Aug 25, 2025
The Great AI SEO Scam: How Fake AEO/GEO Experts Are Bleeding Businesses Dry in 2025
A $50,000 wake-up call that every North American business owner needs to read before hiring an AI optimization consultant
Last month, a mid-sized e-commerce company in Toronto paid $50,000 to a self-proclaimed "Generative Engine Optimization expert" who promised to "dominate AI search and future-proof their visibility." Six months later, their traffic from AI sources? Zero. Their ChatGPT citations? None. Their Google AI Overview appearances? Crickets.
They're not alone. And Google's John Mueller just confirmed what industry experts suspected all along about AI SEO scams.
AI SEO Experts and the Alphabet Soup Gold Rush
If you've been on LinkedIn lately, you've probably seen them: posts breathlessly announcing the death of traditional SEO and the birth of AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AIO (AI Optimization), LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization), and whatever other AI SEO acronym some consultant cooked up last week.
The proliferation of AI SEO terms has created confusion in the digital marketing space, with businesses unsure which AI optimization strategy to pursue.
But here's where it gets interesting—and infuriating.
On August 14, 2025, Google's John Mueller issued a stark warning about AI SEO scams that should have every business owner paying attention:
"The higher the urgency, and the stronger the push of new acronyms, the more likely they're just making spam and scamming," Mueller warned on Bluesky, specifically calling out the proliferation of AI optimization terms flooding the digital marketing industry.
This isn't just casual commentary from a Google employee. This is the search advocate at the world's largest search engine essentially saying: "Most of these AI SEO consultants are trying to scam you."
How Fake AI Optimization Experts Target Businesses
And boy, have these fake AI SEO experts arrived in force.
Hundreds of self-proclaimed "GEO experts" and "AI optimization specialists" have suddenly materialized, each claiming to possess the secret key to unlocking visibility in AI search engines—a marketing domain that has existed for less than two years, according to a July 2025 analysis by Search Engine Land.
But here's the kicker about these AI SEO scams: Many of the months-old, faceless entities peddling grandiose AI optimization solutions appear to be AI-generated themselves. They're using AI logos, AI-automated marketing campaigns, and making big promises about AI search rankings—but with zero evidence that they've actually helped anyone rank in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews.
Think about that for a second. AI-generated companies are selling AI search optimization services. The irony would be hilarious if it weren't costing North American businesses tens of thousands of dollars in AI SEO consulting fees.
What AI SEO Consultants Promise vs. Reality
The Big AI Optimization Promises
Scroll through any AI search optimization agency's website today and you'll see claims like:
"Dominate AI search results & Future-Proof your organic visibility"
"Position your brand as the definitive choice in this AI-dominated search environment"
"500% increase in AI citations and ChatGPT mentions guaranteed"
"Get your content featured in Google AI Overviews and Perplexity results"
Modern brands should integrate AEO with Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Voice Engine Optimization (VEO). This trifecta helps content appear in AI-generated summaries, voice assistant responses, and interactive search experiences—making your brand unmissable, promises one recent "comprehensive AI SEO guide."
Real AI Search Traffic Data That Exposes the Hype
Let's examine the actual AI search statistics: AI search traffic is growing, but from an incredibly small baseline. But the question every business should ask is: how much AI search traffic are you actually missing?
The most recent data from North American businesses tells a fascinating story of selective AI optimization statistics:
The Reality Check (Actual Website Analytics):
AI Search traffic is less than 1%: Combined traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other AI search engines represents less than 1% of total website traffic, and for many sites it's actually under 0.5% according to June 2025 analysis by Glenn Gabe
ChatGPT referral traffic remains minimal: ChatGPT accounts for just 0.19% of total web traffic across 44,421 websites analyzed as of August 2025
AI traffic growth vs. actual volume: While traffic from generative AI sources to U.S. retail websites increased by 1,200 percent compared to July 2024, generative AI traffic remains modest compared to traditional search, social media, and email marketing channels
The Optimistic View (Used by AI SEO Consultants):
Some studies claim ChatGPT has 4.33% of "search market share"
AI traffic up 527% year-over-year, with some SaaS sites seeing over 1% of all sessions coming from LLMs
Bold predictions that ChatGPT could rival Google "in four years"
The critical difference? The inflated AI search statistics count every ChatGPT conversation as a "search"—including creative writing, coding help, and casual chats. The realistic numbers track actual referral traffic to business websites.
Translation: Most North American businesses are being sold expensive AI optimization services to solve a problem that represents less than 1% of their total website traffic.
The Truth: AI Optimization is Just Traditional SEO Repackaged
Here's what will make you furious if you've already paid thousands for "AI search optimization services":
Many of the most commonly cited AI SEO tactics marketed as magic bullets for AI search visibility are really just standard search engine optimization approaches that have been rebranded for the AI era.
That "revolutionary" structured data strategy for AI search? That's been fundamental SEO practice since 2011.
Those "cutting-edge" entity optimization techniques for ChatGPT and Perplexity? Standard semantic SEO practices that any experienced SEO professional knows.
The "game-changing" content formatting for AI readability and Google AI Overviews? Basic content optimization and on-page SEO that any decent digital marketing agency should already be doing.
Even Google's own official guidance for AI search optimization makes this crystal clear. In their May 2025 blog post about succeeding in Google's AI experiences, their advice was refreshingly straightforward:
"Focus on making unique, non-commodity content that visitors from Search and your own readers will find helpful and satisfying".
That's it. That's the "revolutionary AI optimization strategy" these consultants are charging $50,000 for.
Effective AI Search Optimization Strategies That Actually Work (DIY Guide)
Let's cut through the AI SEO marketing BS and examine what the actual data shows works for AI search optimization in 2025:
1. Add Concrete Data and Statistics to Your Content
Instead of vague marketing claims, "replace vague statements like 'many businesses struggle with email marketing' with concrete data: 'Email marketing generates $42 for every $1 spent, according to Litmus's 2024 research'".
Cost to implement this AI optimization tactic: $0. Time required: 30 minutes per article.
2. Include Visual Content for AI Search Engines
Research from March 2025 found that Perplexity AI is more likely to cite sources than other AI platforms and includes both images, video and text content in its responses.
Cost to implement: Whatever you're already spending on content marketing.
3. Implement Technical SEO Basics for AI Crawlers
"Clear titles, descriptions, dates, and schema.org markup help AI systems quickly understand your content", according to January 2025 analysis of AI crawler behavior and search engine optimization best practices.
Cost to implement: A few hours of technical SEO work, or $500-$1000 if you hire help.
4. Structure Content to Answer Questions Directly
Start with "You can reduce website loading time by optimizing images, enabling compression, and choosing faster hosting" before diving deeper rather than burying your answers in paragraphs of fluff. This approach helps with both traditional SEO and AI search optimization.
Cost to implement: Editorial time you should be spending on content optimization anyway.
Notice anything? None of these proven AI search optimization strategies require a $50,000 AI SEO consultant.
How AI SEO Scammers Hook Businesses: The Complete Playbook
Here's exactly how these AI optimization scams typically work:
Stage 1: Create Fear About Traditional SEO
They start by telling you traditional search engine optimization is dead, that Google's AI changes are making SEO obsolete, and that you're already behind your competitors who are "dominating AI search results."
Stage 2: Confuse You with AI SEO Acronyms
They bombard you with AEO, GEO, AIO, LLMO, and other terms, making it seem like there's some complex new AI search optimization science you couldn't possibly understand without their expensive consulting services.
Pro tip: As one industry expert noted, "Generative Engine Optimization" is abstract and could confuse executives... GEO conflicts with geography, geology, and geo-targeting—good luck owning that acronym.
Stage 3: Create Urgency Around AI Search
They claim Google's AI changes are happening "faster than ever" and that only their proprietary AI optimization methods can save your search rankings.
Remember Mueller's warning about AI SEO scams: The higher the urgency and the stronger the push of new acronyms, the more likely it's a scam.
Stage 4: Promise Unrealistic AI Search Results
They guarantee specific improvements in ChatGPT citations, AI visibility scores, Google AI Overview appearances, or other AI search metrics that sound impressive but don't actually correlate to business revenue or lead generation.
The Uncomfortable Truth: Most North American Businesses Don't Need "AI SEO" Yet
Here's what the AI optimization crowd doesn't want you to know:
Even when AI search does impact traffic, it doesn't necessarily hurt revenue.
Stack Overflow experienced an 18% drop in visits after ChatGPT became popular, yet NerdWallet reported a 35% growth in revenue despite a 20% decrease in site traffic.
Why? Because when people click to a website from search results pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality, where users are more likely to spend more time on the site, according to Google's own data.
And here's something that might surprise you: organic search traffic actually grew 18% year-over-year in June 2025, according to BrightEdge research, even amid all the AI growth.
The traffic might be shifting, but for most North American businesses, it's not disappearing.
The B2B vs B2C Reality Check
The data shows that AI search impact varies dramatically by industry:
B2B Winners:
B2B technology was the most transformed sector with nearly 32% growth in AIO presence in November due to its highly technical and query-based content. Keywords related to security (+55%), data (+40%), development/DevOps (+42%), and infrastructure (+38%) rose to the top ranks of AIOs.
Healthcare content saw an uptick of 15% in AIO citations due to the expert and authoritative nature of its sources, namely medical clinics and research institutions.
B2C Reality:
Traffic from generative AI sources is predominantly coming through desktop devices, at 86 percent share compared to mobile, in stark contrast to overall e-commerce activity, where desktop share-of-visits came in at just 34 percent
Most consumer traffic still flows through traditional search and social channels
Translation: If you're a B2C company, you're probably being oversold on AI optimization.
When AI Optimization Actually Makes Sense
Look, we're not saying AI search optimization is completely useless. But it makes sense for a very specific subset of North American businesses:
Large B2B technology companies with millions of pages and significant existing organic traffic
Healthcare and medical organizations where AI tools are commonly used for research
Professional services firms in highly competitive niches where every small advantage matters
For everyone else? You're probably getting sold a solution to a problem you don't have yet.
How to Protect Yourself (And Your Budget)
If You Want to DIY It
Follow Google's official recommendations from their May 2025 guidance:
Ensure technical accessibility: "Make sure your pages meet our technical requirements for Google Search, so that we can find them, crawl them, index them, and consider them for showing in our results"
Use structured data properly: "If you're using structured data, be sure to follow our guidelines, such as making sure that all the content in your markup is also visible on your web page"
Create quality content: Focus on unique, helpful content that actually answers user questions.
Total cost: Your existing content budget plus maybe $1,000 for technical implementation.
If You Must Hire Help
Ask these questions:
"Can you show me specific examples of content you've gotten cited in ChatGPT or Perplexity?"
"What's your track record with businesses similar to mine in North America?"
"How do you measure success, and what ROI can I expect?"
"What percentage of the work is traditional SEO vs. actual AI-specific tactics?"
Red flags:
They can't show specific AI citation examples
They emphasize urgency and new acronyms
They guarantee specific AI rankings
They can't explain their methods in simple terms
Green flags:
They focus on content quality and technical basics
They show measured, realistic expectations
They have verifiable case studies from North American businesses
They explain how their work connects to actual business metrics
The Bottom Line: Don't Be the Next $50,000 Sucker
Here's the truth that'll save you thousands:
Gartner predicts a 25% drop in traditional search engine volume by 2026, which sounds scary until you realize that still leaves 75% of search volume in traditional engines.
And even as AI search grows, SEOs have learned to optimize for mobile, voice, video, images, local searches, and app stores... AI search is simply the next frontier for SEO professionals to conquer.
The skills that work for good SEO will work for AI search too.
The biggest winners in the AI search transition won't be the North American businesses that panic-bought expensive "GEO optimization" packages. They'll be the ones that focused on creating genuinely helpful content, maintained strong technical foundations, and didn't get distracted by shiny new acronyms.
Save your $50,000. Invest it in better content, stronger technical SEO, and maybe a vacation to recover from all the marketing BS you've been subjected to lately.
Because when John Mueller from Google tells you that urgency and new acronyms usually signal scams, you should probably listen.
The house always wins—and in this case, the house is selling you solutions to problems that represent less than 1% of your traffic.
Want to actually improve your search visibility? Start with the basics: create better content, fix your technical SEO, and stop falling for marketing hype. Your wallet will thank you.
Works Cited
Adobe. "Adobe Analytics: Traffic to U.S. Retail Websites from Generative AI Sources Jumps 1,200 Percent." Adobe Blog, 17 Mar. 2025, blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2025/03/17/adobe-analytics-traffic-to-us-retail-websites-from-generative-ai-sources-jumps-1200-percent.
BrightEdge. "New Report from BrightEdge Reveals Surge in AI Search Engines, Signaling a New Era in Online Information Discovery." Globe Newswire, 16 Dec. 2024, www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/12/16/2997560/0/en/New-Report-from-BrightEdge-Reveals-Surge-in-AI-Search-Engines-Signaling-a-New-Era-in-Online-Information-Discovery.html.
BrightEdge. "One Year Into Google AI Overviews, BrightEdge Data Reveals Google Search Usage Increases by 49%." BrightEdge, 14 May 2025, www.brightedge.com/news/press-releases/one-year-google-ai-overviews-brightedge-data-reveals-google-search-usage.
Carr, David, et al. "AI Is Driving More Traffic, but Not Offsetting 'Zero-Click' Search." Digiday, 15 July 2025, digiday.com/media/in-graphic-detail-ai-platforms-are-driving-more-traffic-but-not-enough-to-offset-zero-click-search/.
Gabe, Glenn. "AI Search Currently Drives Less Than 1% of Traffic To Most Sites, Google Is Still Dominant, and Watch The Long-term Risk of Ignoring Google Search." GSQi, 25 June 2025, www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/ai-search-traffic-compared-to-google/.
Gabe, Glenn. "The June 2025 Google Core Algorithm Update – Analysis and Findings including HCU(X) Surges, AI Overview Impact, YMYL Volatility, and More." GSQi, 16 July 2025, www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/june-2025-google-core-update/.
Google Developers. "Top Ways to Ensure Your Content Performs Well in Google's AI Experiences on Search." Google Search Central Blog, May 2025, developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/05/succeeding-in-ai-search.
Melton, Will. "How to Optimize for AI Search Results: 9 Effective Strategies." Xponent21, 29 May 2025, xponent21.com/insights/optimize-content-rank-in-ai-search-results/.
Mueller, John [@JohnMu]. "The Higher the Urgency, and the Stronger the Push of New Acronyms, the More Likely They're Just Making Spam and Scamming." Bluesky, 14 Aug. 2025.
PPC Land. "ChatGPT Traffic Reaches 0.19% While Google Maintains 41.9% Share." PPC Land, 19 Aug. 2025, ppc.land/chatgpt-traffic-reaches-0-19-while-google-maintains-41-9-share/.
PPC Land. "Google's John Mueller Warns AI SEO Acronyms Signal Spam Tactics." PPC Land, 14 Aug. 2025, ppc.land/googles-john-mueller-warns-ai-seo-acronyms-signal-spam-tactics/.
Schiele, Laura. "AI Search Is Booming, but SEO Is Still Not Dead." Search Engine Land, 18 July 2025, searchengineland.com/ai-search-booming-seo-still-not-dead-458935.
Soulo, Tim. "AI Traffic Has Increased 9.7x in the Past Year." Ahrefs Blog, 26 June 2025, ahrefs.com/blog/ai-traffic-increase/.
WebProNews. "Organic Search Traffic Up 18% YoY Amid AI Growth, BrightEdge Finds." WebProNews, 20 Aug. 2025, www.webpronews.com/organic-search-traffic-up-18-yoy-amid-ai-growth-brightedge-finds/.