What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?

Answer engine optimization, or AEO, is the practice of making a business the one an AI assistant names when it answers a question, rather than a link it lists. Traditional search returns ten blue links and lets the customer choose. An answer engine, whether that is ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overviews, returns a short recommendation with one or two names in it. AEO is the work of being one of those names.

The reason it matters is that most local businesses are invisible in this new format. Across the businesses we have measured, more than three in four are named by no AI assistant at all. If AEO sounds abstract, that number is the concrete version of it: three in four owners are losing the recommendation without knowing the game changed.

SEO optimizes for a position in a list. AEO optimizes for being the choice the assistant makes on the customer’s behalf. The difference is the difference between appearing and being picked.

The mechanics differ too. A ranking rewards on-page relevance and links to your own pages. An answer rewards corroboration: an assistant retrieves candidates and grounds its answer in what independent sources say. So AEO leans harder on off-property signals, reviews, directory presence, and being named in local roundups, than classic SEO ever did. Your own website is table stakes; what the rest of the web says about you is the deciding factor.

AEO is young enough that vendors are already selling hacks for it. Be skeptical. Google is explicit that many suggested AEO and GEO tricks are not supported by how Search actually works, and that there are no secret machine-readable files or markup that unlock AI features. If a vendor promises to buy you into an AI answer, they are selling something that does not exist.

What does work is unglamorous and real:

• Be retrievable for the money query, not just your brand name, so the assistant can find you when it matters.
• Build off-property attestation: reviews, accurate directory listings, and genuine mentions across the web.
• Keep your Google Business Profile complete and current, which Google names directly as a factor in local AI results.
• Make your pages clear, fast, and machine-readable so you are eligible to be cited in the first place.

Start by measuring, not guessing. Find out what AI already says about you and which of the underlying signals are weakest, then fix the two that decide recommendations first: retrieval grounding and off-property attestation. Everything else is eligibility work that supports those two.