What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of making your business the one an answer engine names when someone asks a question. Answer engines include AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and voice assistants.
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What counts as an answer engine
Any system that replies with an answer rather than a list of links. That began with featured snippets and voice assistants and now includes the generative assistants, which write a full answer and often recommend specific businesses.
The AEO checklist
- Allow the AI search crawlers in robots.txt (OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT, Claude-SearchBot for Claude, PerplexityBot for Perplexity), and make sure a firewall rule is not blocking them. Blocking training-only crawlers like GPTBot or ClaudeBot opts you out of AI training, not out of the answers.
- Put your key facts in the HTML the server sends, not only in JavaScript: business name, what you do, location, contact details and prices where you publish them.
- Add structured data: Organization (or LocalBusiness) schema, and FAQPage schema on pages that answer real questions.
- Publish an llms.txt file that points AI systems at your most important pages.
- Write pages that answer one question each, with the answer in the first paragraph.
- Keep your listings and reviews consistent on the directories the assistants cite for your category.
- Check the answers regularly, across several assistants, without your brand name in the question.
Measuring AEO
Rankings do not describe an answer. The useful measures are how often you are named, how early in the answer or conversation, whether your site is cited as a source, and which businesses are named when you are not. Because answers vary between runs and engines, measure a set of questions repeatedly rather than one question once.