What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of making a business visible inside the answers AI assistants give, rather than in a list of search links. Where SEO optimizes for ranking on Google's results page, AEO optimizes for being named and recommended inside a single AI-generated answer from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity.
How AEO differs from SEO
SEO competes for a position among ten blue links a person then chooses from. AEO competes to be one of the few names an AI assistant says when it answers a question directly. The user often never sees a list at all — just the answer — so being absent from it means being invisible.
What answer engines weigh
AI assistants build their answer from the sources they trust and cite: a business's own pages, reviews, editorial coverage, and structured data. They favor entities that appear consistently, with accurate and detailed information, across those sources — and they're sensitive to the exact phrasing of the question.
Why it matters now
A growing share of high-intent questions — including 'where should I eat?' — are answered by an AI assistant before any website is visited. AEO is how a business stays present on that new surface.
More questions
Is AEO the same as SEO?
No. SEO optimizes for ranking in a list of links; AEO optimizes for being named inside a single AI-generated answer. They overlap (both reward accurate, well-covered information) but the target surface is different.
Which AI engines does AEO target?
Primarily ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google), and Perplexity — the assistants people use to ask for recommendations.