What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) — sometimes called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) — is the practice of making your brand more likely to be named, cited, or recommended by AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.

Where classic SEO optimizes for ranking a link on a results page, AEO optimizes for being the answer the model gives. The user often never sees a list of links at all — they get a paragraph naming two or three options and act on it.

How AEO differs from SEO

• •The unit of success is a mention or citation, not a ranking position.
• •There is no single results page — answers differ per model, per phrasing, per user.
• •Corroboration across many sources matters more than any one page's on-site optimization.
• •You can't see it in Google Search Console; you have to measure the models directly.

What actually moves AEO

The fundamentals overlap with good SEO — but weighted differently. Clear answer-first content, third-party corroboration, structured data, and topical authority all help. Keyword density and backlinks-for-their-own-sake help far less.

Where to start

Start by measuring. Find out which buyer questions the assistants answer without naming you, and which competitors they name instead. That tells you exactly where the gaps are — and turns AEO from a vague idea into a specific, prioritized list of fixes.