AI search, explained
What is AEO, and how is it different from SEO?
Short answer
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring a website so AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI answers, and Copilot can find, trust, and quote it directly. Where SEO aims to earn a click from a results page, AEO aims to be the sentence the assistant reads out — which means clear direct answers, structured data, real facts and prices on the page, and content a crawler can read without running JavaScript.
SEO and AEO, side by side
| SEO | AEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank on the results page and earn the click | Be the source the generated answer quotes |
| Unit of content | The page | The paragraph or the table row |
| What wins | Relevance, site quality, links, page experience | Specific facts, clear direct answers, structured data, consistency |
| Numbers and prices | Optional | Decisive — assistants quote concrete figures far more readily than adjectives |
| How it is measured | Impressions, position, clicks in Search Console | Whether assistants name you, and referral traffic from assistant domains |
| Crawling | Googlebot renders JavaScript | Most assistant crawlers do not — HTML must be complete on arrival |
The terms, defined
- Answer engine optimization (AEO)
- Structuring a site so AI assistants can quote it as the answer to a question. The unit of success is a citation inside a generated answer, not a blue link.
- Answer engine
- Any tool that returns a written answer instead of a list of links: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Google's AI answers.
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Earning position on a traditional results page through relevance, site quality, and links. Still the foundation: assistants mostly draw from pages that already rank.
- Generative engine optimization (GEO)
- Another name for AEO, used more often in enterprise marketing. Same objective: being the source a generated answer cites.
- Direct answer
- A short, self-contained paragraph placed immediately under the heading that answers the page's question without needing the rest of the page for context.
- Structured data (schema markup)
- Machine-readable JSON-LD describing what a page is about — a business, a service, a price, a set of questions and answers — so a crawler does not have to infer it from the layout.
- Entity
- The thing a search or answer engine believes your business is, assembled from your site, your structured data, and mentions elsewhere. Consistent facts across all three make a strong entity.
- llms.txt
- A plain-text file at the root of a site that summarizes what the business does, what it charges, and which pages matter, written for AI crawlers rather than people.
- Server-side rendering
- Sending finished HTML from the server. Many AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript, so content that only appears after a script runs is invisible to them.
- Citation
- The link an assistant shows next to a claim it made. Citations are how AEO produces traffic, and they favor pages with specific, verifiable facts.
Read more on this
- The blog covers AEO, agency pricing, and Google Ads in longer form.
- The free audit scores your current site on exactly these signals.
- Pricing lists what a build with AEO included costs.
FAQ
Questions about AI search
- Is AEO different from SEO?
- They overlap heavily but the target differs. SEO tries to win a position on a results page so a person clicks through. AEO tries to be the passage an AI assistant quotes when it writes the answer. In practice good SEO is the entry ticket — assistants draw mostly from pages that already rank — and AEO adds the structure that makes a page quotable: a direct answer under the heading, real numbers, FAQ markup, and structured data that names the business.
- Does AEO replace SEO?
- No. Traditional search still sends most local business traffic, and assistants lean on the same underlying index. Treat AEO as a layer on top of a technically sound, well-ranked site rather than a replacement for it.
- How do I get my business mentioned in ChatGPT answers?
- Publish the specific facts an answer needs — what you do, where you do it, and what it costs — as plain text on a crawlable page; add structured data that ties every page to one business entity; allow AI crawlers in robots.txt; and get mentioned on third-party sites. Assistants weight off-site corroboration heavily, so a business that only exists on its own domain stays a weak entity no matter how good its markup is.
- Can you guarantee an AI assistant will cite my site?
- No, and nobody can. Assistants pick sources per question and change models constantly. What is controllable is whether your pages are crawlable, factual, structured, and specific enough to be quoted — sites that are not never get cited at all.
- Is AEO included in an AXF Creative build?
- Yes. Every build ships with server-rendered HTML, per-page titles and descriptions, business and FAQ structured data, direct-answer paragraphs, an llms.txt file, and crawler rules that allow AI assistants. It is not a separate line item.
- How can I check where my current site stands?
- Run the free audit. It scores SEO, AEO, UX, and page speed on your existing site and lists the specific things blocking an assistant from reading and quoting it.
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