What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of getting your brand cited and recommended inside AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Gemini — so you appear in the single synthesised answer users now read instead of a list of links.
Why AEO exists now
For two decades, being found online meant ranking a page in a list of blue links. That behaviour is changing fast. People increasingly ask a question and read one AI-generated answer that names a handful of sources — and never scroll a results page at all.
If an answer engine doesn’t cite your brand, you are invisible at the exact moment a buying decision is forming. AEO is the discipline of making sure your brand is one of the sources the engine trusts and names.
How answer engines choose who to cite
Answer engines don’t rank ten links — they synthesise an answer and attribute it to a few sources. To be chosen, your brand needs three things working together:
- A clear entity: the engine understands exactly who you are, what you do, and where you operate.
- Answer-ready content: information structured as direct, quotable answers to real questions.
- Authority: citations, mentions and structured data that signal your brand is a trustworthy source.
AEO in four phases
At CITED we run AEO as a repeatable programme: Audit how engines see you today, Structure answer-ready content and schema, build Authority through citations and entity trust, then Monitor your share of answer and iterate each month.
Is AEO the same as SEO?
No — though they’re related. SEO optimises to rank pages; AEO optimises to be the cited source inside an AI answer. Most brands need both. We break the distinction down in our guide, AEO vs SEO: what’s the difference?
See how AI sees your brand
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