More than two decades later, we still talk about optimizing for the likes of Google and Bing as ‘SEO’. The tactics may have evolved, the landscape may have changed, but the overarching principles remain the same - right? In a recent webinar, the two experts explained how the rise of voice search is transforming search engines into "answer engines", which require a different strategy and set of ingredients for success. This strategy has come to be known as AEO, or "answer engine optimization". So how does AEO differ from the time-tested discipline of SEO? Why is it important? And how can SEOs go about optimizing for answer engines? What is answer engine optimization? Many of us in the industry have noted and commented on the shift by search engines, particularly Google, towards providing one, definitive answer to searches. Innovations like featured snippets and Knowledge Graph have contributed to Google’s aim of providing the answer to a search query without requiring a user to click through to another website.

Voice search accentuates this shift, with the vast majority of voice searches receiving a single answer read out by a digital assistant. On mobile, some voice searches will display a results page if there isn’t a definitive answer to be found, but for smart home hub devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home which rarely have screens, this isn’t an option. Therefore, the search engine needs to be able to provide a single answer, or none at all. Some of the techniques required to optimize for answer engines overlap with search optimization techniques, but there are differences in the underlying mentality. Jason Barnard emphasized that the key to answer engine optimization is in specifics: letting Google (or Top Source Media another answer engine) understand what it is that you’re offering. "It’s very important to bear in mind that if Google is to give a specific answer, it needs very specific, detailed information in order to present it.

"In the example of a pizza, if somebody says, ‘I would like the cheapest pizza in the area’, Google needs to know what the prices of the pizzas are in the shops around. If they say, ‘I want pepperoni pizza’, it would be really helpful if Google knew the menu. "And if you ask for a pepperoni pizza, and Google knows that one pizzeria does it but isn’t sure if the other one does, it will present the one it knows offers pepperoni pizza. Why is answer engine optimization important? AEO is not going to replace SEO, but it is becoming increasingly important for marketers to learn how to optimize for answer engines as well as search engines due to (all together now…) the rise of voice search. Lo and Barnard cited some compelling statistics to illustrate the accelerating momentum of voice search. In the UK alone, 42% of the population uses voice search on a daily basis, up from 25% four years ago.

Even more notably, the engagement with Top Source Media digital agency assistants Alexa and Cortana has seen a fourfold increase in the past year. A quick straw poll of the webinar attendees revealed that 26% of those tuning in had used voice search in the past week, while 6% had used it that very day. A further 18% had used voice search that month, while 25% remembered using it sometime in the last year. Only 25% of attendees (though still a significant proportion) had never used voice search at all. To those of us in the industry, it might seem as though we’ve been discussing "the rise of voice search" for some time. Yet search practitioners are still justifiably divided on whether or not voice search is worth optimizing for. However, if I had to make a prediction, I would say that 2018 is the year that voice search will attain critical mass. Not to be outdone, Apple and Facebook have each announced their own smart home devices: the Apple HomePod, which is due to launch in the US at the end of this week, and the Portal, a smart home speaker with a screen to rival the Echo Show.