What UAE businesses ask about AI search

AEO stands for answer engine optimisation: writing a page so a machine can lift one correct answer from it. Put the answer in the first sentence under a heading phrased like the question, state specifics plainly and name your sources. It's a set of habits inside good SEO, not a separate discipline, and Google says content doesn't need to be chopped into tiny pieces for AI.

GEO is generative engine optimisation: shaping content so AI engines use and cite it in the answers they write. The term comes from a research paper accepted to KDD 2024, by researchers including Princeton University, which reported visibility gains of up to 40 per cent on a benchmark of 10,000 queries. It measured presence in generated answers, not traffic or sales, and it has nothing to do with geo-targeting.

You can't rank in ChatGPT the way you rank on Google, because it writes one answer instead of a ranked list, and nobody outside OpenAI can guarantee a mention. You can influence whether its answer about you is accurate: keep your site open to crawlers, state plain facts with numbers and named sources, and earn accurate mentions on other sites. Then test with the same questions every month.

The main study is the GEO paper, run on a benchmark of 10,000 queries. Adding citations, quotations and statistics gave relative improvements of 30 to 40 per cent in how visible a source was in generated answers, while keyword stuffing did not perform well. Treat it as a 2023 and 2024 research benchmark, not a traffic promise: it measured visibility, and results varied by subject.

OpenAI says ChatGPT has about 1.2 billion weekly users worldwide, a company figure announced on 29 September 2026, and we found no UAE-only number. The nearest UAE measure is Microsoft's AI Diffusion report: 73.3 per cent of people aged 15 to 64 had used a generative AI product by June 2026, against 18.8 per cent worldwide. That counts any use, not daily use or use at work.

AI Overviews are short answers written by AI that Google places above some results, with links to sources inside them. Google's Search Help page lists the United Arab Emirates among the places where they're available, and lists Arabic among the supported languages. Availability doesn't mean every search shows one, so check the searches your buyers actually use, in English and in Arabic.

AI Overviews appear inside normal Google results for some searches, while AI Mode is Google's conversational way to search, where a person asks a longer question and keeps going with follow-ups. Google's help pages list the UAE for both, with Arabic supported. For a business, the difference is how buyers ask: a quick query may meet an Overview, while a research task may happen in AI Mode.

No. Google's documentation says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, and that no special schema is needed. So check that your key pages are indexed and not blocked, then make each one worth quoting: answer in the first sentence and state facts only you can state.

No. llms.txt is a proposal by Jeremy Howard, published on 3 September 2024, for a Markdown file that lists your key pages for AI tools. Google says Search doesn't use it and you don't need one, and OpenAI hasn't confirmed that it reads one. We publish one because it's cheap, not because it moves rankings. Don't pay a monthly fee for it.

No. The pages AI answers draw on come from the same web that SEO works on, and Google says the entry requirement for its AI features is an indexed page that can show a snippet. What changes is the click, because an answer on the results page can satisfy someone who once would have visited. Measure enquiries, not just visits, and make the pages closest to a sale your strongest.

They may, but we found no UAE data. In the US, Pew Research found adults clicked a traditional result in 8 per cent of Google visits that showed an AI summary, against 15 per cent of visits without one, using March 2025 data from 900 adults. Google disputes the method. Watch your own Search Console clicks and enquiries instead of leaning on any average.

Not for being written with AI. Google's February 2023 guidance says it rewards high-quality content however it's produced, and that using AI mainly to manipulate rankings breaks its spam policies. Under those policies, scaled content abuse means many pages generated mainly to game search without helping users, with AI pages that add no value as an example. The test is purpose and value, not the tool.

Not on ordinary business sites. Since August 2023 Google shows FAQ rich results only for well-known, authoritative government and health websites, so don't pay for FAQ markup as a way to win extra space in results. Writing the questions is still worth doing, because people and assistants read them. Keep each answer able to stand alone, with the fact people need in the first sentence.

Ask the questions a buyer would type, in English and Arabic, and log what comes back: if you're named, if the facts are right and which sources the answer leans on. Run each question several times, because answers change between runs, and repeat the whole set monthly. A single screenshot proves nothing; a month-by-month log shows whether anything is moving.

Put three questions to each agency. What will you change on my site in month one? How will you show me the AI answers before and after, in English and Arabic? What do you refuse to promise? A good answer to the last is a citation, because nobody outside the engines can guarantee one. Be wary of a proprietary visibility score you can't inspect.

For Magnetic Keys it sits inside SEO, which starts from AED 12,000 a month, excluding VAT, because good SEO does most of the work and AI search adds specific extras: answer-first content, entity and schema coverage, clean crawl access and tracking of how often you're named in AI answers. If another agency quotes a separate retainer, ask what it includes that SEO doesn't.