How Are AI Web Browsers Rewriting the Rules of Discovery?

Open a browser today, and you are no longer typing queries. You are speaking to intelligence.

AI-driven browsers like Arc Search, Perplexity, Brave Leo, Microsoft Edge Copilot, and Comet are quietly replacing the traditional search bar with conversational interfaces that think, compare, and recommend in real time.

According to SimilarWeb, traffic to AI browsers has grown more than 400% in 2025, while traditional search sessions are flattening. Gartner projects that by 2026, more than 60% of consumer web interactions will originate from AI-powered navigation tools rather than search engines.

The message is clear: ranking is no longer the finish line. Visibility now lives inside AI ecosystems where answers, not links, define discovery.

That is the world Altos EO+ was built for.

Are AI Answers Replacing Search Results?

For two decades, marketers chased blue links and snippets. Now, generative engines summarize the web instead of listing it.  

Platforms like Comet, Perplexity, and ChatGPT answer millions of queries each day with citations and synthesized insights. Recent data from SparkToro and Similarweb shows that between 6 and 7 out of every 10 Google searches now end without a click. As AI summaries replace traditional listings, the path to discovery is being rewritten.

In this new landscape, presence matters more than position. Can AI recognize your brand, interpret your expertise, and trust your data enough to include you in an answer?  

The short answer: it can, as long your website speaks the right language.  

Where search engines once looked for keywords, AI instead looks for relationships. Modern discovery systems depend on entities, schemas, and contextual linking to understand relevance. Think of it as a language of entities.  

But what happens if your website doesn’t speak this new language? Unfortunately, that renders it virtually invisible in this new ecosystem.

Learning to Speak the New Language of AI-Driven Discovery

Teaching your website to provide content the way that AI can understand them was the inspiration for EO+. This framework utilizes five key discovery lenses based off the new rules of AI search, leveraging them to optimize websites for a better performance in an AI-dominated space.  

For example, when we say that AI searches for answers, that’s the essence of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), one of EO+’s five discovery lenses.

What Is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?  

AEO hinges on two important goals: helping AI find the best possible answer to a user’s question and delivering that answer clearly and efficiently.  

Traditional SEO relied on ranking. AEO relies on understanding. As we stated previously, we’re not dealing with simple queries. We’re connecting with intelligence. AI systems can read, understand, and extract information from web content. AEO is about ensuring your content meets AI halfway, presenting information in the language it speaks.  

EO+ considers countless different strategies for making this possible (think straightforward explanations, clearly labeled sections, concise answers, and factual language), but ultimately it comes down to providing the clearest, most direct, most trustworthy answer.

How Is Visibility Measured in an AI-First World?

Like the new-and-improved strategies that power it, web performance needs to be analyzed through an entirely different lens, too.

We’re moving away from traditional clicks and engagement. Contemporary visibility metrics now include:

Visibility Share

When someone asks an AI a question like “What’s the best hotel near the Portland airport?” or “How do I set up a social media launch?” AI pulls from many sources. Visibility Share tells us how often your brand surfaces in those answers, how you stack up against competitors, and whether AI considers your content valuable and trustworthy

A higher Visibility Share means AI tools see your brand as a strong, credible match for user questions.

Entity Mentions

Entity Mentions track when and where your brand appears in AI-generated responses by name.  

We treat brands, products, locations, and even people are treated as entities, also known as things AI learns to recognize and connect with certain topics. So, when an AI says:

• “According to Altos Agency…”

• “Data from Kelly’s Roast Beef suggests…”

• “LivAway Suites is known for…”

Those are entity mentions. They signal two things:  

1. Recognition: AI understands who you are

2. Association: It knows when you’re relevant to a topic

More mentions usually indicate that AI has strong, accurate information about you and is pulling that into its reasoning.

Generative Inclusion Rate  

This metric tells you how often AI pulls your actual content (NOT just your name) into its generated answers, presented as a percentage.

For example: if AI answers 100 relevant queries, and your content shapes the response in 20 of them, your Generative Inclusion Rate is 20%. It’s a quantification of your overall presence inside AI’s knowledge base.  

A high inclusion rate means AI is aware of your brand and actively uses your content to inform its answers.

How Does AEO Fit Into the EO+ Discovery Framework?

EO+ helps brands understand their current AI visibility and identify where they can strengthen their presence across the evolving discovery landscape. Because discovery now happens across multiple modes (search, social, conversational, and generative), the framework looks at how a brand shows up in each environment and where gaps may exist.

This is where AEO acts as the connective tissue. Answer Engine Optimization ensures your content is clear, structured, and interpretable by AI systems, making it easier for tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overview to recognize and surface your expertise.  

The next generation of discovery demands content built with clarity, logical structure, and trust signals that AI can confidently use. We can help provide the roadmap to do exactly that.

Prepare Your Brand for AI-Driven Discovery

Altos EO+ was built for the way discovery works now. As AI browsers and answer engines reshape how people find brands, EO+ helps you understand where you stand and what it takes to be visible inside these new ecosystems.

If you want to see how AI currently interprets your brand, or understand why you do or do not appear in AI-generated answers, we should talk. Discovery is no longer about rankings alone. It is about recognition, trust, and inclusion.

Your audience is already searching differently. Get your AI Visibility Report and see what discovery truly looks like in an AI-first world.