Life science buyers have changed how they research vendors.
Fewer of them start with a Google search now.
More of them open up ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews and ask direct questions.
The AI answer gives them a few sources and a few vendors. If you're not one of them, you're not in the conversation your buyer is having.
And the data shows how fast this is moving:
- Traffic from AI citations grew more than tenfold in seven months, from July 2024 to February 2025 (Adobe).
- AI has contributed to search traffic declines of 30-50% (AthenaHQ).
- A study of 768,000 AI search citations found the top 50 domains captured nearly 30% of all mentions (Xponent 21).
This is a winner-take-most pattern.
A handful of sources get cited again and again. Everyone else is absent, and strong content is no protection if AI systems can't read it, understand it, or trust it.
The rest of this article explains AEO and how you can get found in AI search ahead of your competitors.
What is AEO?
Answer engine optimization (AEO) means optimizing content so AI-powered search engines can easily understand, trust, and cite it.
There are two general parts to AEO:
- Structuring your on-page content for AI
- Getting third party brand mentions on forums like Reddit, on social media, and in category directories like BestLabTech that AI pulls from when buyers ask comparison questions
Search engine optimization (SEO) got you ranked in Google. AEO gets you quoted inside the AI Overview and in models like ChatGPT.
SEO is obviously still important. Google isn’t going away, and it still sends more traffic to websites than any other source.
But AI search is becoming more and more involved and you need to start using both if you want to capture as many qualified leads as possible.
One more concept before we move on:
There is some overlap between SEO and AEO. The technical groundwork is the same: clean structure, fast pages, clear authority, content a crawler can reach.
However, Google and AI search have officially decoupled, which means that ranking high on Google (even in position #1) doesn’t mean you’ll also rank in the AI Overview.
In 2025, top-ten Google rankers accounted for roughly 76% of citations inside AI Overviews. By early 2026, that share had fallen to around 38%.
So you need to treat SEO and AEO as separate efforts.
OK, let’s say you don't need any more convincing.
How do you actually get found in AI search?
Start with the following five factors.
Five factors that decide if AI can use your content
Here's a self-check you can run on your site today.
For each factor, ask whether it's clearly in place, uncertain, or missing.
1. Crawlability and access.
AI crawlers are allowed in your robots.txt, your security tools aren't blocking known AI bots, and your key pages are publicly reachable rather than gated or rendered only in JavaScript. If AI can't reach the page, nothing else on this list matters.
2. Structure and context. One clear topic per page, a logical header hierarchy from H1 to H2 to H3, the core answer near the top, and sections that make sense read on their own.
3. Entity recognition. Organization schema in place, author bios that state real scientific or domain credentials, and consistent brand information across your site and the wider web, so AI knows who you are and why you're credible.
4. E-E-A-T signals. First-hand experience on the page, credentials stated outright rather than implied, content updated within the last six months, and external validation from other sources.
5. Performance. Pages that load in under three seconds, a clean mobile layout, and no script or image bloat. Slow pages get skipped.
Write the answer first & structure your content
When an AI system evaluates your page, it's asking three questions:
- Can I find the answer immediately?
- Do I understand what this page is about?
- Do I trust this source enough to reuse it?
You can do two things to help meet these criteria and get cited in AI:
- Lead with the answer. A strong first 100 words follows a simple order: the answer, then the reason it's true, then what to do about it.
- Structure your content into “snackable bites” that AI can pull and quote. No large blocks of text. Instead, use short sections, clear headers, and lots of bullets.
Let’s take a before and after example, taken from this page:
Before:
What is ‘lab of the future’?
Although the ‘lab of the future’ is not yet explicitly defined, many individuals have diverse visions of what it entails. Central to this concept is digital connectivity, where all instruments are interconnected, allowing for the potential of a “digital twin” of the physical lab. This setup facilitates predictive modeling, optimization, automation, and, beyond that, autonomation — automation that incorporates intelligence enabling human interactions with automated processes.
Monitoring and visualizing lab activities will enhance control; this, in turn, fosters the ability to optimize lab performance and scientific research, ultimately creating opportunities to automate and autonomize more lab functions. As labs become digitally empowered, they along with the scientists within them will play critical roles in addressing significant humanitarian challenges such as climate change, unmet medical needs, and food safety.
To achieve this, organizations must commit to technologies that align with the lab of the future.
Now, here’s what that copy looks like when you rewrite it for AI, with the answer first and a “snackable” structure.
After:
What is the "lab of the future"?
The "lab of the future" is a fully digitally connected lab, where every instrument is linked and data flows freely enough to build a "digital twin". It’s a live digital replica of the physical lab.
That connectivity unlocks four capabilities:
- Predictive modeling: Anticipate outcomes before running the experiment
- Optimization: Tune lab performance and research output using live data
- Automation: Hand routine tasks to machines
- Autonomation: Automation with built-in intelligence, so humans can interact directly with automated processes
The logic is a virtuous cycle. When you can monitor and visualize everything in the lab, you get more control. More control lets you optimize performance, which creates room to automate and autonomize even more functions.
See?
Same knowledge. One version makes an AI system work to find the answer, the other hands it over. The latter answers the question straight away, and uses short paragraphs and bullets.
The window is wide open… for now
There’s an early-mover advantage right now when it comes to AI search.
Not many brands are deliberately trying to improve their AI citations… yet. Many are getting cited just because they have a solid SEO strategy in place. So if you move now and deliberately work on your AEO, you’ll reap the rewards before your competitors do.
Start with your existing content. Re-structure it so it’s “snackable”:
- “Answer-first” content: Get to the point. Answer the question at the top.
- Short paragraphs: No large blocks of text.
- Clear headers that explain what you’re going to talk about
- Lots of bullet points: Break up text visually so it’s easy to scan
Structuring your content is low hanging fruit here. Pick one article or blog post this week and get started.
About the author
Colm O'Regan is a copywriter and AI consultant who helps life science brands create content that drives leads and sales. He specialises in helping science companies improve their AEO and get cited by AI. Find out more at sciencecopywriting.com. Colm also runs a lab software review site called BestLabTech.com where he matches software buyers to the right vendors.
