No — but the definition changed. Classic ranking still determines which pages an AI system draws from, so technical health, authority and content quality remain the foundation. What died is the assumption that a top-three position automatically produces a click, because a large share of queries now end inside an AI-generated answer.
Answer engine optimisation is structuring content so it can be extracted as a direct answer — in a featured snippet, an AI Overview, or an assistant's response. In practice it means answering the question in the first paragraph under a heading that matches how people ask it, plus FAQPage and entity schema so machines can parse it unambiguously.
Generative engine optimisation is the discipline of becoming a source that generative systems cite. Where SEO competes for a ranked position, GEO competes to be named inside the answer. The levers are entity consistency across the web, structured data, third-party corroboration, and content written to be quoted rather than skimmed.
SEO optimises for a position in a list of links; AEO optimises for being the answer itself. They share a technical foundation but diverge in format: SEO rewards depth and coverage, AEO rewards a crisp, self-contained, directly-extractable response placed where a machine will find it first.
LLMs.txt is a plain-text file at the root of your domain telling AI crawlers which pages best represent your business and how to describe it. It is not a ranking factor in the classic sense, it is a disambiguation aid — and for a local business with multiple service areas it removes exactly the ambiguity that keeps models from naming you.
Almost always one of four reasons: your entity information is inconsistent across your site, Google Business Profile and directories; your pages bury answers under narrative; you have no structured data; or you simply have too little third-party corroboration for a model to name you confidently. It is rarely a single technical switch.
Make the same facts about your business true and identical everywhere a model can check — your site, Google Business Profile, industry directories, review platforms and press. Then structure your pages so each answers one question directly, add Organization and FAQPage schema, and earn mentions on sources the model already trusts.
AI Overviews draw predominantly from pages already ranking on page one for the query, so ranking is the prerequisite, not the alternative. On top of that: a direct answer in the opening lines, a heading phrased as the question, clean schema, and content that a machine can lift without needing to summarise three scattered paragraphs.
Perplexity favours pages with clear sourcing, recent updates, and specific factual content over marketing prose. Concrete numbers, dates, named authors and cited sources materially improve the odds of being included in its answer set, and it will show you which sources it used — which makes it the easiest engine to test against.
Gemini leans heavily on Google's own entity understanding, which makes Google Business Profile completeness, category accuracy, review substance and consistency between your profile and your website unusually influential. If your profile and site disagree about what you do, Gemini resolves the conflict by recommending someone else.
Entity and profile consistency work often shows up in AI answers within six to ten weeks. Content and authority work behaves like SEO — four to eight months for durable change on competitive terms. Anyone quoting thirty days for a competitive category is describing a coincidence, not a process.
No, and treating South Florida as Miami-only is the most expensive regional myth in this market. Fort Lauderdale alone carries higher search volume than Miami for several agency-category terms, and Broward and Palm Beach businesses face materially less competition for the same work. The optimisation is identical; the competitive maths is better north of the county line.
Less, and that is the point. Fort Lauderdale's category terms are meaningfully lower difficulty than Miami's equivalents, so a well-structured site with clean local entity data and consistent reviews can compete on a budget that would be insufficient in Miami-Dade. The mistake is copying a Miami page and swapping the city name.
Judge Fort Lauderdale agencies on whether they can show local search and AI citation results for businesses your size in Broward specifically, not statewide averages. Seal Global serves Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach from its Miramar, Florida headquarters, which sits between the two markets, and reports on citations and qualified leads rather than impressions.
There is no objective answer, and claiming the title is a marketing move. What separates credible Miami agencies is transparent tracked-keyword reporting, coverage of both classic search and AI citation surfaces, no lock-in contracts, and a senior strategist actually on the account rather than fronting the sale.
Local SEO and AI visibility programmes for small South Florida businesses generally run $750–$2,500 per month. Competitive multi-location or high-value service categories run $3,000–$8,000. Full-service engagements including paid media start around $5,000. Anything under $500 per month is templated work at scale.
Ask for the tracked prompt set. An agency doing real AI search work can show you which prompts it monitors across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, your current citation share on each, and what changed month over month. An agency that cannot produce that is selling SEO with new vocabulary.
A complete programme covers entity and citation consistency across your site, Google Business Profile and directories; schema implementation; LLMs.txt; content restructured for extraction; review systems; third-party mention building; and monthly monitoring of citation share across the major AI engines alongside classic rankings.