AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

An answer engine returns a response rather than a list of links: Google’s AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, and voice assistants. AEO is the work of being the source it draws that response from.

In practice that means structuring content so a passage can be lifted cleanly: a direct answer in the first sentence under a question-shaped heading, facts stated once and unambiguously, and structured data that names the entities involved.

The uncomfortable part is that a successful AEO result often produces no click. The visitor gets their answer inside the engine. What it produces instead is citation and brand presence at the moment of decision, which is worth measuring differently from sessions.