Agent CX Is the Missing Layer in AI Search
AI agents can find your site, but can they get through it? SEO has no category for that gap yet. Marketing should own it, not engineering.
The SEO industry is grappling with a lack of clarity around the term for the layer that occurs after an AI agent lands on a website. Some refer to it as ASO, or Agentic Search Optimization, while others call it ADO, or Agentic Discoverability Optimization. However, neither of these terms is universally accepted, and they clash with existing definitions.
ASO is already associated with App Store Optimization, while ADO has been used in the context of Azure DevOps and ADO.NET. This naming confusion stems from the fact that the industry hasn't fully grasped the nature of this layer and who should be responsible for it. The traditional SEO framework of technical, content, and links doesn't adequately cover the complexities introduced by AI search.
Two additional aspects need to be considered: getting cited inside an AI-generated answer (AEO) and being cited in a summary (GEO). These new layers involve optimizing to get recommended, not just found. The current ASO and ADO focus on the technical layer, which includes clean APIs and checkout flows that don't assume human interaction.
However, there's a significant gap between getting found, getting recommended, and being technically transactable once an agent decides to act. This gap is not covered by existing tools or measurement methods. ACO, or Agent Conversion Optimization, was initially considered as a potential name, but it is already in use in computer science.
Therefore, the proposed solution is ACX, or Agent CX, which sits between AEO/GEO and ASO/ADO and covers everything in between, from an agent being able to read your content to completing a transaction.
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