What is AEO? Answer Engine Optimization in plain English

SEO got you onto page one of Google. AEO is the newer game: showing up as a named source when someone asks an AI engine a buying question.

Answer Engine Optimization means structuring what you publish — and where you publish it — so models can find, trust, and cite you. That usually includes clear entity pages, FAQ-shaped content, schema, llms.txt, and third-party mentions on sites the engines already trust.

It is not the same as stuffing keywords into a blog post. AI answers blend many sources; the brands that win are the ones that are consistently accurate, quotable, and present across the web those engines crawl.

Most teams start by measuring: which prompts mention you today, which competitors show up instead, and which pages (or publishers) the engines cite. That measurement layer is what this directory indexes — AI visibility monitors, AEO platforms, GEO content tools, and SEO suites that bolted on AI tracking.

GEO is the other label you will see for the same job. We break down GEO vs AEO at /blog/geo-vs-aeo so you can match the words buyers and vendors actually type into Google.

If you only do one thing this week: pick the five questions your buyers actually ask ChatGPT, run them yourself, and write down who gets cited. That list is your AEO roadmap. For a tool-assisted version of that loop, see /blog/track-brand-mentions-chatgpt.