Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
The discipline of structuring content so answer engines, from featured snippets to AI assistants, can extract and attribute a correct answer to you.
AEO predates the AI wave (featured snippets were the first answer engines) and now extends to AI Overviews and chat assistants. The craft is consistent across both eras: one question per section, the answer in the first sentence under the heading, the mechanism stated rather than just the conclusion, and structured data (FAQ, definition and how-to markup) that mirrors the prose. The difference from GEO is emphasis: AEO optimises for being the extracted answer, GEO for being the cited and recommended source across a longer generated response. In practice teams run them as one programme with two scoreboards: snippet ownership on classic search, and referral traffic from assistants.
Related terms
Optimising content to be read, cited and recommended by AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, rather than only ranked by classic search.
Large Language Model. A neural network trained on massive text data that can generate, summarize, and reason about language.
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