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July 29, 2025
There’s a great song from my teenage years called “Back in the Day,” and as I get older and (cough) older, I find myself saying that phrase more than I care to admit:
Well, today’s blog is going to start with one of those.
Businesses had to list in the Yellow Pages. For those of you unfamiliar with this ancient artifact, the Yellow Pages were thick, heavy books that doubled as doorstops and dumbbells. They were a printed telephone directory listing the businesses in your area—name, address, phone number—organized by category. If you owned a business, you had to be listed. No questions asked.
Then along came the internet. And at first, they played well together. Business owners had their Yellow Pages listing, and then they started optimizing their storefronts online. Being found in both places became vital—until one day, the internet took over and the Yellow Pages faded to black.
Sorry, Grandma.
The game has evolved. It’s no longer enough to have a website (even a well-ranked one). Now, you have to be the answer inside the AI-powered search results ring.Yes, we’re at the beginning of another marketing evolution: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). 👉 You can check out our Complete Guide to AEO right here.
And with this evolution, we’re hearing the same questions from clients, partners, business owners, and even strangers at dinner parties: “Should I still be doing SEO or Paid Search? Is Google dead?” And no wonder, every day a new marketing “guru” drops clickbait declaring the death of Google, sending shockwaves through the digital kingdom.
So let’s get this out of the way:
No, Google isn’t dead. But it is evolving.
And if Google gets it wrong, well… it could become the next Blockbuster in a Netflix world.
This isn’t the end, it’s the evolution. And if you’re old enough to remember the Yellow Pages, you’ve already seen this movie before.
Here’s what I tell our clients:
The original Yellow Pages were for when people knew what they needed, they just needed help finding it. The early internet mimicked that: SEO was about being findable. Today, AEO is the next step in that utility mindset: giving people direct answers without needing to visit a site at all.
Just like the Yellow Pages evolved from plain listings to bold, ad-laden pages… digital marketing evolved from just being listed (SEO), to paying for visibility (PPC), to now competing for presence inside AI-driven answer engines that might never send you a click unless you’re part of the answer box.
“In the Yellow Pages era, if you weren’t listed, you didn’t exist. In the early web era, if you weren’t SEO-optimized, you were invisible. Today, if you’re not AEO-ready, you’re not even in the conversation.”
And right now, just like back then, you need to be in both. Back then, smart businesses stayed in the Yellow Pages and jumped into the wild new internet frontier. Eventually, more and more resources shifted to the web until one day… the Yellow Pages were gone. We’re in that same transitional moment again, this time, from Search Engines to Answer Engines.
Start reading up on AEO. (Or just ask us, we’ve got you.) This doesn’t have to be scary, in fact, it can be a great opportunity.
We recently did a content review with a financial client to identify AEO opportunities. It turned into a full-blown digital detox. We found a blog post giving terrible tax advice—because it was eight years old. It felt less like content strategy and more like packing for a move and discovering just how much junk had been piling up.
So take a peek under the hood of your website. I guarantee you’ll find some AEO opportunities, and probably a few dusty relics that need to go. Because at the heart of it all—Yellow Pages, SEO, AEO—it’s about being found by those who need you, and then delivering an experience that’s actually helpful when they do.
Imagine a world with no websites. We lived there once. And something inside me says… we might live there again someday.
But not today.
Not today.
Author Steve Blanshan is the Managing Partner at PunchDrunk Digital. You can reach him or any of the other PunchDrunkers at info@punchdrunkdigital.com—or go “back in the day” and give us a call.
