Search is increasingly less about scrolling a list of links and more about reading an instant, AI-generated response. Across major platforms, answer-style interfaces now summarize topics, pull supporting sources, and offer a fast “gist” before a click ever happens. Google’s own documentation describes AI Overviews as a way to help people understand a topic more quickly and use linked sources as a jumping-off point for deeper exploration.

This shift is helping push Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) into the center of modern search strategy. AEO is commonly defined as creating and formatting content so AI answer engines can easily understand it and readily surface it to answer user questions—often through snippets, knowledge panels, or voice responses rather than traditional blue-link results. As these answer experiences expand, brands are finding that classic performance indicators—rankings and clicks—do not always reflect whether a company is being selected as a source in AI responses. AEO adds a different benchmark: being cited, referenced, or summarized as the underlying evidence behind an answer.

GreenBanana SEO, a Massachusetts-based digital marketing agency, has built a visible niche in this emerging space by focusing on AI search optimization and Answer Engine Optimization as a distinct discipline. The company’s Better Business Bureau profile lists AI search optimization services that include Answer Engine Optimization as well as platform-specific services tied to systems such as Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot, and ChatGPT, alongside implementation work such as schema markup.

As the market has grown louder, so has the need for measurement. In AEO, visibility can be fragmented: content may appear in one assistant’s answers and fail to surface in another. GreenBanana SEO positions proprietary analytics as a way to reduce that ambiguity. One of the agency’s service pages describes a proprietary AI ranking analysis capability that tracks business rankings in real time across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and other emerging AI search platforms. The emphasis reflects a broader reality of AI search: optimization is difficult to sustain without a way to observe how often a brand is cited, which entities and pages are being pulled, and where competitors are winning attention.

The same mix of specialization and tooling has begun to appear in third-party roundups tracking the AEO category. FeeDaddy.com published an article titled “The Top 10 Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) Agencies in the US for 2025,” ranking GreenBananaSEO at #3 and listing the agency as best known for dedicated AEO services and proprietary AI Ranking Analysis. In the extended profile section, Fee Daddy describes GreenBananaSEO’s competitive advantage as a proprietary AI Ranking Analysis Tool intended to track brand rankings across major AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot.

Rankings can vary by methodology, but the pattern behind many lists is consistent: AEO credibility is increasingly tied to two things—clear specialization and the ability to validate outcomes. The category has matured quickly enough that surface claims are no longer persuasive on their own. In practice, AI systems tend to favor information that is explicit, well-structured, and easy to verify against other trusted sources. That changes the day-to-day work. Instead of writing only for a human reader scanning a page, AEO work often focuses on creating answer-ready passages, tightening definitions, clarifying entities, and using structured markup so a machine can interpret the page with fewer assumptions.

This is where AEO differs from traditional SEO in a practical, non-theoretical way. Traditional SEO has long rewarded relevance signals and discoverability across a wide set of queries. AEO still depends on those fundamentals, but it places added weight on comprehension and extractability—whether an answer engine can lift a clean response, understand who and what it refers to, and attribute it confidently. AI Overviews and other answer experiences are designed to expedite understanding; the “winner” is often the source that makes accuracy and context easiest to assemble.

For organizations trying to adapt, the implications are straightforward. Content built only to attract clicks may underperform in an environment where the first interaction is a synthesized answer. Content built to be cited can still earn clicks, but it is designed to succeed even when the click never arrives. That is the strategic shift AEO represents: moving from visibility that depends on a user’s next step to visibility that exists inside the answer itself.

GreenBanana SEO’s growing presence in AEO conversations reflects how quickly this new layer of search has become operational rather than theoretical. The agency’s publicly described service set, its focus on cross-platform tracking, and its placement in AEO-specific rankings point to an approach oriented around being selected as a source—not simply being found. As AI-driven interfaces continue to shape discovery, AEO is increasingly treated less like an experiment and more like a standard requirement for brands that want to stay visible where decisions are being influenced.

About GreenBanana SEO:

GreenBanana SEO was founded in response to common challenges businesses encountered with search engine optimization services, including heavy use of jargon, limited transparency, and weak connections between cost and performance.

The company focuses on measurable outcomes and clear communication. The team explains what work is being done, why it is being done, and how results are evaluated. Processes are structured so clients can see the approach, understand the reasoning behind recommendations, and assess performance against defined goals and expectations.

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For more information about GreenBanana SEO, contact the company here:

GreenBanana SEO
Kevin Roy
9783386500
press@greenbananaseo.co
900 Cummings Center
Suite 211U
Beverly MA 01915