What is AEO? Answer engine optimization, explained for site owners

Short answer: AEO (answer engine optimization) is the work of making your pages the ones AI tools pick, quote and name when someone asks a question: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. It builds on SEO and adds one job: being easy for a machine to lift a correct answer from. Nobody can guarantee a citation. Last updated 7 October 2026.

You will also see it called GEO (generative engine optimization) or AI search optimization. In practice the work is the same. The rest of this page shows how an answer engine ends up citing one page and not another, a checklist you can run against your own site this afternoon, how to do AEO in order, and how to tell whether it's working.

How an answer engine picks a page to cite

Details differ by product and change often, and the vendors don't publish their full recipe, so treat this as the general pattern rather than a rulebook. When a question needs fresh or specific facts, the engine typically does four things:

1. Searches. It turns the question into one or more searches and pulls back candidate pages. A page that can't be crawled, or doesn't rank for anything near the question, rarely gets this far.
2. Reads passages, not pages. It looks for the stretch of text that answers the question. A paragraph that states the answer in plain words is easier to use than one buried under a long introduction.
3. Cross-checks. It leans on facts that several sources agree on, and on sources that look authoritative for the topic. A business named consistently across its own site, directories and third-party lists is easier to trust than one described differently everywhere.
4. Writes the answer and links its sources. Some tools show citations for every claim; others answer from what the model already learned and cite little. That is why the same question can give a different answer tomorrow.

So the levers you control are whether your page can be fetched, whether it answers the question directly, whether its facts are right and match what others say, and whether you are named on the pages the engine already trusts.

AEO vs SEO

AEO doesn't replace SEO. A page that a search engine can't find is also hard for an answer engine to find.

A checklist you can run against your own site

Pick your five most important pages and check each one.

• Answer-first paragraph. Does the first paragraph under the heading answer the question in two or three plain sentences (who it's for, what it costs, how it works)? If someone copied just that paragraph, would it be correct on its own?
• Headings that are questions people ask. "How much does X cost?" beats "Pricing philosophy".
• Crawlable. Open /robots.txt. Are the bots from the AI tools you care about allowed to fetch your public pages? Is the answer in the HTML, not only drawn by JavaScript after load? Training crawlers and search crawlers are separate bots, and you can treat them differently.
• One canonical URL per page, a working sitemap, and no accidental noindex.
• Named entities, spelled the same everywhere. Your business name, product names, founder and location written identically on your site, your directory listings and your social profiles. Organization schema with your name, URL and profiles makes this explicit.
• FAQ and Article schema that matches the visible page. Structured data tells a machine what each part is. It doesn't force a citation, and Google no longer shows FAQ rich results, so add it to describe the page, not to chase a feature. Never mark up text that isn't on the page.
• Facts that are true today. Prices, plans, limits and dates. Wrong facts get quoted just as readily as right ones. Put a date on pages where the facts change.
• A comparison table where buyers compare things, with rows you can check.
• Third-party mentions. Are you on the lists, directories and review sites that rank for your buyers' questions?

How to do AEO

In this order, because each step tells you what the next one should be.

1. Write down 20 to 50 questions your buyers ask. Mix questions that name you ("is Acme any good?") with questions that don't ("best invoicing app for contractors"). The second kind is how strangers find you.
2. Ask them in each engine and save the answers. Record who is named, what is said about you, and which sources are cited.
3. Fix what is wrong first. If an answer states a price, feature or limit that you don't have, find the page it came from and put the current fact on a page you control, in plain words.
4. Make the page that should win each missing question answer it directly, in its first paragraph, then back it up with detail, a table or an FAQ.
5. Remove technical blockers: robots rules, JavaScript-only content, missing canonicals, broken links, slow pages.
6. Get named where the engines look. The cited sources from step 2 show which listicles, directories and publications matter. Earn the mention honestly; paid links that pass ranking signals break Google's spam policies.
7. Ask again on a schedule and compare.

How to measure AEO

One screenshot of one answer proves nothing, because answers vary from ask to ask. Measure like this instead:

• Keep the question list fixed. Changing it every week makes the trend meaningless. Add new questions alongside the old ones, not in place of them.
• Use the same engines each time: ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, plus Bing if your buyers use it.
• Record per question: were you named, were you cited (a link to your site), what was said, and who else was named.
• Report a rate with its sample size ("named in 6 of 30 buyer questions"), and treat a one-or-two-question wobble as noise. Look for a change that holds over several weeks.
• Keep Search Console open next to it. It shows clicks and impressions, which AI answers often don't produce, so AEO wins can look quiet there. Analytics referrals from AI tools are a partial signal, not the full picture.

You can do this by hand in a spreadsheet. Tools exist that automate the asking.

Where Dinkum fits

Dinkum does much of this for you: it asks a fixed panel of buyer questions weekly across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers, fixes the pages that state wrong facts, ships answer-first pages as pull requests you approve, and judges each change at 14 and 28 days against the rest of the site. For third-party mentions it lists the directories and articles engines cite for your market and drafts outreach pitches, which you send. It costs $2,000 a month for one site, month to month. Read what an AEO agency should do, or how to choose an AI SEO agency if you're comparing options. There are no published client results yet, so we won't quote any.

Questions

What does AEO stand for?

Answer engine optimization: optimizing your content so answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI answers) can find, trust and quote it.

What is the difference between AEO and GEO?

Very little. Both mean getting named and cited in AI-written answers. Some people use GEO for AI-written summaries and AEO for being the single answer, but the work is the same.

Is AEO replacing SEO?

No. Answer engines mostly find pages through search, so crawlable, well-ranked pages are still the base. AEO adds answer-first writing, accurate facts and mentions on the pages engines trust.

Can I guarantee ChatGPT will cite my site?

No, and be wary of anyone who says they can. You can make your pages easy to fetch and quote, and fix what AI gets wrong about you.

How long does AEO take to work?

Some engines fetch live pages, so a fix can show within days or weeks. Others change slowly. Judge a change over several weeks of the same questions, not one ask.

Can I do AEO myself?

Yes. The steps above need a spreadsheet, access to edit your pages and a couple of hours a week. If you'd rather have it done and reviewed, get a free site review.