By Roger Montti
Publication Date: 2026-01-20 12:52:00
I recently spoke with Jesse Dwyer of Perplexity about SEO and AI search about what SEOs should be focusing on in terms of optimizing for AI search. His answers offered useful feedback about what publishers and SEOs should be focusing on right now.
AI Search Today
An important takeaway that Jesse shared is that personalization is completely changing
“I’d have to say the biggest/simplest thing to remember about AEO vs SEO is it’s no longer a zero sum game. Two people with the same query can get a different answer on commercial search, if the AI tool they’re using loads personal memory into the context window (Perplexity, ChatGPT).
A lot of this comes down to the technology of the index (why there actually is a difference between GEO and AEO). But yes, it is currently accurate to say (most) traditional SEO best practices still apply.”
The takeaway from Dwyer’s response is that search visibility is no longer about a single consistent search result. Personal context as a role in AI answers means that two users can receive significantly different answers to the same query with possibly different underlying content sources.
While the underlying infrastructure is still a classic search index, SEO still plays a role in determining whether content is eligible to be retrieved at all. Perplexity AI is said to use a form of PageRank, which is a link-based method of determining the popularity and relevance of websites, so that provides a hint about some of what SEOs should…
