What Is AEO? Answer Engine Optimization Explained
The short answer
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the practice of making a website readable, quotable, and trustworthy for AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews, so they cite it in answers. It extends classic SEO with three new requirements: AI crawler access, passage-level extractability, and verifiable entity trust.
What does AEO mean?
AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. It's optimizing a site so AI answer engines name and link it when users ask questions — instead of citing a competitor. Where SEO chases blue-link rankings, AEO chases being the source an AI quotes.
How is AEO different from SEO?
SEO optimizes for a ranked list of links. AEO optimizes for a single synthesized answer that cites a few sources. You can rank #1 in Google and still be invisible in AI answers if crawlers are blocked or your content isn't cleanly extractable.
What are the three pillars of AEO?
- ▪Access: AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended) can actually fetch your pages — no robots.txt or WAF blocks.
- ▪Extractability: content is in clean HTML, under question-shaped headings, in short self-contained passages an engine can lift.
- ▪Trust: verifiable entity signals — structured data, consistent descriptions, reviews, authorship, and a Wikipedia/Wikidata presence.
How do I check my AEO?
Run an AEO scan. cited? probes live AI engines with your buyers' questions, reports whether you're cited, mentioned, or absent, and audits all three pillars — for free, with a fix prompt per failed check.
Frequently asked questions
+Is AEO the same as GEO?
They overlap heavily. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) emphasizes being cited by AI answer engines; GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is a broader term for optimizing across generative AI surfaces. In practice the tactics are nearly identical: crawler access, extractable content, and entity trust.
+Does SEO still matter for AEO?
Yes. Many AI engines ground answers in search results, so classic SEO signals still feed AEO. But SEO alone isn't enough — you also need crawler access, clean extractable passages, and structured data for engines to quote you.
+How do I start with AEO?
Confirm AI crawlers aren't blocked, then make content extractable (clear headings, short answer-first paragraphs, FAQ, schema). Run an AEO scanner like cited? to baseline where you're cited and what's blocking you.