Answer engine optimisation, or AEO, is setting your website and your business details up so that AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI answers can understand them, and so you have a better chance of being named when somebody asks one of them to recommend a business like yours. It is the same idea as SEO, aimed at assistants instead of a results page. It improves the chances. Nobody controls what an AI says, and anybody promising you a guaranteed mention is overselling it.
Why it is a separate thing from SEO
Search results are a list of links, and somebody clicks one. An AI assistant reads the pages itself and answers in a paragraph, often naming two or three businesses and no more. There is no page two.
So the question stops being "where do we rank" and becomes "is there anything on this site clear enough to quote". Those need different work.
What actually helps
- Facts stated plainly on the page — what you do, where you do it, what it costs, what your hours are. Assistants quote specifics and skip vagueness.
- Structured data, which is a machine-readable copy of those same facts sitting in the page for crawlers to read.
- Answering real questions directly, in the first sentence, rather than building up to it.
- Being consistent everywhere — the same business name, address and phone number on your site, your Google listing and your social profiles.
- Letting AI crawlers read the site at all. Some sites block them without realising.
What nobody can promise
That an assistant will name you. That it will keep naming you next month. That you will appear for a particular question. The models change, they are trained and updated on their own schedules, and none of that is anybody’s to control.
What is within reach is making sure that when an assistant does look, there is something clear, accurate and quotable to find.
Related questions
Is AEO the same as GEO?
Near enough. Generative engine optimisation is another name for the same work — getting a business understood and cited by AI assistants rather than ranked on a results page.
Can you guarantee my business is named by ChatGPT?
No, and nobody can. AEO improves the chances by making the facts about your business clear and machine-readable. What an assistant actually says is not within anyone’s control.
Do I need AEO if I already do SEO?
They overlap but they are not the same. A lot of what helps AEO is good practice anyway — clear facts, direct answers, consistent business details.