Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so that AI answer engines — such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — understand it, trust it, and cite it in their responses.
AEO is one of several names for the same discipline. You will also see it called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or AI Search Optimization. The naming is still settling across the industry, but all three describe the same goal: earning a place inside the single answer an AI assistant returns, rather than a position in a list of links.
Like GEO, AEO rewards answer-first writing, clean machine-readable structure, an llms.txt file, consistent facts about your brand, and corroboration from third-party sources the engines already trust. It is measured by citations — whether, and how often, engines name you when asked the questions you want to own.