What is answer engine optimisation (AEO)?
Answer engine optimisation is the practice of structuring content so that AI assistants and answer features, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, can find it, understand it and quote it. It favours direct answers near the top of a page, clear question-led headings and accurate structured data.
How AEO differs from SEO
Traditional SEO aims for a ranked link that people click. AEO aims to be the source an answer is built from, which may be read without a click. The foundations overlap: crawlable pages, clear topics and authority still matter.
What it looks like on a page
A short, direct answer in the first lines, headings phrased as the questions people ask, lists and tables where they help, and schema markup that describes the page. An llms.txt file can point AI tools to the most useful pages.
AEO and GEO
Generative engine optimisation is a close relative that focuses on being cited by generative AI tools. In practice the two terms describe much of the same work.
