What is AEO?
Anmol Talwar, founder of The AEO Loop
When a client asks an AI assistant who to hire, it doesn't hand back ten blue links — it names a few businesses, by name. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the discipline of making sure that name is yours. It reads different signals from SEO, and it's measured differently too.
Last updated: July 2026
Getting recommended, not ranked.
SEO and AEO optimise for two different things. One competes for a rank in a list; the other competes to be the name an engine says out loud.
SEO
SEO optimises a page to rank — to climb a list of links for a search term. More positions, more clicks. The goal is to be found.
AEO
AI engines don't show a list — they recommend. They weigh signals across the whole web to decide which few names to say out loud. The goal is to be chosen.
This isn't SEO — and your SEO agency can't do it. Being indexed by an engine is not the same as being recommended by one. Different game, different rules.
Search moved from a list of links to a single recommendation.
When an engine answers "who should I hire," it names a few businesses and drops the rest. There is no page two.
You can't see it
AI answers are private and personalised. You have no idea what engines say about you to a buyer in your city — until you look.
Competitors are named
The engine doesn't say "no result." It confidently recommends someone. That someone is often a direct competitor, by name.
The signals are fixable
Being excluded isn't luck. It traces to specific, repeatable gaps in structure, authority and entity clarity — gaps a system can close.
AEO, in plain terms.
What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of getting your business named and recommended when someone asks an AI assistant — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude — who to hire. Instead of competing for a rank in a list of links, you compete to be one of the few names the engine says out loud.
How is AEO different from SEO?
SEO optimises a page to rank in a list of links so buyers can find you. AEO optimises the signals an AI engine reads to decide which businesses to recommend by name. The two are complementary, but they read different signals — being indexed by an engine is not the same as being recommended by one.
Why does AEO matter now?
Buyers increasingly ask AI assistants for a recommendation before they ever run a traditional search. When the answer names competitors and leaves you out, the decision is made before you enter it — and because the answer is private, you never see it happen unless you look.
Can my SEO agency do AEO?
Not usually. AEO reads different signals — entity clarity, structured extractable content, and off-site authority the engines cite — and it is measured by reading live AI answers, not tracking keyword ranks. It is a distinct discipline that sits alongside SEO, not inside it.
Does AEO work for a small business or my specific industry?
Yes. The mechanics are the same whatever you sell: an engine reads clear, extractable pages, checks whether your facts are consistent across the web, and names the businesses it can most confidently recommend. What changes by industry is which questions buyers ask and which third-party sources the engines trust. The AEO Loop publishes industry guides for plastic surgeons, med spas, dentists, law firms, financial advisors, SaaS and home services on its industries page.
How do you know if AEO is working?
You track it. Ask the engines the buying-intent questions your customers actually use and record whether your business is named, mentioned, cited, or left out, on each engine, then watch how that presence rate moves over time. There is no single ranking to check, so the honest measure is directional movement across a fixed set of prompts, run on a cadence. The free scanner runs that check across four engines so you can see where you stand today.
How much does AEO cost?
Start free: the scanner and a founder-reviewed Gap Report cost nothing. When you are ready to act on it, the one-time Foundation Build starts at $1,499 to optimize an existing site, and ongoing retainers run from $1,999 a month. Scope and price are set upfront, with nothing added silently. Full detail is on the pricing page.
AEO, GEO, LLMO — the terms, sorted out.
The space is young and the labels overlap. Here is what each one means, and how they relate.
Answer Engine Optimization
The broadest term, and the one we use. Getting your business named and recommended when an AI assistant answers “who should I hire.” It aims one rung above being cited — at being the recommendation.
Generative Engine Optimization
Usually narrower: getting your content pulled into and cited inside a generative answer. Being cited is a step toward being recommended, not the same thing. In practice GEO and AEO overlap heavily.
LLM Optimization
Other names for the same idea — optimising for large language models and AI search. Different label, same goal: be legible and trusted to the systems that now shape recommendations.
Being a known thing
Whether an engine can identify your business as a distinct, verifiable entity — name, location, services, credentials — rather than an unconfirmed string of words. Weak entity clarity is a top reason a business is skipped.
Machine-readable labels
Schema markup in your page code (Organization, FAQPage, and more) that tells an engine exactly what it is reading, so your services and answers are easy to extract and quote.
Where answers come from
Modern engines pull from a live index and trusted third-party sources when they answer. If you are not in what they retrieve, and not corroborated by the sources they trust, you cannot be recommended.
AEO vs GEO vs SEO.
The three overlap, but each optimises for a different outcome. Here is the difference in one view.
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The goal | Rank a page in a list of links | Be the business an AI names and recommends | Get your content pulled into and cited in a generated answer |
| Where you appear | The search results page | Inside a ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity recommendation | Inside the generated answer, as a cited source |
| What it optimises | Keywords, links, page speed | Entity clarity, extractable content, cited authority | Content phrasing and structure a model will quote |
| What winning is | A top blue link | Your name in the answer, ahead of rivals | Your page cited as a source in the answer |
| How it is measured | Rankings and traffic | Whether engines recommend you, by written rule | How often you are cited in answers |
In practice AEO and GEO overlap heavily — being cited (GEO) is a step toward being recommended (AEO). We optimise for the recommendation and treat citation as one signal on the way there. New to the terms? Read the GEO explainer →
From excluded to recommended.
Invisible
A strong local business asks four engines “who’s the best in my city.” It is named zero times. Competitors are recommended by name, with reasons. The pages read well to a human but give an engine nothing clean to extract, the entity is unconfirmed in the sources engines trust, and there is no third-party authority to corroborate the claims.
Named
The priority pages are restructured so answers are easy to extract, the entity is made unambiguous across schema and the profiles engines cite, credentials are verified and machine-readable, and the off-site authority is built where the engines actually look. Over a few re-crawl cycles the business moves from excluded, to mentioned, to recommended.
Related guides
Find out what AI says about you.
Run the free scanner — real queries against four live engines — and see whether you're recommended, mentioned, cited, or excluded, and who's surfaced instead. It is one live sample per engine, so read it as a starting point rather than a verdict.