by Ema Fulga
Ema is an AI Search Content Strategist and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) expert. She's also the founder of decipher., an AEO agency that helps brands appear where people are now searching: AI-powered platforms like Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, and others. With a background in copywriting and creative strategy, she’s on a mission to turn messy messaging into clear and structured content that helps brands get mentioned and cited in AI searches.
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Last updated: 05.10.2026
TL;DR: The problem: Most AEO advice only covers one thing: getting mentioned in category searches. Discoverability gets you noticed, not necessarily booked.
The missing piece: AI queries can actually be split into three types. There’s discovery (getting considered), comparison (winning the shortlist), and branded (closing the deal).
Why this is a problem: Branded, bottom-funnel queries (such as "[Brand] pricing," "is [Brand] worth it," "[Brand] reviews") are simultaneously the highest-intent and most neglected. Right now, AI is answering them with outdated pages, stray Reddit threads, and old reviews, because nobody's optimising for them on purpose.
The Fix: Audit all three query types (not just discovery), publish honest comparison content, and keep your own pricing/FAQ/policy pages current enough that AI has something better to cite than a three-year-old complaint.
I have a confession to make. I use the term AI visibility, like everyone in the GEO world, but I don’t really like the term. It’s nothing personal. It just doesn’t quite reflect what brands want from AI search or what we do at decipher. as an AEO agency. No brand is happy with only being spotted in AI search. They want the mention to go somewhere. Ideally, a sale!
Discoverability through AI search is just the beginning. Brands need to maintain visibility until the conversation turns into a purchase decision. That’s what’s really exciting about the rise of AI search. You can be a part of the back and forth as customers weigh up their options.
But not everyone is talking about it and certainly not everyone is optimising for it… A brand can be perfectly visible in AI Overviews. You could have nailed getting cited, mentioned, included in every "best of" list ChatGPT spits out and still lose the sale two prompts later. When someone types "is [Brand] actually worth it," the model could serve up a synthesis of a three-year-old Reddit complaint thread. If you’re not strategic, that is.
Visibility gets you into the room. It doesn’t always win you the deal.
So we're going to talk about the bit everyone skips. There are three distinct types of AI queries your brand needs to think about. Let’s dive into what each one actually requires and why treating "AI search" as one big undifferentiated blob is costing you conversions you don't even know you're losing.
Why "AI search" isn't one thing
Back in the blue-link era, SEO figured out the same thing. Not all searches are equal. There's informational intent ("what is X"), commercial intent ("best X for Y"), and transactional intent ("buy X near me"). Nobody optimised a pricing page like a blog post, or a blog post like a checkout flow. Different intent, different job, different content.
AI search has the exact same structure but in a different format. Instead of finding clues in keywords, you’re looking at one long conversation (or multiple over time) that quietly moves someone from never heard of you to should I trust you to am I about to hand over my card details.
Most GEO content optimises for stage one and calls it a day. That leaves two entire categories of queries where your competitors (or worse, nobody at all) are writing the answer for you.
1. Discovery queries: getting into the conversation
What they look like: "Best CRM for a 10-person agency", "AI tools for freelance writers", "who does GEO in the UAE" (we see you).
This is the territory most GEO guides already cover in exhaustive detail. You get your foot in the door by focusing on entity clarity, structured content, third-party authority, and generally being the kind of brand a model can confidently name-drop. We won't re-hash it all here. The short version is that this is where technical GEO foundations and authority-building content do their work.
This stage is necessary but limited. Discovery queries get you considered. That's it. You're now one of three to five names in a list, competing against brands the user has never heard of, in an answer they'll skim in about four seconds. It's the AI equivalent of appearing on page one. You’re off the start line but no where near the finish line.
2. Comparison queries: winning the room
What they look like: "X vs Y for small teams", "is [Brand] better than [Competitor] for e-commerce", "cheaper alternatives to [Brand]".
This is where things get interesting, because almost nobody is deliberately optimising for it, which means the AI has to get its answer from somewhere. That somewhere is usually a random Medium post, a G2 comparison grid, or a competitor's own "X vs Y" landing page that was, unsurprisingly, written to make X look better.
If you're not publishing your own honest comparison content, you're not losing this query. You're just letting someone else answer it for you. And that someone rarely has your best interests at heart.
What wins here:
First-party comparison pages that don't play dumb about your weaknesses. Models are trained to sniff out one-sided marketing copy. A comparison that admits "we're not the cheapest option, but here's what you get for it" reads as more trustworthy to both the AI and the human reading its answer.
Use-case segmentation through multiple landing pages serving different audiences. "Best for startups" and "best for enterprise" are different answers. Give the model the material to make that distinction correctly, rather than forcing it to guess.
Structured pros/cons that are genuinely extractable. I’m talking about tables, clear headers, no burying the useful bit in paragraph four.
Skip this stage and you're not neutral. You're just letting the competitor write the narrative, and trusting a stranger's blog to be fair to you. I think you’d have better luck winning the lottery…
3. Branded queries: the conversion layer everyone forgets
What they look like: "[Brand] pricing", "is [Brand] worth it", "[Brand] reviews", "how do I cancel [Brand]", "[Brand] vs alternatives".
Here's the bit that seals the deal. These are the highest-intent queries in the entire AI search journey, and almost nobody treats them as a content problem. Think about what's actually happening. Someone already knows your brand. They're past discovery, past comparison and doing final due diligence before they buy, renew, or churn.
What AI says next about your brand makes or breaks the sale. You don’t want AI (and in turn the customer) to make the final call based on an outdated pricing page, a two-star Trustpilot review from 2024, and a Reddit thread where someone got confused about your cancellation policy.
This is the moment of truth. And most brands have handed the mic to whoever shouted loudest on a forum.
What wins here:
Owned pricing, FAQ, and policy content that's actually current, not "current as of the last website redesign."
Deliberately answering the awkward questions yourself like "Is [Brand] worth it", "Why did [Brand] change its pricing", "[Brand] complaints". If you won't answer these, a disgruntled ex-customer will, and the model will believe them over your silence.
Active monitoring of review platforms and community sentiment, not just for PR purposes. That sentiment is now a direct input into your sales conversation, whether you like it or not.
Treating this like conversion-rate optimisation, because that's what it is. Nobody would ship a checkout page without testing it. Yet almost nobody is checking what ChatGPT tells a prospect thirty seconds before they were about to buy.
Putting it together
Query type | What the user's actually doing | What the AI pulls from | What you should be optimising |
Discovery | Building a shortlist | Third-party authority, structured data, entity signals | Technical GEO foundations, category content |
Comparison | Narrowing the shortlist | Review sites, competitor content, random blogs | First-party comparison pages, honest differentiation |
Branded | Doing final due diligence | Your own site, reviews, forums, support content | Owned FAQ/pricing/policy content, reputation monitoring |
Most AEO strategies stop at row one. That's not wrong, just incomplete. It's the equivalent of nailing your billboard and completely ignoring what happens once someone walks into the shop.
How to audit your own brand across all three
If you really want to know what’s missing from your GEO strategy…
Run your discovery queries. The category questions your buyers would actually ask. Who gets named? Are you in there?
Run your comparison queries. "[Your brand] vs [top two competitors]." Read the answer as if you were the customer. Would it convince you?
Run your branded queries. Pricing, reviews, "is it worth it," "alternatives to." This is the one nobody checks but matters just as much. If not more! Imagine if someone discovers your brand on social media, goes to AI search to check up on you, and is put off by what they find there.
Log what comes back for each. You'll usually find the gap isn't visibility. It's everything that happens after someone's already found you.
What now?
Getting mentioned is nice. Getting compared fairly is better. But getting someone across the finish line, when they've typed your brand name into an AI chat with their card halfway out of their wallet, that's the query that actually pays the bills.
Visibility gets you noticed. The other two get you paid.
If you'd like us to run an audit on your brand (properly, across all three query types, not just the discovery one everyone else checks), book a discovery call. We'll show you exactly what's missing, and it's usually not what you'd expect.