What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the practice of making a brand's information easier for search engines and AI systems to understand, retrieve and use when answering a user's question.
That can mean appearing in direct search answers, AI-generated summaries, citations, comparisons, recommendations and conversational search results.
The aim is not simply to produce more content. It is to make the right information easier to find, verify and use.
Why AEO exists
For most of search history, the journey looked something like:
Now the answer can increasingly appear before the website visit. A user can ask "Which fibre provider is best for a family in Cape Town?" or "Which attribution consultant should I use in South Africa?" and receive a synthesised response containing explanations, companies, comparisons, recommendations and supporting links. The website is still important. But it may no longer be the first place the customer encounters the information. That creates the need for AEO.
Is AEO just SEO?
No. But it sits on top of many SEO fundamentals. Traditional SEO asks: How do we improve discovery and ranking in search results? AEO adds: How do we make information useful when the system itself provides the answer? That expands the work into areas such as clear answer structures, entity clarity, factual consistency, citations, third-party authority, AI visibility, recommendation testing and answer accuracy. Good SEO gives AEO a stronger foundation. AEO does not magically make SEO irrelevant.
AEO vs GEO
The terminology is still evolving. A practical distinction is: AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) focuses on improving the likelihood that information is used within direct answers. GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) focuses more specifically on visibility within generative AI responses. In reality, the work overlaps so heavily that QFD treats them as connected disciplines. I would not build two completely separate strategies simply because the market has two acronyms. See AEO vs GEO vs SEO.
What does AEO actually involve?
A useful AEO programme has several parts.
1. Understand the questions
Do not begin with content production. Begin with buyer behaviour. What do customers ask during Discovery (What is AEO?), Problem recognition (Why doesn't ChatGPT recommend my company?), Evaluation (AEO consultant vs agency?), Comparison (Best AEO consultants South Africa?), Purchase (How much does AEO cost?). Map the decision journey. Then map the information required at every stage.
2. Establish the current answer
Before optimisation, test what the answer systems already say. Record brand presence, recommendation position, competitors, citations, factual accuracy, platform and date. This becomes the baseline. Without it, you have no defensible way to say the work improved anything.
3. Fix entity clarity
An entity is simply a distinct thing a system needs to understand. For a business that may include the company, founder, products, services, locations, parent company and brands. The relationships should be clear. If the site cannot consistently explain who the company is and what it does, that needs fixing before anyone starts discussing advanced GEO tactics.
4. Improve answer quality
Some pages need to answer questions more directly. Useful characteristics include descriptive headings, concise definitions, explicit answers, meaningful examples, logical structure, factual support, helpful tables and clear comparisons. Do not write for a machine. Write information that is easier for both people and machines to use.
5. Create non-commodity information
This may be the most important long-term component. Google's current guidance for AI search explicitly recommends creating unique, valuable and non-commodity content rather than simply repeating information already available elsewhere. That can mean original data, industry research, benchmarks, experiments, expert analysis, calculators, methodologies and case studies. A company becomes more citeable when it has information worth citing.
6. Strengthen supporting sources
The website is only one source of information about a business. AEO may therefore include understanding where competitors are mentioned, which publications influence the category, how directories describe the company, what review platforms say, whether company profiles are accurate and which comparison pages surface. The objective is not to manufacture mentions. It is to make the broader information environment more complete and accurate.
7. Get the technical basics right
AEO still needs a functioning website. That includes HTTP 200 pages, sensible canonicals, crawlable content, indexation, mobile usability, page performance, structured data where appropriate and internal linking. For ChatGPT search specifically, OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot when publishers want their public website content to be discoverable and eligible to be surfaced and cited.
Does schema help AEO?
It can help machines understand structured facts and relationships. But do not sell schema as a ranking hack. Use it when it accurately reflects visible content, it clarifies entities, the relationships are real and the implementation is technically valid. Structured data is one component. Not the strategy.
Does AEO require llms.txt?
Not for Google. Google explicitly clarified in 2026 that llms.txt is not required and does not improve or hurt Google Search visibility. Other systems may make use of it, so maintaining one may still be reasonable depending on the use case. But llms.txt is infrastructure. It is not evidence that a company has "done AEO".
Does AI-generated content hurt AEO?
Not simply because AI was used. The important question is whether the resulting page is accurate, useful, original, relevant and genuinely valuable. Google's current policy does not ban generative AI content, but warns that generating large numbers of pages without adding value may violate scaled-content abuse policies. The practical test is simple. If removing your company name from the article would make it indistinguishable from 100 competing AI-written articles, why would anyone cite it?
How do you measure AEO?
Do not measure AEO with one visibility score. I use several layers. Visibility (does the brand appear?). Recommendation (is the brand actually recommended?). Citations (which sources support the answer?). Accuracy (is the information correct?). Traffic (do identifiable AI/search visitors reach the site?). Leads (do they convert?). Pipeline (are the leads commercially useful?). Revenue (does the activity ultimately generate value?). See How to Measure AEO Performance.
How long does AEO take?
There is no responsible universal answer. Some problems can change relatively quickly, for example fixing an incorrect page, removing stale information or correcting structured facts. Other outcomes take longer: building authority, earning citations, creating research, changing recommendation patterns and establishing a category position. The baseline matters. So does the competitive environment. A new company with no authority cannot reasonably expect the same timeline as an established national brand.
Can AEO guarantee ChatGPT recommendations?
No. And you should be suspicious of anybody offering that guarantee. AI answers vary. The goal is to improve the information available to the system and measure whether the brand becomes more visible, accurate and recommendable. That is optimisation. Control is something else.
Who needs AEO?
AEO becomes especially relevant where buyers use research and recommendations before purchasing. Examples include professional services, financial services, SaaS, technology, telecoms, ecommerce, travel, healthcare, education and considered consumer purchases. The higher the consideration, the more interesting AI-mediated discovery can become.
Who does not need to panic about AEO?
Everybody. You do not need to rebuild your website tomorrow because somebody tweeted that SEO is dead. Start by asking: Are buyers using these surfaces? Does my brand appear? Is the information correct? Are competitors materially stronger? Could this affect commercial discovery? If yes, build a plan. If no, there may be more valuable things to fix first.
What good AEO looks like
Good AEO is not 1,000 generated articles, fake citations, keyword stuffing, five schema plugins, an llms.txt file, screenshot reporting or guaranteed ChatGPT rankings. It is clear information, strong evidence, credible sources, good technical foundations and consistent measurement. That is far less exciting than a hack. It is also much more durable.
QFD's approach
I think about AEO as part of the acquisition system. The work begins with: What are buyers asking? Then: What answers are they receiving? Then: Why? Then: What should change? Then: Did the answer move? And finally: Did anything commercially useful happen? That last question is where AEO becomes a growth problem rather than an SEO experiment.
See also: AEO & GEO Consulting and How to Get Recommended by ChatGPT.
Before you optimise the answer, find out what it currently says.
The fastest way to start is to establish the current answer. See where the brand appears, where it does not, and what the AI systems currently say about it.