What is AEO?
When a buyer 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.
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.
Find out what AI says about you.
Run the free scanner — real queries against four live engines — and see whether you're recommended, mentioned, or excluded, and who's surfaced instead.