Marketers see the importance of AEO, but many haven’t started

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Marketers believe answer engine optimization (AEO) will significantly reshape their organizations’ digital strategy in the next three years, but only 20% have started implementing AEO initiatives. 

That’s according to a survey conducted by Acquia and Researchscape, which also found that 50% of both small businesses (less than 100 employees) and large enterprises (10,000 employees or more) say they are unshare of the share of their traffic is sourced by LLMs.

Other findings of the survey include:

• 18% of respondents have no current plans for AEO while 23% are planning to address AEO.
• 45% cite budget constraints as the biggest barrier to adapting an AEO strategy, following by lack of internal expertise at 40%.
• 62% of respondents have seen a decline in clicks/web traffic from search engines, with 39% being able to show the percentage decline.
• 51% note personalization as the most important element of a content strategy to ensure future success.

The online survey was conducted by Researchscape was fielded from July 11 to 31, 2025. There were 516 respondents from the U.S. and U.K.

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