Every week, it seems, a new acronym buzzes through our industry: SEO, ASO, and now AEO or GEO, SXO, LEO, and on. For seasoned practitioners like us at Binari, this proliferation of labels might feel like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, or at least on a ship that’s still very much afloat. In truth, companies from the smallest startups to the largest retailers have spent decades living and dying by Google. As one recent analysis notes, search-engine optimization (SEO) has grown into a $75 billion industry of its own. That shouldn’t be surprising. From the way headlines are written to the stuffing of e-commerce listings with carefully chosen keywords, SEO has shaped nearly every corner of the web.

So before conceding that “SEO is dead,” consider that Google itself has only reinforced the need for SEO: its algorithms change constantly, each update sending SEO demand surging anew.

In fact, Google’s query volume grew in 2024, handling over 5 trillion searches (about 14 billion per day); roughly 373 times as many as OpenAI’s ChatGPT managed in the same period. In other words, the data show that SEO is evolving, not evaporating.

As our clients at Binari® know well, the core challenge remains building a strong digital presence in the face of any algorithmic shift.

SEO in the Agency Trenches: Complex, Rich, Rewarding

At Binari, we’ve learned that SEO thrives on complexity and variety.

In an agency setting, no two clients are alike. One day we might be optimizing a local retail website, the next a fintech platform or a healthcare marketplace. This cross-industry diversity makes the work anything but dull. Some of our toughest problems involve niche queries: for example, ranking on page 1 for a financial term with only a few hundred monthly searches.

On paper it seems insane to allocate budget for low-volume keywords. Yet in practice, “winning” such tiny battles often yields disproportionate long-term value. Even a keyword with 1,000 searches per month can translate into significant exposure once you capture the top spots, a phenomenon we sometimes call SEO’s compounding effect.

After all, users trust those top organic results much more than ads. A recent study cites that the first organic result on Google’s page gets an astounding ~39.8% click-through rate; vastly higher than the single-digit CTR for top paid ads.

In plain terms, a modest ranking boost can snowball into a flood of traffic and credibility over time. For our team, every site we optimize becomes an exercise in this compounding law: meticulous, iterative work today builds exponential authority tomorrow.

1. Diverse verticals. Our SEO engineers tackle clients from e-commerce to finance, each with its own keywords and user intent. This keeps our work fresh and teaches us to adapt best practices to any industry.

2. Tiny niches, big payoff. We often work on “micro-keywords”, terms searched only 50-500 times per month. It’s painstaking, but winning those rankings can disproportionately benefit the client’s brand awareness and conversions.

3. Long-haul ROI. Even in low-demand niches, we see compound growth. As our sites rise, trust grows: remember that first-organic-link CTR stat (39.8%). Over years, that organic authority snowballs. It’s why many companies maintain in-house SEO teams, the payoff is built to last.

In short, what might look like “SEO with small demand” on paper is in reality a masterclass in digital marketing. Seasoned SEOs know that patience and depth of strategy here earn outsized returns.

Chatbots vs. Search Engines: Disruption or Continuity?

Lately, the loudest chatter has centered on AI chatbots. After OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022 and Microsoft and Google hurried to add chatbot features, many proclaimed the end of “10 blue links.”

In 2023-2024, headlines flirted with “SEO is dead” themes, suggesting that new answer engines would usurp Google’s throne. There’s no shortage of speculation in the air: as one industry columnist puts it;

With the emergence of conversational AI models like ChatGPT, there is an increasingly loud debate about how the future of search and information retrieval could evolve.

Yet the real-world numbers offer crucial perspective. A comprehensive cross-platform study found that Google still commands roughly 83.5% of all searches, far ahead of any other channel.

Even after factoring in social media and AI tools, Google’s dominance holds strong. By contrast, ChatGPT accounted for only about 4.3% of cross-platform search share (and much less when counting raw query volume). In fact, in 2024 Google processed about 5 trillion searches (93.6% market share) while ChatGPT saw only ~37.5 million searches per day (~0.25% share).

In everyday terms, Google remains the undisputed information gateway for the vast majority of users.

Fortunately, those statistics capture the current reality: Google’s massive index and ranking algorithms still touch everything from news to product listings.

Even when a consumer wants to buy an item on a marketplace like Tokopedia or Amazon, many will start on Google search anyway, Google’s algorithms simply sift through more data with greater relevance. That’s why searches for shopping, entertainment, or local info still overwhelmingly route through Google in practice. By contrast, new entrants like TikTok or Instagram search are growing, but they complement rather than replace web search. Surveys show that a large fraction of young users do employ TikTok or Instagram as informal search tools, for example, 42% of Americans overall (and 64% of Gen Z!) have used TikTok to find information, and nearly one in ten Gen Z actually say they prefer TikTok over Google for some queries.

This reflects changing habits (short-form video can answer casual questions faster for some users), but remember: TikTok’s total search activity is still a tiny slice compared to Google’s.

Ultimately, every platform, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, or the big social networks , can act as a “traffic entrance,” a place users start their journeys. Some have their own built-in search engines; others rely indirectly on Google’s web search. But for now, the best estimate is that Google remains the principal cross-platform portal. In that context, our mission at Binari is to serve whichever door users go through, be it Google’s blue links, an AI answer snippet, or a social video.

The Alphabet Soup of Optimization: SEO, AEO, GEO, SXO, LEO…

If chatbots and new platforms are reshaping user behavior, the industry language has followed suit.

Alongside classic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and ASO (App Store Optimization), consultants now bandy about terms like AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), SXO (Search Experience Optimization), LEO (Language Engine Optimization), even LLM SEO. The acronym list can seem endless. For clarity:

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization); the original practice of optimizing websites to rank well in traditional search engines like Google and Bing.

2. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization); optimizing for AI-powered answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.). The goal is “improving a brand’s visibility in AI-powered answer engines.

3. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization); often used interchangeably with AEO. It refers to structuring content so AI models can surface and cite it. In fact, one tech article flatly declared “the era of SEO is over, say hello to GEO,” noting that GEO (also called AEO) is essentially a marketer’s way of staying relevant in a chatbot world.

4. SXO (Search Experience Optimization); the blend of SEO and UX design. SXO means not only ranking high, but ensuring visitors have a smooth, engaging experience once they arrive. In practice, SXO combines traditional SEO tactics with user-centric site design (easy navigation, high-quality visuals, etc.) so that ranking high also leads to conversions.

5. LEO (Language Engine Optimization); a newer term for tailoring content to be easily parsed by large language models. It emphasizes clear, concise, answer-ready content that AI (and humans) can understand.

A recent tech blog even advises:

Don’t optimize in isolation, and don’t chase hype. Call it LLM SEO, Language Engine Optimization (LEO), Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)… the goal is the same: own a concept clearly, consistently, and with the right structure so models understand it.

Adapting Strategies for AI and Answers

What does this evolution mean for how we do SEO? In practice, many techniques carry over, but the emphasis shifts. For example, SEO used to focus primarily on keywords and backlinks, but now experts advise writing in a more conversational, question-and-answer format.

This means crafting content as if answering a user's question directly, using clear headings, bullet lists, and concise paragraphs, so that AI systems can easily extract and cite the info. (Indeed, one SEO veteran observes that AI chatbots “tend to summarize with citations rather than prominent links,” and suggests publishing content in “citable chunks, with clear authorship” to get picked up) In short, the best practices now include: optimizing for natural-language queries, providing thorough answers to likely questions, and organizing content for machine readability.

Consider this simplified comparison: a traditional SEO article might stuff in as many related keywords as possible, whereas a modern “AI-friendly” article would break those ideas into smaller, well-structured pieces. It might even look more like an FAQ or bullet-point guide, precisely the style that AI assistants love to reference. Yet we stress: this is not trickery, it’s user-centered thinking. Google itself has shifted to reward precisely that type of clarity (e.g. featured snippets and “position zero”). We still focus on quality and relevance, but now with extra attention to clear formatting and context for both people and machines.

The Enduring Value of SEO (Reframed)

Let’s be crystal clear: none of these new terms heralds the death of SEO. Rather, they are refinements atop the same foundation. Even with AI assistants in the picture, Google and other search engines have only doubled down on quality signals.

One recent analysis underscores that organic SEO still builds deep trust: users click organic links far more than ads, and new studies show first-page organic results capturing almost 40% of all clicks. Time and again, data confirm it: when you solve a user’s query truly well, the traffic (and conversions) follow.

As we look toward 2025, Binari is anything but complacent. We’ve navigated every major shift since our founding in 2011, from the Facebook era (when analysts once called Facebook “the newest, most unexpected threat to Google”) through mobile and video revolutions. Each challenge left us wiser. And with each new Google update or AI innovation, we were busy preparing and adapting, not panicking. In fact, across the industry we’re seeing exactly what we expected: more emphasis on high-quality content and technical best practices (indexability, speed, structured data, etc.), which only reinforce SEO’s core.

In short, we remain confident in SEO’s continuity. This article isn’t a sales pitch. it’s our professional conviction that, viewed correctly, SEO is alive and evolving. To our peers and clients: don’t be swayed by jargon alone. Focus on serving users, building clear content, and owning your topics consistently. That strategy works whether people are typing a query into Google, asking a chatbot, or exploring a social app.

We at Binari even have faith in the coming year. Our SEO engineering projects are growing, and we’re adding talent to tackle these new frontiers.

If you’re intrigued by the evolving world of search (and yes, even AI), consider joining us, we are hiring SEO professionals and analysts (see binari.co.id/career for details). Every era has its buzzwords, but our goal is timeless: help clients be found. We’ve done it through Google’s infancy, through every mobile wave, and now into the age of AI.

2025 could very well be our best year yet. Let’s tackle the next algorithm together.