What is AEO (answer engine optimization), and how does it work?

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of getting your brand chosen as the answer when people ask an AI tool a question. An answer engine is any tool that replies with a direct answer instead of a list of links, such as Google’s AI Overviews, Google AI Mode or ChatGPT. AEO is very close to GEO, and the difference is mostly in the name.

This guide explains what an answer engine is, how AEO works, which questions it targets, how it relates to SEO, and how to do it.

What is an answer engine?

An answer engine is a tool that answers your question directly. You ask, and it replies in plain sentences. Often it gives a short list of brands or products, with a few words on each.

A search engine works in a different way. It shows a list of links, and you open them to find the answer yourself.

Answer engines are not brand new. Google has long shown short answers at the top of some results, in boxes called featured snippets. Voice assistants read out a single answer when you ask them something. Early AEO work aimed at those. Today, when people say AEO, they mostly mean ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers.

These tools don’t all draw on the same pages: across 6,482 keywords where both had links in our study of 10,000 AI answers, Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT shared only 3.33% of the pages they linked to, on average.

How does answer engine optimization work?

AEO works on what an answer engine knows and finds about your brand. When a buyer asks a question, the engine draws on two things. One is what it learned in training, the huge body of text it studied before release. The other is what it finds when it searches the web at that moment. It then picks a few brands and writes its reply.

So AEO has two jobs:

• Give clear answers on your own site. Say plainly what you sell, who it’s for, what it costs and how it compares. The engine can only repeat what it can find.
• Make sure other websites say the same. Answer engines lean on reviews, lists, comparison articles and news about your field. If those pages name you, the engine has good reason to name you too.

The second job matters more than most people think. In our study of 10,000 AI answers, when ChatGPT named brands it already knew, 85% of those mentions had no link to the brand’s own website. The engine named those brands because it knew them from across the web, not because it had just read their sites.

Which questions does AEO target?

AEO starts from the questions buyers really ask. Those questions change as a buyer moves toward a decision. Take someone with a damp basement:

1. The problem: “Why does my basement smell damp?”
2. The options: “What is the best dehumidifier for a basement?”
3. The comparison: “Brand A vs Brand B: which one lasts longer?”
4. The decision: “Is Brand A worth the price?”

You want to be named at every step. A brand that shows up only at the last step misses the buyers who made up their minds earlier.

These are the same questions whether you call the work AEO or GEO, and we put the two names side by side in AEO vs GEO.

Does AEO replace SEO?

No. SEO (search engine optimization) is the work of ranking your pages in search results, and it still matters. Google’s AI answers lean heavily on pages that rank well in Google. If those pages don’t mention you, the AI answer often won’t either.

AEO builds on SEO. It adds a focus on being named inside the answer, and on what other websites say about you. For more on this, see whether SEO still matters.

AEO strategy: 7 best practices

AEO works best as one complete plan, not a single trick. Here are the seven practices:

1. List your buyers’ questions at every step, from the problem to the final choice.
2. Ask each answer engine those questions more than once, because answers change. Note which brands it names, what it says about them, and which pages it links to. Our free AI visibility audit runs these checks for you.
3. Answer those questions on your own site in plain words, with real facts and prices.
4. Get your brand onto the pages the AI uses. These are the reviews, lists and articles behind the answers.
5. Get onto the pages that rank in Google for the same questions. Google’s AI answers lean on them.
6. Fix wrong details. If an AI gets your prices or features wrong, find the pages it is drawing from and get them corrected.
7. Track the answers again and again, and adjust the plan. We obsessively track them, because one check can fool you.

Keep your hopes honest. No one controls what an answer engine says, and the answers change over time. Good AEO raises the odds that you are named and described correctly.

Answer engine optimization examples

Here are two real examples from our study, and what each one means for AEO.

The answer came from review pages. For “best gaming headset for pc,” ChatGPT named three headset brands. It linked to two review sites and to none of the three brands’ own sites. The brands were the answer, but other websites backed them up. The AEO work here is to get your brand onto the review pages the engine reads, with the right details.

The answer changed each time. For “best lotion for tattoos,” we searched Google three times. The first AI Overview named two brands. The next two kept one of them and swapped the other for a different brand. Being the answer is not a one-time win. It is a share of the times a buyer asks, so AEO means checking again and again.

The same lessons hold for GEO. If you’re still asking what is GEO, it is the closest name for the same work.

How do you measure AEO?

You measure AEO with the same numbers as AI visibility. How often are you named? How do you compare with your competitors? Does the AI describe you correctly? Our guide to what AI visibility is explains how to track these step by step.

Check each answer engine on its own, because each one leans on different kinds of sites: in our study, Google’s AI Overviews linked to Reddit in 49.87% of answers and to YouTube in 50.81%, while ChatGPT did so in only 0.31% and 0.16%.

We run this work for online stores, software companies and trade businesses. See AI SEO for ecommerce, AI SEO for SaaS and AI SEO for contractors.

Get your free AI visibility audit

Find out if AI picks your brand as the answer. If you want the seven practices above done for you, that is the work of our AEO agency. Either way, our free audit shows where you stand in AI, what your buyers ask AI, and how to close the gap. Get your free AI visibility audit.