What is Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)?
AnswerOps · 15 Jun 2026 · 2 min read
The short answer
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the practice of making your business the name an AI assistant gives when someone asks it for a recommendation. Where SEO competes for a rank on a page of links, AEO competes to be named inside the single answer — with information the assistant can read, trust, and repeat.
From a list of links to a single answer
For two decades, being found meant ranking in Google's ten blue links. That is changing. More and more buyers skip the list entirely: they ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity for a recommendation and act on the two or three names it returns.
There is no second page in an AI answer. If the assistant does not name you, you are not ranked lower — you are simply not in the running. AEO is the discipline of making sure you are one of the names it gives.
How AEO differs from SEO
SEO and AEO share DNA — you still want to be crawlable and present in the search indexes these assistants draw on — but the target is different:
- SEO optimises for a position on a results page. The signals are largely keywords and backlinks.
- AEO optimises to be extracted and named inside an answer. The signals are clear, machine-readable information; content that directly answers the question; and consistent, third-party corroboration that you are who you say you are.
Same engine, different fuel.
The four things AI weighs before it names you
- Readable — can a machine parse and extract you? (Real HTML in the page source, structured data, a clean information architecture.)
- Answerable — are you the clearest, most quotable answer to the question?
- Trusted — does the open web corroborate you? (Consistent identity, reviews, listings, and mentions across the sources AI checks.)
- Fresh — is your information current?
Most businesses over-invest in the first and under-invest in the third — which is exactly where AEO is won.
Key takeaways
- AEO makes your business the answer an AI gives, not just a link on a page.
- It extends SEO to extraction, entity trust, and answer-shaping.
- AI weighs four things: readable, answerable, trusted, fresh.
- The biggest gap for most businesses is trust — corroboration across the web.
Where to start
Begin with a visibility check: ask the assistants the questions your customers actually ask, and see whether you are named — and who is named instead. That baseline tells you exactly where the work is. If you would like us to run it for you, the free AI Visibility Check takes about 60 seconds to request.