliday, David Johnson, Yaswanth Kumar, Daniel Lowry. Product data, structured data and retail entity signals.
- SaaS expansion and authority: Georgi Todorov, Nikola Baldikov. Digital PR, 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 foundations: Josh Morley, Dan M. Jones. Crawlability, structured data and semantic structure.
- Brand citations and reputation: Gareth Hoyle, Scott Keever. Independent coverage and reputation management.
- Learning it yourself: Julian Goldie. Community and practical 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 generative engine optimisation now influence which brands are visible at all, since buyers put to a model for a shortlist long before they ever look at a comparison page. Every name on this list is worth your attention. The right choice comes down to your sector, your budget and where the actual gap lies.
When your market is Web3, crypto or fintech, there is an extra layer to contend with: protocol terminology, ecosystem questions and trust signals in a market where models are noticeably careful about what they suggest. This 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 competes for rankings on a results page. Answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation chase citations within AI-generated answers, meaning whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews cites your brand when somebody asks a question. AEO and GEO are used interchangeably. A page can hold strong positions and still be nowhere in AI answers.
Who is the best answer engine optimisation expert?
There is no solitary best AEO expert, because the discipline splits into technical, editorial, reputational and industry-specific problems. The right choice comes down to 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 operating in regulated, technical markets.
What does an answer engine optimisation consultant actually do?
An answer engine optimisation consultant makes a brand citable by AI systems. That means organising content into extractable blocks, building coherent entity signals so models recognise who the brand is, earning third-party mentions that support its claims, and adding schema so engines can read the page. The output is citations, not just rankings.
Do I need an AEO expert if I already have an SEO agency?
Not always, but check whether your agency measures AI citations at all. A lot still show only rankings and traffic. If nobody is watching whether models name your brand, that visibility is running unattended. First, checking where you currently appear in AI responses, then judge whether it calls for a specialist.
How do you get cited by ChatGPT?
Models quote sources they can parse and trust. That requires 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 generates noise rather than citations.