What Is Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)?
Answer engine optimisation, or AEO, is shaping your website so AI tools such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot can find it, understand it and quote it. Traditional search rewards a high position in a list of links. An answer engine rewards the clearest, most quotable source for one specific question.
By Stuart Humphrey, Founder and Managing Director, Phoenix Marketing · Updated 21 September 2026
AEO compared with SEO
We work through six stages, in this order, because each one depends on the one before.
| Traditional SEO | Answer engine optimisation | |
|---|---|---|
| What wins | A high position in the results | Being the source the AI quotes |
| What competes | The whole page | A single passage |
| Length | Depth often helps | Length can bury the answer |
| What people see | Your title and description | Often your words, without your name |
That last row matters. One study of four AI engines found almost 62 per cent of citations used a page as a source without ever naming the brand. Good AEO aims for both: being used, and being named.
What makes an answer easy for AI to quote
The second tells an AI exactly who, where and what, in one sentence. That is AEO in a nutshell.
Five habits of AEO friendly writing
ANSWER FIRST
Put the answer in the opening sentence, then explain.
Match the question
Use headings that mirror what people actually ask.
One idea per section
Short, self contained sections are easier to lift.
Be specific
State places, prices, dates and who you help.
Stay consistent
Keep your name, address and description the same everywhere.
AEO, GEO and SEO
- SEO is the foundation. The strongest signals for AI citations are still being crawlable and ranking well.
- GEO is the whole discipline of being chosen by AI tools. Generative engine optimisation explained
- AEO is the writing craft within it: making each individual answer clear and quotable.
Three AEO checks you can do today
- Read your most important page aloud. Does the first sentence answer the question in the heading?
- Open your robots.txt file and look for AI crawler names such as GPTBot or OAI-SearchBot being blocked.
- Ask ChatGPT a question you should be the answer to, and see who it names instead.
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Frequently asked questions
Is AEO the same as GEO?
They overlap. We use GEO for the whole discipline and AEO for the specific craft of making individual answers easy to quote.
Does AEO replace SEO?
No. Google’s AI features are built on its core ranking systems, so a site that cannot rank is rarely cited. AEO works within SEO.
Which businesses benefit most from AEO?
Any business whose customers compare options or ask for recommendations before buying, such as professional services, healthcare, trades and B2B.
Is there a figure for how much AEO helps?
The research that named the field reported gains of up to 40 per cent, but that was the best case in a test setting, not an average. Be wary of anyone promising a set figure.
Sources: Semrush with Kevin Indig, Growth Memo, 9 June 2026 (ghost citations). Cyrus Shepard, Zyppy, AI Citation Ranking Factors Analysis, 7 May 2026. Aggarwal and others, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD 2024. Google Search Central, Optimizing for Generative AI Features, July 2026.
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