Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)
2 min read · Reviewed 17 Oct 2026
In short
Shaping your pages so AI tools can find them, understand them and quote them in their answers. Also called GEO.
In plain English
Search engine optimisation aimed at a list of results. Answer engine optimisation aims at the answer itself: the paragraph an AI tool writes when someone asks a question. You will also see it called generative engine optimisation (GEO) or AI search optimisation. The names differ; the job is the same.
Most of it is good writing with a clear structure. Answer the question your buyer actually asks, in their words, near the top of the page, with facts AI can repeat. Keep your business described the same way everywhere AI might read about you.
A real example
A bookkeeper renames her page from "Bookkeeping Services" to "Do I have to charge sales tax if I sell on Etsy?" and moves her two-sentence answer up to sit under that heading. She also updates her business profile so it says she works with online sellers. A month later she asks the same questions in the same two AI tools to see whether either now cites her.
Why it matters
Nobody can promise that AI will cite a particular page, and anyone who does is guessing. What you can do is remove the reasons it would not: wrong facts about you at the source, pages that never answer the question directly, and descriptions that contradict each other. Then re-test the same way, so you know whether it worked.
