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What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of making a business easy for AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini to find, understand and name when they answer a question. Where search engine optimization (SEO) aims for a ranked link on a results page, AEO aims for a mention, or a cited link, inside the answer itself.

Why it matters

Many people now ask an AI assistant questions they used to type into a search box: "who is the best physiotherapist near me", "which accounting software suits a small agency". The answer usually names a handful of businesses. If yours is not among them, the person asking may never see a list of links where you could have appeared.

How AEO differs from SEO

  • The result is a sentence, not a position. You are either named in the answer or you are not, so the useful measure is how often you are named across many questions and runs.
  • Answers vary. The same question can produce a different answer an hour later. A single check proves little; repeated checks show a rate.
  • Some answers come from memory, some from a live search. An engine answering from what its model learned in training reflects the web as it was; one that searches first reflects your site and what others say about you now.

What answer engines can read

Nobody outside the engine companies knows exactly how each one chooses what to name. What can be checked is whether your site gives them clear, consistent material to work with:

  • Direct answers to the questions customers ask, stated plainly near the top of a page rather than buried in marketing copy.
  • A clear entity: who you are, what you do and where, said the same way on every page and in your structured data (schema.org JSON-LD).
  • Crawlable pages: a robots.txt that does not block the AI crawlers, a sitemap, real titles and headings, and content that is in the HTML.
  • Corroboration: the same facts about you on other sites, such as directories, reviews and press, so an engine is not relying on your word alone.
  • For local businesses, a name, address and phone number that match everywhere they appear. What we check for local and service businesses.

How to measure AEO

Pick the questions that matter to your business, ask each engine each question several times on a schedule, and record whether you were named. The share of those answers that name you is your citation rate, and its direction over weeks is more informative than any single answer. We describe exactly how we do this, and what it cannot tell you, on how we measure AI visibility.

Common questions

Is AEO the same as SEO?

No, but they overlap. Both reward pages that are crawlable, clearly structured and trustworthy. SEO is judged by where a link ranks on a results page; AEO is judged by whether an AI answer mentions or cites you at all, which is closer to a yes or no per question.

Can anyone guarantee that ChatGPT or Perplexity will recommend my business?

No. Each engine decides what to include, its answers vary from one run to the next, and the engines change over time. What can be done is measuring how often you are named and improving what the engines can read about you.

Does llms.txt help with AI search visibility?

We have seen no public evidence that the major answer engines use llms.txt when deciding what to cite. It is a small text file that is cheap to publish, so our implementation kit includes one, but we do not count it as a lever on citations.

How do I check whether AI engines mention my business?

Ask them the questions your customers ask, more than once, and record whether you are named. Our free scan asks one engine one such question; monthly plans ask every engine your chosen questions on a schedule.

See whether AI engines name your business.

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