Only One In Five Australian Business Leaders Are Acting On Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) As AI Reshapes Search

The way Australian buyers discover and evaluate businesses has shifted, but the majority of marketing leaders have not adjusted their strategies to match, according to new research from HubSpot.

The company’s analysis of 14 million citations and more than 13,000 real AI conversations found that while 63 per cent of Australian marketing leaders understand Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), only one in five are actively optimising for it. A further 42 per cent who understand AEO admit they are not applying it consistently.

The findings point to a widening gap between how buyers are searching and how businesses are positioning themselves online, with AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity increasingly replacing traditional search engines as the starting point for purchase decisions.

Aja Frost, Head of Global Growth at HubSpot, warned that the window for early movers is narrowing.

“The shift to answer engines is already happening. The question isn’t whether your customers are going to use them, it’s whether they find you when they do,” Frost noted.

With ChatGPT traffic predicted to overtake organic search by 2028, according to Siege Media, businesses that delay risk becoming invisible in the channels their buyers are already using.

Blogs are not dead but need rethinking

HubSpot’s data revealed that blog posts and listicles account for 62.1 per cent of all content cited by AI engines, suggesting that long-form content remains relevant but needs to be approached differently.

“Don’t spin down your blog. If there is something AI should know about your brand and products, put it there, but it would be a mistake to approach blogging the same way you did pre-AI,” Frost commented.

Queries are getting longer and more specific

The research found that the average AI query runs to approximately 350 words, compared to around five words for a typical Google search. This shift demands more specific, contextual content from businesses.

“When queries get more specific, content needs to get more specific too. Generic content simply doesn’t answer the question the way specific, contextual content will,” Frost explained.

Structure and freshness matter

Page structure has a measurable impact on whether content gets cited by AI engines. Formatting headers as questions showed a strong correlation with citations across almost every AI engine tested. FAQ sections, schema markup, visible “last updated” dates and proprietary data were all positively associated with visibility.

“AI models prefer pages that are structured, scannable and data-dense,” Frost observed.

Freshness also plays a larger role than it does in traditional search engine optimisation. Content cited by AI engines is on average 25 per cent more recent than content ranked by Google. For ChatGPT specifically, cited content is 1.2 years more recent on average.

“With answer engines, recency can push you back into the citation pool,” Frost added.

Backlinks lose their predictive power

In a finding that challenges one of the foundational assumptions of traditional SEO, HubSpot’s research showed that backlinks do not reliably predict AI visibility. The company pointed to one article cited 85 times for HubSpot-relevant AI queries that had just a single backlink.

“Content clarity and specificity often outweigh domain authority. If you’re a smaller company, this is great news, there is a much more level playing field,” Frost noted.

Social platforms feed AI answers

LinkedIn, Reddit and YouTube account for 55 per cent of citations for product comparison and recommendation queries, making them critical platforms for AI visibility.

“If your brand never appears in YouTube transcripts, Reddit discussions or LinkedIn posts, you are missing three of the most influential ecosystems feeding AI’s opinions,” Frost pointed out.

Visibility is volatile

The research also found that AI visibility is inherently unstable. Nearly 60 per cent of cited pages appear once and do not recur the following month. Only 30 per cent of brands stay visible from one AI answer to the next.

“In a volatile system, moments are meaningless, trends are what matter. The real question is not, did we show up today? It’s, are we showing up more over time,” Frost commented.

HubSpot launches AEO tool

The findings accompany the launch of HubSpot AEO, a new offering designed to help businesses understand where they currently stand and appear more often in AI answers across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Beta users who prioritise answer engines are seeing AI referral traffic grow 20 per cent compared to customers not using the tool.

Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot, described the product as a response to a fundamental change in buyer behaviour.

“How buyers search is fundamentally changing. They are asking questions in places like ChatGPT and Gemini, and the companies that show up in those answers are already winning,” Rangan commented. “That’s exactly why we’ve built HubSpot AEO: to help businesses improve their AI visibility, grow brand awareness, and ultimately drive more qualified leads.”

Research methodology

The research was commissioned by HubSpot and conducted by Lonergan Research in accordance with the ISO 20252 standard. Lonergan Research surveyed 1,007 Australian business leaders in organisations of 50 or more employees across capital city and non-capital city areas. The survey was conducted online between 19 February and 27 February 2026, with data weighted to the latest population estimates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Last Updated on April 24, 2026 by Nick Ross