Discover practical insights on AI SEO, AI Search, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Technical SEO, content strategy, and search marketing. Plain Intelligence publishes research-driven guides, tutorials, industry updates, and actionable frameworks to help marketers, SEO professionals, founders, and businesses improve visibility across Google Search, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, and emerging AI search platforms.
Browse by topic
All articles
Every guide, checklist, and case study — newest first, 10 per page.
-
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
A 2026 guide to answer engine optimization (AEO) — what it means, how it differs from SEO and GEO, and how to optimize content to be the answer that answer engines deliver.
-
llms.txt Guide
A clear-eyed llms.txt guide for 2026 — what the proposed standard is, how it works, what evidence exists for its impact, and whether you should implement it.
-
AI Search Statistics
A careful look at AI search statistics for 2026 — what the data shows about adoption, zero-click behaviour, and citations, how to interpret it, and which numbers to trust.
-
AI Search Analytics
How to measure AI search visibility when clicks and rankings stop telling the story — citation tracking, AI referrals, branded lift, and a monthly workflow.
-
How AI Citation Systems Work
The mechanics behind how AI assistants decide which sources to cite — passage grounding, attribution thresholds — and how to make your pages citation-worthy.
-
AI Search vs Google Search
How AI search and traditional Google search differ across retrieval, results, behavior, and optimization — and why a dual strategy beats choosing sides.
-
Zero-Click AI Search
Why more searches end without a website visit, how zero-click AI search changes success metrics, and how to build visibility and trust when clicks disappear.
-
AI Knowledge Graphs Explained
What knowledge graphs are, how AI search systems use them to verify entities, and how to make your brand a recognized node they can trust and cite.
-
AI Crawlers Explained
GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot, Google-Extended and CCBot explained — what each AI crawler does and how to configure robots.txt deliberately.
-
Microsoft Copilot Search Optimization
Copilot runs on Bing’s index. Learn the Bing Webmaster + IndexNow foundation, what Copilot cites, and how to win visibility across Microsoft’s AI surfaces.
What each pillar covers
- AI SEO — how AI search engines and assistants rank, cite, and surface content, from ChatGPT search to Google AI Mode, plus AI search analytics.
- GEO / AEO — Generative Engine Optimization and Answer Engine Optimization: entity SEO, retrieval optimization, and earning AI citations.
- SEO Fundamentals — keyword research, on-page SEO, internal linking, Core Web Vitals, schema markup, and topical authority.
- Technical SEO — crawlability, indexing, robots.txt, XML sitemaps, structured data, site architecture, and migrations.
- Content Strategy — content clusters, editorial calendars, evergreen content, AI content creation, and measuring content ROI.
- Future of Search — voice, visual, and multimodal search, AI agents, personalization, and zero-click search trends.
- Research & Data — original SEO experiments, AI citation studies, core update analyses, and repeatable case-study methods.
New to the site? Start here, brush up on SEO basics, or get one trend a week via the newsletter.
Stay updated
Get weekly insights on SEO and content strategy.