MRS Digital poll finds SEO leads as AI search terms fragment
A poll of 187 brightonSEO stand visitors shows SEO leads individually, while most favor other terms for AI-era search visibility.
MRS Digital has put numbers behind the debate over what marketers should call search optimization in the age of AI. In a poll of visitors to its stand at brightonSEO on October 8 and 9, SEO remained the most popular individual label, but most respondents chose something else.
The agency's published account of the poll records 187 answers, a narrower base than the 200 participants stated in a later press release supplied to ContentGrip. That discrepancy matters: the first-party published counts are used here, and the findings describe one conference-stand sample rather than the wider profession.
Table of contents
Jump to each section:
- SEO still leads, but no term commands a majority
- What the brightonSEO poll actually measured
- Why AI search labels matter less than visibility
- What this means for marketers
SEO still leads, but no term commands a majority
43% chose SEO and 57% chose another term. These are shares of 187 visitors who answered the agency's stand poll, according to MRS Digital.
SEO attracted 80 votes, followed by generative engine optimization (GEO) with 36 and answer engine optimization (AEO) with 28. AI SEO received nine votes, AI search eight and AIO/AISO three. Another 23 respondents selected something else.
That spread does not establish that a new term has replaced SEO. It suggests something subtler: professionals recognize the expansion of discovery into AI interfaces, but have not agreed on a common way to describe the work.
The vocabulary is fragmenting faster than the underlying objective. For marketers, that makes the name of the discipline a less reliable signal of what an agency or team actually delivers.
What the brightonSEO poll actually measured
The respondents were visitors to MRS Digital's stand at the Brighton Centre, not a randomized sample of search professionals. The agency asked people which term they preferred and published the resulting vote counts. It also reported 19 different names across the answers, including write-in alternatives.
That distinction is especially important when comparing the result with other surveys. A previous Fractl survey covered by ContentGrip asked marketers about familiarity and terminology in a different sample. Differences between the studies cannot establish a time trend because the populations and questions are not identical.
MRS Digital's own terminology is revealing. The agency markets an AI SEO service, yet only a small minority of its poll respondents chose that particular label. Naming a service and describing how people search for it are related commercial decisions, not proof of an industry's preferred vocabulary.
Why AI search labels matter less than visibility
For marketing teams, the more consequential change is the growing need to understand how brands appear in AI-generated answers as well as conventional search listings. ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Google's AI experiences offer different discovery environments, and a single ranking report cannot describe every interaction.
MRS Digital describes SEO and AI SEO as one combined service, rather than treating each new acronym as a separate discipline. That approach illustrates a practical distinction: the tools and measurements may expand even when the organizational label stays familiar.
A new acronym does not create a new customer journey. It is the shift in where answers appear, how brands are represented and what teams can measure that creates the work.
The commercial risk is confusing terminology with capability. An agency can use GEO in a proposal without explaining how it will assess citations, brand descriptions or search performance. Conversely, a team that still calls its work SEO may already be evaluating those AI discovery surfaces.
What this means for marketers
For marketers, the survey is best treated as a prompt to clarify scope rather than a vote on the industry's future name.
Define the outcome. Specify whether the priority is traditional organic traffic, AI-answer inclusion, accurate brand representation or a combination. The label alone cannot tell stakeholders which outcome is being measured.
Clarify the channels. Separate Google search listings from AI Overviews and conversational assistants in reporting discussions. They do not provide identical visibility signals.
Ask what changes operationally. Determine which content, technical, digital PR and measurement practices the proposed AI-search work actually adds to existing SEO efforts.
Keep terminology intelligible. Use the language clients and internal teams understand, then explain specialist acronyms when they add precision rather than confusion.
Search marketing may end up with a dominant new name, or it may continue to use SEO as an umbrella for an expanding set of discovery channels. This conference poll cannot settle that question.
What it does reveal is a gap between professional vocabulary and operational clarity. As AI becomes another place where customers encounter brands, marketers will need to make that clarity visible in their briefs, measurement and accountability, regardless of which acronym wins.
