What is AEO? Answer engine optimization in plain English

AEO in one minute

For many searches, Google now shows an AI-written answer above its ordinary results. Voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa often read out one answer and stop. In both cases the customer gets one answer, not ten links, and most of the attention goes to the business or the page the answer came from. AEO is the work of making your website the kind of page that answers the question clearly enough to be picked.

How AEO differs from SEO and GEO

• SEO is being found in a list of results on Google or Bing.
• AEO is being the answer when an engine gives one answer instead of a list.
• GEO is being named when an assistant such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini writes a recommendation.

The three overlap a great deal, and people use the names loosely. The practical advice is nearly the same for all of them, which is good news for a small business: you do not need three separate plans.

What helps

• Put the answer first. Write a short, honest answer to each question in two or three sentences, with the actual answer in the first one, then explain. This kind of plain answer is exactly what answer engines like to quote.
• Use the customer's own words. A heading such as "How much does a boiler repair cost in Springfield?" matches how people ask.
• State the facts plainly. What you do, where you work, your opening hours, how pricing works. A voice assistant asked "who is open near me" cannot use what you have not said.
• Keep your details identical everywhere, including your Google Business Profile.
• Add structured business details that match your page. See copy and paste.
• Do not block quoting. A "nosnippet" setting tells Google not to quote your page, and Google uses the same setting for its AI answers.

An example

Say a customer asks "how much does a boiler repair cost in Springfield?". Compare two ways of answering it on a page.

The better version answers in the first sentence, gives something a person or an assistant can actually quote, and says how pricing works. Put your own true figures in place of the square brackets, and never publish anything that is not true for your business.

How to see how you are doing

Search for the questions your customers ask, on Google and on your phone, and see which pages are quoted. Our website check looks at the other half: the full report asks ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity questions about your trade and town, checks whether anything is turning AI robots away or stopping Google quoting you, and gives you questions to answer on your site, written for you to adjust. The example report shows how that looks.