The practice of making your brand the answer AI assistants and AI search features give when people ask questions about your category.
AEO, short for answer engine optimization, is the work of getting a business named in the direct answers that tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews give to questions. Where classic SEO aims for a high position in a list of links, AEO aims for a mention inside the answer itself, ideally as the first recommendation.
AEO builds on SEO rather than replacing it. Google says that appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode depends on the same things as appearing in search: a page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown as a snippet, and no special markup is required. ChatGPT search relies on OpenAI's own crawler, OAI-SearchBot, being able to reach the page.
On top of that foundation, AEO work usually covers three things: pages that answer buyers' questions directly and early, mentions on the third-party sites that AI answers draw on (reviews, directories, comparison articles and press), and tracking a fixed set of prompts to see who each assistant names over time.
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