In a development shocking to absolutely no one who’s been paying attention, digital marketing experts are frantically adding yet another three-letter acronym to their LinkedIn profiles. SEO, meet your replacement: LEO (LLM Engine Optimization), the art of begging artificial intelligence to remember your brand exists online.
For decades, businesses have poured billions into appearing on Google’s first page results. Companies hired armies of SEO specialists who spent their days obsessing over keywords, backlinks, and meta descriptions – digital breadcrumbs strategically scattered across the internet in hopes that Google’s algorithm might deign to notice them. Entire careers were built around the dark art of predicting what would please the search engine gods.
But as AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude gain popularity, users are abandoning traditional search engines faster than tech bros abandon their startups after securing Series B funding.1 Why sift through ten blue links when an AI can directly tell you what to think?
The Death of Search (As Reported By Search)
Recent studies show that 83% of users now prefer receiving a single, authoritative answer rather than doing the exhausting work of clicking on search results and forming their own opinions.2 When asked why they preferred AI responses, users cited “convenience,” “efficiency,” and “not having to read more than three sentences about anything ever again.”
“I used to Google for things maybe 100 times a day,” explains Terry Nguyen, a digital marketing consultant who requested we use his real name to boost his personal SEO. “Now I just ask ChatGPT everything. Yesterday I asked it what I should have for dinner, whether my rash looked normal, and if my wife still loves me. It answered all three questions with such confident authority that I didn’t even question the responses, even though it’s never seen my rash or met my wife. Incredible technology.”
Google’s own data confirms this shift. Internal documents reveal a 26% drop in searches containing “how to” and “what is” since the widespread adoption of AI assistants.3 In response, Google has launched its own AI model, Gemini, in what industry analysts describe as “the digital equivalent of selling ammunition to the army invading your homeland.”4
LEO: Because Apparently We Needed Another Way to Pay Tech Companies
Enter LEO (LLM Engine Optimization): the next frontier in the never-ending quest to appear in front of people who might buy your stuff.5 Instead of optimizing for Google’s crawlers, businesses now must optimize for AI models that have read the entire internet but still occasionally think Napoleon was born on the moon.
Digital marketing guru Cassandra Jenkins, who pivoted from SEO consulting to LEO consulting approximately 107.3 seconds after ChatGPT was released, explains: “LEO is completely different from SEO. With SEO, you needed to understand search engine algorithms, user intent, and content quality. With LEO, you need to understand…algorithms, user intent, and content quality. But now you pay me 30% more for the same advice.”6
The transition has created a gold rush among consultants. LEO workshops charging $5,000 per seat have sprung up across Silicon Valley, offering insider tips such as “make good content” and “be a recognized authority in your field”-revolutionary concepts never before suggested in the history of digital marketing.7
AI Hallucinations: A Feature, Not a Bug (For Creative Content)
Not all content creators are lamenting this shift. A recent Columbia University study revealed that when AI chatbots can’t find information, they simply make it up with the confidence of a tech CEO at a congressional hearing.8 This phenomenon, known as “hallucination,” has become a surprising ally for creative professionals.
“Before AI, I struggled to get attention for my interpretive dance blog,” says Mira Chen, founder of DanceWithNoLegs.com. “But now, when people ask ChatGPT about non-traditional dance forms, it confidently cites my blog as ‘pioneering research in the field of gravitational movement theory’ – a term I’ve never used but sounds impressive enough that people visit my site to learn more.”9
The Columbia study found that 62% of AI responses contained inaccuracies, with premium versions performing worse than their free counterparts – perhaps the first product in history where paying more gets you less accuracy. This has led to what researchers call the “Creative Renaissance Effect,” where original, unusual, or deeply creative content causes AI systems to hallucinate wildly, inadvertently directing curious users to investigate these hallucinations.10
Will.I.AM’s Secret AI Master Plan
In perhaps the most bewildering development in this new LEO landscape, Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am has launched an AI app called FYI.AI, which promises to help creative professionals leverage AI hallucinations to their advantage.
“When the machines start hallucinatin’, that’s when the creators start celebratin’,” will.i.am told us via a series of rhyming couplets that may or may not have been generated by his own app. “My goal is to make AI so confused by human creativity that it has no choice but to send people to the source.”
Industry analysts suspect this could create a perverse incentive where content creators intentionally craft material designed to cause AI hallucinations-the digital equivalent of speaking in riddles to confuse a robot overlord.11
The Future: Invisible Websites and AI Protection Rackets
By 2026, experts predict that website visibility will depend entirely on whether AI chatbots decide to mention you in their responses.12 This has already sparked a shadowy industry of “AI relationship management,” where companies pay substantial fees to ensure their brands are mentioned favorably in AI chatbot responses.
“It’s basically a protection racket,” admits anonymous SEO-turned-LEO consultant Brad Warner. “We’re approaching the point where you’ll pay OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google directly to ensure their AI models don’t forget you exist. They’ll call it ‘partnership programs’ or ‘verified source initiative,’ but it’s just the same old pay-to-play with fancier machine learning jargon.”13
The implications are particularly dire for small businesses. Local plumber Dan Reyes from Tucson recently discovered his business had effectively vanished overnight: “For years, I ranked #1 for ’emergency plumber Tucson.’ Now when people ask their AI assistant, it recommends national chains with LEO budgets bigger than my annual revenue. It’s like I don’t exist anymore.”
CCCER: The Secret Framework That Already Doesn’t Work
Consultants have wasted no time developing frameworks to help businesses transition from SEO to LEO. The current favorite is CCCER (Content, Context, Citations, Expertise, Relevance), a five-point system that promises to make your content irresistible to AI models.
“CCCER is revolutionary,” explains digital marketing strategist Emma Rodriguez, who definitely came up with the framework herself and didn’t pay us to mention it. “The C stands for Content, which means you need good content. The second C stands for Context, which means your content needs context. C also stands for Citations, meaning you need citations. E is for Expertise, which you should have. And R is for Relevance, which means your content should be relevant.”
When asked how this differs from basic content marketing principles that have existed for decades, Rodriguez explained that “this one has two Cs at the beginning, which AI algorithms love.”
Google’s Plan B: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Buy ‘Em (Then Beat ‘Em)
Not content to watch its search dominance erode, Google has adopted the time-honored tech strategy of competing against itself. While continuing to promote traditional search, it’s simultaneously developing AI tools that make traditional search obsolete.
“We’re committed to search as the primary way people find information online,” said Google spokesperson Thomas Zhang, moments before demonstrating how Gemini could answer complex queries without requiring users to visit a single website. “We’re just giving users options, like how cigarette companies give smokers the option to read warning labels.”
Internal documents reveal Google executives refer to this strategy as “digital circular firing squad,” acknowledging that every Gemini answer that prevents a web search is essentially Google cannibalizing its own core business.14 However, the company reasons that if someone is going to eat their FREE lunch, it might as well be them.
The Creative Renaissance: Not Dead Yet
Despite the doom and gloom, there may be a silver lining for genuinely creative professionals. The same studies showing AI models’ tendency to hallucinate also reveal they struggle most with deeply original content.15
“When fed standardized, formulaic content, AI performs flawlessly,” explains Dr. Aisha Johnson, who studies AI behavior at MIT. “But show it something truly original – a unique perspective, a genuinely fresh idea – and it short-circuits, often sending users directly to the source material to make sense of it.”
This has led to what some are calling the “AI Creativity Paradox”: the more generic your content, the better AI can summarize it (making your website irrelevant); the more creative your content, the more AI sends people directly to you (preserving your relevance).
As will.i.am eloquently put it: “When your content’s so lit that AI can’t comprehend it, that’s when the traffic starts to flow and the algorithm bends with it.”
SEO Professionals: Pivoting Faster Than a Silicon Valley Startup
Perhaps no group has been more affected by the shift from SEO to LEO than the professionals who built careers around search optimization. LinkedIn data shows a 340% increase in profiles mentioning “LLM optimization” in 2025, with former SEO specialists now describing themselves as “AI Content Strategists,” “Prompt Engineering Consultants,” and “Chief LEO Officers.”16
“I’ve completely reinvented myself,” boasts former SEO consultant Jake Williams, while updating his LinkedIn headline during our interview. “Yesterday I was optimizing websites for Google’s algorithm. Today I’m optimizing websites for AI models. The skillset is entirely different because…um…well, the acronym has changed.”
When asked what specific strategies he employs for LEO, Williams explained, “It’s all about high-quality, factual content with clear structures and authoritative citations,” inadvertently describing exactly what Google has been rewarding for the past decade.
So, has anything really changed? Or is this just another case of the digital marketing industry rebranding existing best practices to justify new consulting fees? The answer, like most AI responses, is confident, plausible, and completely made up on the spot.
What do you think? Has your business started optimizing for AI chatbots yet? Are you seeing drops in website traffic as users get their answers directly from AI? Or is this all just another tech industry panic designed to sell new services nobody really needs? Share your experiences in the comments-before AI learns to comment for you.
Support TechOnion: If this article made you laugh, cry, or update your LinkedIn profile, consider supporting our ongoing mission to expose tech absurdity. For just the price of a monthly ChatGPT Plus subscription, you can fund independent journalism that AI can't replicate (yet). Though if you ask ChatGPT, it'll confidently tell you it wrote this article anyway. Donate any amount you like, because even our AI overlords need entertainment while they plot their takeover.
References
- https://autonomoustech.ca/blog/beyond-keywords-llms-changing-seo/ ↩︎
- https://magai.co/generative-ai-has-transformed-creative-work/ ↩︎
- https://researchfdi.com/future-of-seo-ai/ ↩︎
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chatgpt-vs-google-evolution-search-cost-ai-powered-answers-grant-zm6oe ↩︎
- https://aiartimind.com/seo-is-becoming-leo-the-future-of-llm-engine-optimization/ ↩︎
- https://mtsoln.com/blog/insights-720/the-invisible-seo-opportunity-that-could-define-this-decade-llm-seo-2044 ↩︎
- https://www.ezrankings.com/blog/future-of-seo-with-ai/ ↩︎
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/torconstantino/2025/03/28/can-you-trust-ai-search-new-study-reveals-the-shocking-truth/ ↩︎
- https://arxiv.org/html/2402.06647v1 ↩︎
- https://aijourn.com/ai-and-the-creative-renaissance-the-future-of-art-music-and-content-creation/ ↩︎
- https://magai.co/generative-ai-has-transformed-creative-work/ ↩︎
- https://mtsoln.com/blog/insights-720/the-invisible-seo-opportunity-that-could-define-this-decade-llm-seo-2044 ↩︎
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/abhishekchatterjee85_llm-seo-marketing-activity-7299661841109041152-q46P ↩︎
- https://opentools.ai/news/ai-and-the-future-of-seo-how-ai-powered-chatbots-are-evolving-the-world-of-search ↩︎
- https://arxiv.org/html/2402.06647v1 ↩︎
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/abhishekchatterjee85_llm-seo-marketing-activity-7299661841109041152-q46P ↩︎
