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Now You See Me, Now You Don’t:

AEO, AIO, GEO and the New Measurement Illusion

Visibility has become the latest object of desire.

Organisations are being urged to track whether they appear in AI answers, monitor citations, calculate share of model, chase algorithmic visibility and optimise their content for machines.

A new industry has emerged, complete with its own alphabet soup – AEO, AIO and GEO. They come complete with dashboards, scores, indices and shiny promises of competitive advantage.

But it is an illusion because the master magicians behind the technology do not reveal their assistants – and their assistants, the AI models and systems, arrive complete with coded sleight of hand.

AI-generated answers are unstable. Sources vary. Citations do not necessarily support the claims attached to them. Vendor visibility scores use different methodologies and weightings. Results can be influenced, poisoned and manipulated. And, of most concern, the person asking the question may never reach your organisation at all.

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t takes a critical, practical look at the new AI-mediated information environment and the illusory industry growing around it.

We’ll examine what AEO, AIO and GEO purport to be, what they actually tell us, what they don’t, why they’re muddled up, how generative search is changing the relationship between organisations and their stakeholders and communities and why machine visibility should be treated as directional intelligence and reputational risk rather than evidence of success.
Watch below - our digital facilitator explains our session 
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We’ll take a practical look at what we can usefully do: testing high-intent questions, auditing sources and organisational data, identifying information gaps, monitoring accuracy and framing, understanding the emerging machine-visible publishing layer and deciding what belongs in evaluation and reporting.

Because appearing in an AI answer tells you that you appeared in an AI answer.

It does not tell you that somebody knows more, trusts you, understands you, behaves differently or wants a relationship with you.

What we will cover:

  • AEO, AIO and GEO and what's behind the acronyms
  • What citations, mentions and visibility scores can and cannot demonstrate
  • How generative search changes the information journey
  • Inconsistency, hallucination, source quality and AI-mediated reputational risk
  • The zero-click environment and the growing distance between organisations and people
  • The emerging GEO measurement market and the problem with constructed visibility indices
  • Manipulation, recommendation poisoning and other vulnerabilities
  • Practical auditing and monitoring approaches
  • The silent publishing pipeline
  • How to connect AI visibility intelligence back to knowledge, behaviour, attitude and relationships

Live Session

13 October 2026
11:30am NZDT

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Certificate of Completion

CPD Points - 4

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