No, AEO will not replace SEO. It builds on SEO, because answer engines that search the live web, including Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT search and Perplexity, still need to crawl, index and rank pages before they can cite them. A site with weak technical SEO or thin content is rarely the source an AI answer quotes.
What is changing is where visibility shows up. More questions now end with an AI-written answer, so being mentioned in that answer matters alongside ranking in the results below it. That shifts some budget toward measurement across AI engines and toward third-party coverage.
Local businesses are feeling this first, because people ask AI assistants to recommend a plumber, roofer or HVAC company. See how AEO agencies for home service companies compare.