Dan Petrovic is one of the world's leading minds in search engine optimization, or SEO, especially when it comes to the rapidly changing world of artificial intelligence. Based in Australia, he is internationally recognized for his pioneering work, including winning two Google awards for uncovering the search giant's internal systems.
Today, Petrovic focuses on what he calls Answer Engine Optimization, helping major brands navigate how AI search models like Gemini and GPT influence users. He points out that these generative models are the ultimate modern influencers. However, they are not neutral. Each model has its own unique worldview, biases, and technical quirks.
Petrovic argues that despite all the fancy new buzzwords, the SEO industry still owns this AI visibility channel. He teaches marketers how to look beyond traditional rank tracking. By analyzing how large language models associate words and build knowledge, brands can track and actually shape how AI perceives them. As search engines evolve, Petrovic's framework helps businesses transition from traditional search results to an AI-first landscape.
A veteran speaker at major global conferences from Amsterdam to New York, Petrovic continues to share practical, hands-on strategies that turn the mystery of AI search into a science.
Dan Petrovic is Australia's the most well-known AI SEO with worldwide recognition for industry-defining innovation and thought leadership. He specialises in brand, product and service visibility in AI Search and applies his AEO framework to numerous global brands. Dan is a double Google award winner for his work in discovery of Google’s exposed internal systems and algorithms.
Things I learned by probing Gemini and GPT 1,000,000 times.
Gemini and GPT are generative models that interface between search engines and users in AI search or chat apps. These models help us find information, research topics, and make decisions based on the data surfaced by search engines, making them the ultimate influencers. But each model has its own unique worldview with biases towards or against brands, products and services. On top of that, the systems that drive them all have their own quirks. Different snippet sizes, context windows, grounding context, query fanouts, tool use and more. This session moves beyond mystery and guesswork, relying on tests, experiments and facts from someone who's been far into the AI rabbit hole and learned a lot in the last four years.
Dan Petrovic – Enterprise Stage Keynote at Spotlight 2025 by Semrush in Amsterdam
SEO + AI = SEO
Don’t get tricked by fancy new acronyms and buzzwords. It’s the SEO industry that now owns the AI visibility channel and we, the SEO people, decide what the the future holds. Dan’s been leading the transition and sharing his insights and discoveries almost daily. In this session he’ll pop-up the bonnet and reveal the very engine that drives his AI optimization workflow. Get ready for an unprecedented level of both strategic and practical advice.
Beyond Rank Tracking: Analyzing Brand Perceptions Through Language Model Association Networks
Dan presents a framework for tracking and influencing brand visibility in LLMs using bidirectional prompts, frequency and rank analysis, and knowledge graphs. He shows how to optimize content and prompts to guide LLM outputs, measure brand authority within models, and introduces a tool to predict whether a query will be grounded in search or generated from the model’s training data. All pointing to LLM optimization as a powerful new frontier for SEO.
As AI reshapes search engines and user behaviour, traditional SEO strategies are evolving. Learn how to adapt to algorithm changes, automate processes, and enhance visibility in an AI-first search landscape.
