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Top AEO Podcasts in 2026: Best Shows and Guests on AI Search

The top AEO podcasts in 2026 are The Edward Show, Google's Search Off the Record and Aleyda Solis's Crawling Mondays, plus a handful of others, and most of them are SEO shows with guests who were ranking pages long before anyone said AEO. That isn't a coincidence.

Shows 9Listed A to Z, not rankedChecked October 7, 2026

Our editor, David Quaid, has a short answer for anyone who asks what AEO is: it's just SEO. Google says much the same thing in its own documentation:

"The best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search (such as AI Overviews and AI Mode)."

The same page explains that AI Overviews and AI Mode may use a "query fan-out" technique, running several related searches across subtopics before they write an answer. EVERY one of those searches has a ranking, and every ranking still comes down to Authority and Relevance. So the hosts and guests worth your time are the people who can explain how a page earns its place in those rankings, whatever they happen to call the discipline this year.

The top AEO podcasts worth your time in 2026

These are the top AEO podcasts worth your time this year: 9 shows, listed A to Z, not ranked, because the right one depends on what you want out of it.

PodcastHostWhy it is on the list
The Agency Growth PodcastJake Hundley and Cody SeeA weekly show for agency owners, more than 220 episodes in, from the two owners of Evergrow Marketing, an agency for landscaping and lawn care companies. AI search keeps coming up this year, from "The Rise of the AI-Informed Client" in May to "AI Is Devaluing Your Agency" in June. Jake also ran a controlled test this year on whether schema markup changes Google rankings and AI recommendations, and our editor was one of the people who reviewed its method before it ran
AI SEO & Business Automation PodcastJames DooleyJames launched it in December 2025 to teach business owners AI SEO and automation. His FatRank Podcast covers SEO and lead generation
Crawling MondaysAleyda SolisNow billed as SEO and AI search optimization news, tips and interviews. Her AI Search Roadmap series this summer takes content, technical work, brand authority and measurement for AI search one episode at a time
David G Quaid on YouTubeDavid QuaidOur editor's channel, so weigh our view of it accordingly. A new video most weeks; start with "Reframing your SEO Strategy in 2026: AEO vs GEO vs SEO"
The Edward ShowEdward SturmA daily show with more than 1,100 episodes of SEO advice and interviews. AI search comes up constantly, from "How Does ChatGPT Cite Brands? Does It Need Google?" in June to "ChatGPT Is Building Its Own Search Index. Here's How to Rank in It" at the end of September
Experts on the WireDan ShureBack since March 2026, ten years after it first launched, and Dan said the reboot would bring on AI experts as well as SEOs
Fan Out Podcast: An AI Search ShowKrista Doyle and Kaleigh MooreOne of the few shows built around AI search from its first episode. New in 2026 and out twice a month, on AEO news and tactics
Search Off the RecordGoogle's Search Relations teamGoogle talking about its own systems. In "How AI Is Changing Google Search and SEO" (May 2026), Martin Splitt talks to Nikola Todorovic, a director of software engineering on Search, about how AI Overviews and AI Mode came about and what site owners should focus on
Search with CandourJack Chambers-WardA weekly UK show, often with Mark Williams-Cook, that mixes interviews with a monthly SEO news roundup. Good for keeping up with the Google changes that end up in AI answers as well

AEO podcast guests worth hearing

The AEO podcast guests worth hearing are the ones who can show you where an idea came from, and two of them were on The Edward Show this year doing exactly that.

Shaun Anderson has worked in search since the early 2000s and runs Hobo Web out of Scotland. Start with his episode on the Google API leak, "Google Wasn't Lying: What the Google API Leak Really Revealed About SEO", because it is built on what Google's own documents say rather than on anyone's opinion of them. He came back in January to explain what E-E-A-T is and what it isn't, and Primary Position, the agency our editor runs, has him on its Top 50 SEOs of 2026 with the API leak next to his name.

Ann Smarty is the one to hear on brands and AI answers. Her October 3 episode, "Google's AI Overviews Now Tell Customers Why to Avoid Your Brand", is about AI Overviews that now show up on plain brand-name searches and sometimes give people reasons to go elsewhere. If you sell anything, listen to that one first. Back in March she and our editor recorded an episode together on Reddit SEO, which is a subject of its own.

And our editor has been on The Edward Show often enough that you can find those episodes yourself.

How to get more out of an AEO podcast

To get more out of an AEO podcast, treat every episode as a set of claims to test rather than advice to follow. Our editor calls critical thinking the most important skill in SEO, and a podcast is a good place to practice it, because nobody on a podcast has to show their work.

So when a guest says something you can check, write it down, and then check it: on your own site, in Search Console, or against Google's documentation (Search Off the Record helps here, because it is Google explaining its own systems). If it holds up, use it. If the guest can't tell you how they know, that is your answer too.

The same test works on agencies. If an agency you're considering has someone on one of these shows, listen before the sales call, because a long unscripted conversation tells you more about how a team thinks than any deck will. When you're ready to shortlist, our guide on how to choose an AEO agency has the questions to ask.

How a podcast gets on this list

A podcast gets on this list when it publishes regular episodes on SEO and AI search in 2026, hosted by people who do the work or by a search engine itself. Shows are listed A to Z, not ranked, and nobody pays to be here. Our editor's own channel is on the list and marked as his.

We opened each show's own pages between October 4 and October 7, 2026. To suggest a show, or to correct a detail about one, email hello@eliteaeo.ai.

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