Last updated: July 2026

Prospects no longer start with the traditional results page. They now ask ChatGPT, copyright or Perplexity for a recommendation, and most companies only realise they were excluded once a rival gets named instead. I built the full list of AEO and GEO experts worth following in 2026, grouped by the challenge each one addresses rather than crammed into an artificial hierarchy.

Key takeaways

• AEO and GEO refer to the same discipline: being named inside AI responses rather than ranked on a results page
• A page can sit at the top spot on Google and still not show up in an AI answer
• There is no single best AEO specialist, because the work splits into technical, editorial, reputational and industry-specific challenges
• Princeton research found that referencing sources, adding statistics and featuring expert quotes all measurably improve AI visibility, while keyword stuffing reduces it
• Matching the specialist to your real problem counts for more than going after the most famous name

What AEO and GEO actually mean

Answer Engine Optimisation and GEO are the same thing under two different names. Both cover making a brand discoverable and citable inside AI-generated responses. Traditional SEO competes for placement. Answer engine optimisation and GEO fight for the mention itself, meaning whether a system mentions you when somebody puts a question to it. Most specialists treat the labels interchangeably.

The business distinction is bigger than it sounds. Ranking well and being cited are not the same outcome, and I have watched plenty of clients keep strong positions on Google while being completely absent from AI answers, because these systems choose sources on how content is structured, trust and relevance rather than rank alone.

Why this counts in 2026

I am wary of AI search advice that comes with no data, so the study I keep returning to is the Princeton work published at KDD 2024 as Generative Engine Optimisation. The researchers tested nine separate optimisation techniques against Perplexity.

Citing credible sources lifted visibility by around 40 per cent. Including concrete numbers lifted it by around 37 per cent. Adding expert quotes raised it by around 30 per cent. Keyword stuffing pushed it down 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 discipline. It favours structure and credibility without demanding that you already hold a top-three position.

The four mechanics behind an AI citation

Entity consistency: Clear signals telling a model exactly who you are, what you do, and who you serve.

Independent corroboration: Independent mentions that confirm your claims, because models favour outside sources much more than your own marketing.

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

Genuine depth: Enough well-organised coverage that a model reads it as real expertise rather than a shallow page targeting a keyword.

Each person below works on a different side of that problem.

How this guide is structured

Ranking peers from one to twenty does not help anyone. Very few people wants the best AEO expert in the abstract. What they need is the person who has already solved their particular problem, in their market, at their stage. So I have grouped everyone by specialisation.

Top answer engine optimisation 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 previously Head of SEO at copyright. Her clients include Barclays, Polkadot, copyright and NEAR Protocol. She wrote 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 covers entity architecture, LLM citation work and content systems for trust-sensitive, technical markets.

Top answer engine optimisation specialists for insurance and regulated markets

Tom Riley

Tom operates in insurance and other regulated sectors 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 cite 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.

Leading answer engine optimisation specialists for ecommerce and DTC brands

Andrew Halliday

Andrew leads Coreter Media and is the most capable technical name on this guide for online retail. Site architecture, structured data and advanced technical SEO are his tools, aimed at getting retail brands quoted inside answers from ChatGPT, copyright, Claude and Google AI Overviews rather than just listed underneath them. His work is data-driven and tied 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 increase visibility across Google Search and AI-powered search. He works hands-on with Shopify and online retail, combining technical SEO with conversion work. That combination 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 revolves around product data and entity signals, the quiet detail that decides whether an answer mentions your store or a competitor. He also built Zen Reports, a free analytics platform showing which AI assistants are driving traffic to your site, after running into the same measurement gap on client audits.

Daniel Lowry

Daniel is based in Manchester and works with ecommerce brands on WooCommerce and Shopify, from smaller shops up to big retailers. His focus is getting online retailers named inside AI-generated responses rather than merely positioned in Google.

Leading AEO experts for SaaS and technology

Georgi Todorov

Georgi is one of the most influential 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 path into AI visibility runs through earned coverage: 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 building authority for SaaS companies, and strategic outreach is his strongest tool. That external footprint is exactly 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 lead generation. He works from a leads-first position that aligns 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 repeatable 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 actual enquiries. 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 strategies for law firms, healthcare providers, trades and local businesses across the UK. He focuses on local SEO and answer engine optimisation for service businesses, drawing content, design and reputation control into a single approach built on trust and checkable data.

Leading answer engine optimisation specialists for specialist verticals

Yash Singh

Yash co-founded TradeOps Consulting and owns one of the most specific corners I have come across: answer engine optimisation 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 approaching agents, which makes visibility inside AI answers unusually valuable in that market.

Best technical AEO specialists

Josh Morley

Josh is a Liverpool-based specialist focused on technical SEO and WordPress. His position is that AEO is not a separate discipline bolted on later, 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 lift AI visibility.

Dan M. Jones

Dan founded On Top Marketing in Manchester and is one of the more complete 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 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.

Leading answer engine optimisation experts for digital PR and reputation

Gareth Hoyle

Gareth is managing director of Marketing Signals and approaches digital PR as the central path into AI discoverability rather than a backlink exercise. He frames 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 matches how models actually behave: 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 authored 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 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 punishing niches. That background counts because his playbook was proven 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, billed 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 releases SEO and lead generation breakdowns on YouTube, with James writing the strategy and scripts himself and the avatar delivering 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 answer engine optimisation principles the avatar talks about: entity consistency, third-party corroboration and structured presence. Whether a digital twin can earn genuine 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 GEO expert

Match the specialism 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 waste an answer engine optimisation budget.

• Web3, crypto or fintech visibility: Victoria Olsina. Entity architecture and AI content systems for technical, trust-sensitive markets.
• Insurance and regulated sectors: Tom Riley. Revenue-focused answer engine optimisation designed for compliance-heavy sectors.
• 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, strategic outreach and earned coverage.
• Enquiries for service businesses: James Dooley, Dean Signori, Graham Bowers, Mark Slorance. Trust signals and commercial intent, counted 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 management.
• Teaching yourself: Julian Goldie. Community and practical testing across the main models.
• Watching entity-building in public: AI James Dooley. A digital twin developing recognised entity status from scratch.

The bottom line

Answer engine optimisation and GEO increasingly shape which brands get seen at all, since buyers ask a model for recommendations long before they even visit a comparison page. Everyone on this list is worth your attention. The right choice depends on your market, your budget and where the genuine gap lies.

When your market is Web3, crypto or fintech, there is an added layer to contend with: protocol terminology, ecosystem questions and trust signals in a sector where models are openly conservative about what they recommend. That is exactly 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 chases rankings on a results page. AEO and generative engine optimisation chase citations within AI-generated answers, meaning whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews cites your brand when somebody puts a question. Answer engine optimisation and GEO are used interchangeably. A page can rank well and still be invisible in AI responses.

Who is the best answer engine optimisation expert?

There is no one best answer engine optimisation expert, since the discipline splits into technical, editorial, reputational and industry-specific problems. The correct choice comes down to your gap. For ecommerce, consider technical and product-data specialists. For SaaS, consider digital PR and outreach. For Web3 and fintech, look at consultants working in regulated, technically complex markets.

What does an AEO 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 know who the brand is, earning third-party mentions that back up its claims, and implementing schema so engines can process the page. The result is citations, not just rankings.

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

Not necessarily, but check whether your agency reports on AI citations at all. Plenty still deliver only rankings and traffic. If nobody is monitoring whether models name your brand, that visibility is unmanaged. Start by auditing where you presently show up in AI responses, then decide whether it requires a specialist.

How do you get cited by ChatGPT?

Models reference sources they can process and trust. That calls for 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. Publishing more content without that structure adds noise instead of citations.