What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is work aimed at getting a site's pages used when AI assistants and search features answer a question. Google says that, for its own AI features, this work is still SEO.
Cited from the66th.com/glossary/answer-engine-optimization
How answer engine optimization works
An answer engine is any tool that replies to a question with a written answer: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity. These tools search, read the pages that come back, and quote or link the ones that answer the question best. AEO is the work of making a site one of those pages: crawlable, indexed, and written to answer the questions buyers ask.
A lot of AEO advice adds tactics on top. Google has checked several of them against how its own AI features work.
| AEO advice | What Google's guide says |
|---|---|
| Add an llms.txt file | Not needed. Google Search does not use it. |
| Break content into small chunks | No requirement. Google understands pages that cover several topics. |
| Rewrite pages for AI | Not needed. AI systems understand synonyms and meaning. |
| Add special schema for AI | Not required, though structured data still helps rich results. |
Why Google calls it SEO
Google's guide to generative AI features in Search defines AEO as answer engine optimization and GEO as generative engine optimization, two terms for work focused on visibility in AI search. It says that from Google's perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for search, and thus still SEO. It also tells site owners to ignore tactics like chunking content, creating unnecessary AI text files, or pursuing inauthentic mentions.
Other AI tools follow their own rules, and only their own documentation says what those are. OpenAI's crawler documentation, for example, says a site must allow its OAI-SearchBot crawler to appear in ChatGPT's search answers.
What it means for your business
For a business, AEO and SEO are the same project with one extra step: checking what the AI tools say. Google's guide says content people find unique, compelling and useful will likely influence a site's presence in generative AI search more than any of its other suggestions. For a business, that means facts only you have: your prices, your process and your results.
The extra step matters because AI answers name a few businesses where a results page lists ten. Measuring that, and closing the gaps it shows, is the work of our AI search optimization service.
Common mistakes
- Paying for llms.txt files, chunked rewrites or AI-only schema to get into Google's AI answers. Google says none of them is needed.
- Seeking mentions on forums and listicles that nobody earned. Google says inauthentic mentions are not as helpful as they seem, and its spam systems work on AI answers too.
- Building a page for every variation of a question. Google says content made at scale mainly to manipulate AI responses breaks its scaled content abuse policy.
Related terms
Sources: Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, 10 July 2026; OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI crawlers.