Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Also called: AEO
Answer engine optimization is the practice of making a business legible and credible enough that AI systems name it inside a generated answer.
Traditional search optimization competes for a position in a list of links. Answer engine optimization competes to be one of the handful of names an assistant mentions when it answers a question directly — a fundamentally narrower target, because an answer names two or three businesses rather than showing ten.
The work divides into three parts: making the entity unambiguous, so a model knows what the business is and who it serves; making the content retrievable, so it can actually be read and quoted; and building corroboration, so claims are supported by sources beyond the business's own domain.
Why it matters
When an assistant returns one recommendation instead of a page of options, the difference between being named and being absent is the difference between a customer and no customer. There is no equivalent of position four.