The 25 Greatest AEO/GEO Specialists to Observe in 2026

Analysis is the way you reply these questions, and the way you retain up with what’s altering in AI search. These are the 25 folks publishing probably the most unique analysis on AI search, and those price following.

I began with a longlist of 87 names: folks extensively beneficial as AEO and GEO consultants, and researchers at AI visibility corporations.

Then I counted what number of unique AI search research every individual has revealed. I pulled each web page revealed on every individual’s foremost publishing websites since 2023 (greater than 17,000 pages), checked every one towards the standards beneath, and checked who was credited. The place the identical research appeared in multiple place, comparable to a cross-post, translation or replace, I counted it as soon as.

A web page counted as a research if it met 4 assessments:

Folks solely acquired credit score for research carrying their byline, or that identify them as a co-author or because the analyst behind the information. Firm analysis with no named writer did not rely towards anybody.

I ranked by variety of research, and broke ties by the variety of web sites linking to these research.

Kevin Indig is a development advisor and writer of the Progress Memo publication, and he beforehand led search engine optimisation and development at Shopify, G2, and Atlassian. His analysis makes use of giant quotation and consumer habits datasets to indicate what drives LLM citations, together with retrieval rank, content material depth, model recognition, and G2 profile alerts, and the way AI Overviews and AI Mode change the way in which folks search and select.

The place their research are revealed: growth-memo.com (25), searchenginejournal.com (6), promote.g2.com (3), kevin-indig.com (1), be taught.g2.com (1)

Xibeijia Guan is a knowledge scientist at Ahrefs and the analyst behind most of its AI search analysis. Her research cowl how a lot AI Overviews lower clicks (34.5%), how usually AI-cited pages rank in Google’s high 10, and the way steady AI citations are over time.

The place their research are revealed: ahrefs.com (31)

Dan Petrovic is the Founder and Director of DEJAN, an search engine optimisation company, and of its AI-focused arm DEJAN AI. His analysis makes use of giant question and quotation datasets to measure how Google and OpenAI floor solutions, together with what number of phrases Google takes from every supply, how little web page content material survives filtering, and the way formatting and intent match have an effect on AI visibility.

The place their research are revealed: dejan.ai (20)

Louise Linehan is a content material marketer at Ahrefs who leads a lot of the corporate’s AI search analysis writing. Her research cowl how AI Overviews and ChatGPT select citations, together with a 75,000-brand visibility evaluation, a discovering that 97% of llms.txt information by no means get learn (137,210 domains), and a check exhibiting 1,885 pages that added schema noticed barely any change in AI citations.

The place their research are revealed: ahrefs.com (19)

Johannes Beus is the founder and managing director of SISTRIX, the search engine optimisation and visibility analytics software program firm. SISTRIX analysis below his management is understood for large-sample research of how AI Overviews, AI Mode, and ChatGPT select and alter their cited sources, and what that does to click-through charges and model visibility.

The place their research are revealed: sistrix.com (7), sistrix.de (6), sistrix.fr (1)

Metehan Yeşilyurt is a GEO Researcher at Peec AI who publishes experiments and enormous knowledge analyses on how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews retrieve and cite sources. His work is understood for particular findings comparable to GPTBot crawling a brand new 60,000-page web site 29,000+ instances in 12 hours, Perplexity’s reranking patterns, and the drop in Reddit citations in ChatGPT buying solutions throughout hundreds of thousands of conversations.

The place their research are revealed: metehan.ai (9), peec.ai (2), metehanai.substack.com (2), speakerdeck.com (1)

Search Atlas | 13 research

Manick Bhan is the founder and CTO of Search Atlas and the founding father of LinkGraph. His analysis, constructed on giant quotation datasets comparable to 120M+ AI citations throughout 6.4M domains, reveals that LLM citations are solely loosely tied to Google rankings and area authority, and that schema markup and /llms.txt present no measurable impact on visibility.

The place their research are revealed: searchatlas.com (12), signalgenesys.com (1)

Josh Blyskal is the AI Technique & Analysis Lead at Profound, the place he runs large-scale research of how AI reply engines select which sources to quote. His analysis attracts on datasets of as much as billions of citations and reveals that cited domains change closely over time, differ sharply between ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, and are solely weakly defined by conventional search engine optimisation metrics.

The place their research are revealed: tryprofound.com (8), joshblyskal.com (2), speakerdeck.com (1)

Ryan Legislation is Director of Content material Advertising and marketing at Ahrefs. His research analyze AI search at giant scale, together with one discovering that AI Overviews cut back clicks by 34.5% throughout 300,000 key phrases and one other inspecting 146 million SERPs to see what triggers AI Overviews.

The place their research are revealed: ahrefs.com (9)

Aleyda Solís is a global search engine optimisation marketing consultant and founding father of Orainti, and he or she additionally created the SEOFOMO publication and LearningAIsearch. Her analysis assessments how AI search works and measures the place citations and site visitors come from, together with findings that third-party sources drive 84% to 93% of AI quotation weight for SaaS manufacturers and that AI search is simply 0.19% of visits throughout 40 websites.

The place their research are revealed: aleydasolis.com (8), hub.seofomo.co (1)

Mitul Gandhi is co-founder and Chief Architect of seoClarity, the enterprise search engine optimisation platform. His research use seoClarity’s search knowledge to measure how AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT citations line up with Google rankings, together with a 1,000-query AI Mode research (12,011 citations) and a report on 77 million AI search visits throughout 300+ manufacturers.

The place their research are revealed: seoclarity.internet (9)

Snippet Digital | 7 research

Suganthan Mohanadasan is a co-founder of Snippet Digital and Key phrase Insights and an AI search engine optimisation researcher. His analysis inspects community site visitors, API responses, and server logs to indicate how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and DeepSeek discover, label, and select the sources they cite.

The place their research are revealed: suganthan.com (7)

Davis McCain is a Analysis lead at Profound and one among its early analysis hires. His research are recognized for large-scale AI search knowledge, together with a 1.19 million page-engine lifecycle evaluation throughout 7 AI engines that discovered the half-life of an AI quotation is 11 days, and a 1.4M quotation evaluation exhibiting LinkedIn is the most-cited area for skilled queries.

The place their research are revealed: tryprofound.com (7)

Peec AI / ZipTie | 6 research

Tomek Rudzki is a GEO researcher at Peec AI and co-founder of ZipTie.dev, and beforehand led R&D at Onely. His current research map which domains AI search cites (30M sources), how ChatGPT builds fan-out queries, and why AI Overviews are probably the most under-tracked AI floor.

The place their research are revealed: peec.ai (5), ziptie.dev (1)

Chris Lengthy is a co-founder at Nectiv and an search engine optimisation and AEO marketing consultant who focuses on B2B and expertise manufacturers. His analysis is understood for analyzing how ChatGPT and Google construct fan-out queries (comparable to ChatGPT’s bounce to 7.61 per immediate and Google’s common of 9.06), in addition to OpenAI’s crawl exercise throughout 7B+ log information and a CHEQ case research exhibiting a 5,600% rise in AI citations.

The place their research are revealed: nectivdigital.com (5), botify.com (1)

Tom Capper is a Senior Search Scientist at Moz and STAT, the place he has additionally labored on search product technique. His analysis makes use of giant key phrase samples, usually 40,000 or extra, to measure how AI Overviews, AI Mode and SGE citations examine with conventional high 10 natural rankings, together with the place AI Overviews seem on the web page.

The place their research are revealed: moz.com (3), getstat.com (2), webtan.impress.co.jp (1)

Lily Ray is VP of search engine optimisation & AI Search at Amsive, the place she research how AI search instruments select and cite sources. Her current research cowl self-promotional listicles in Google AI Overviews (69% of 100 B2B queries cited them whereas recommending opponents), the hyperlink between Google natural visibility losses and misplaced AI citations throughout 11 subfolders, and the way rapidly totally different LLMs repeated fictional claims.

The place their research are revealed: lilyraynyc.substack.com (3), lilyray.nyc (1), amsive.com (1)

Hanns Kronenberg is an AI search advisor and the founding father of GPT Insights in Germany. His analysis covers German-language AI search, together with a 1,000,000 immediate dataset (DEVAL-25) with about 14,000 Netflix-related prompts, an evaluation of three,000 key phrases with AI Overviews utilizing Sistrix knowledge, and a Model-AIO research of 100 manufacturers throughout 800 SERP observations.

The place their research are revealed: gpt-insights.de (4), groundingpage.com (1)

Rand Fishkin is the cofounder and CEO of SparkToro and the writer of Zero Click on Advertising and marketing. His analysis makes use of giant machine panels and volunteer immediate runs to measure how folks search and the way constantly AI instruments advocate manufacturers, together with a discovering that Google dealt with about 373 instances extra searches than ChatGPT and a 2026 research exhibiting AI model lists hardly ever repeat.

The place their research are revealed: sparktoro.com (4)

David Bell is Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Previsible, a search consultancy. His annual State of AI Discovery experiences use GA4 knowledge from dozens of web sites (1.96M LLM periods within the 2025 version) to measure how a lot site visitors AI assistants ship and which platforms ship it.

The place their research are revealed: previsible.com (2), searchengineland.com (2)

Ethan Smith is the Founder and CEO of Graphite, an search engine optimisation and growth-marketing company targeted on search engine optimisation and reply engine optimization. His analysis makes use of giant datasets to check claims about AI and search, together with that AI-generated content material is a small share of Google outcomes and AI citations, that search engine optimisation site visitors fell solely 2.5% 12 months over 12 months, and that sampling about 10 AI responses is sufficient to estimate model visibility and place.

The place their research are revealed: graphite.io (4)

Mark Traphagen is VP of Product Advertising and marketing and Coaching at seoClarity. His analysis makes use of seoClarity’s key phrase datasets to measure how AI Overviews have an effect on search engine optimisation, together with a 432,000-keyword impression research and an evaluation of 120 million US key phrases.

The place their research are revealed: seoclarity.internet (4)

Andy Crestodina is the CMO and co-founder of Orbit Media Studios, an internet design and digital advertising company. His analysis attracts on surveys and web site knowledge, together with a 1,110-person AI search adoption survey, conversion charges throughout 97 B2B web sites and 29 million visits, and 560,000+ AI crawler requests, and it reveals that AI guests convert to leads at 3x the speed of different natural site visitors, that AI crawlers go to homepages 15 instances greater than different web page sorts, and that free AI visibility audits give arbitrary scores.

The place their research are revealed: orbitmedia.com (4)

Jan Ehrlinspiel is a GEO Researcher at Peec AI who publishes knowledge research on how AI engines point out and rank manufacturers. His analysis covers how listicle place impacts model visibility throughout practically 200,000 AI responses, why monitoring extra prompts as soon as offers extra correct visibility scores than repeating fewer prompts, and the way an organization’s identify shapes the way in which AI fashions describe it.

The place their research are revealed: peec.ai (3), searchenginejournal.com (1)

Ross Hudgens is the founder and CEO of Siege Media and the writer of Generative Engine Optimization. His analysis is understood for consumer and multi-site research on how AI Overviews and LLMs have an effect on site visitors, together with a 50-site research exhibiting homepage clicks up 10.7%, a 116-site research naming versus pages because the strongest predictor of AI search site visitors, and a 585-brand research the place 5 or extra homepage credibility statements raised AI visibility 62% for mid-authority manufacturers.

The place their research are revealed: siegemedia.com (4)

These are the ten research by the consultants on this listing which have earned hyperlinks from probably the most web sites.