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Answer Engine
Optimisation.
We get your brand understood and cited by AI answer engines — and rebuild your content and data so the citation keeps coming.
Definition
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring a brand's content, data, and product so AI answer engines — such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini — can understand it and cite it as a source. Where SEO earns rankings in a list of links, AEO earns citations inside the AI-generated answer itself.
Service 01
AEO Audit
We measure how AI answer engines currently see, retrieve, and cite your brand — and who they cite instead of you. You get a prioritised report: where you are invisible, why, and the highest-impact fixes.
Service 02
AEO Implementation
We rebuild content, structure, and machine-readable data so engines can quote you: self-contained answer passages, schema markup, semantic HTML, and files like llms.txt. We fix the substrate, then the content shaped on top of it.
Service 03
AI Visibility Monitoring
AEO is not a one-time fix — engines and answers change weekly. We track your citations and share of voice across engines over time, so you can see what is working and hold the lead.
Service 04
GEO — Generative Engine Optimisation
GEO is the sibling term for AEO, emphasising visibility inside generative AI results. We treat them as one discipline: making your brand the source a generative model reaches for, whatever the label.
Pillar guide
The Complete Guide to AEO
Key takeaways
- AI answer engines retrieve passages, not whole pages — structure for extraction.
- You earn citations through clarity, self-contained answers, and corroboration, not keyword density.
- Schema, semantic HTML, and
llms.txtmake content machine-readable. - Third-party mentions matter more than your own site for being cited.
- AEO sits on top of SEO — it doesn't replace it.
On this page
How AI engines choose sources
An AI answer engine does not read your whole page. It splits content into chunks, embeds them, retrieves the chunks most relevant to a query, and synthesises an answer — citing the sources it leaned on. To be cited, your content has to win at the chunk level: each passage must be relevant, self-contained, and trustworthy on its own.
Direct answer
AI answer engines retrieve and cite individual passages, not whole pages. A page is cited when its passages are relevant, self-contained, factually clear, and corroborated by other trusted sources.
The signals that earn citations
Independent research on generative engines (e.g. the Princeton GEO study) found that citing sources, adding statistics, quoting experts, and writing with fluent clarity materially raise citation rates, while keyword stuffing lowers them. In short: write to be quoted, not to be ranked.
- Statistics with sources — specific numbers, attributed and dated.
- Clear definitions — one idea per passage, defined in place.
- Comparison tables — the most-extracted format for "X vs Y" queries.
- Expert attribution — named authors with real credentials.
- Freshness — a visible "last updated" date.
Structuring content for retrieval
Lead every section with a direct, 40–60 word answer that works with zero surrounding context. Use headings phrased the way people ask questions. Keep one idea per paragraph. Prefer tables for comparisons and numbered lists for processes. This is "writing for people, organised for clarity" — which also happens to be exactly what retrieval rewards.
Machine-readable files
Some AI systems and autonomous agents read structured files directly. A robots.txt that allows AI crawlers, an llms.txt summarising your site, a clean sitemap.xml, and schema markup (FAQ, Article, Organization, DefinedTerm) all make your content easier to parse and trust.
Authority & corroboration
AI engines cite entities they can corroborate. A brand mentioned on Wikipedia, Reddit, review sites, and reputable publications is far likelier to be cited than one that only talks about itself. Off-site presence and named, credible authorship are not optional extras — they are core AEO.
How to measure AEO
Traditional rank tracking misses AI citations entirely. Measure AEO by running your priority queries through each engine and recording whether you are cited, who else is, and which page was used — tracked over time as share of AI voice.
Related: AEO vs SEO · Glossary
AEO questions
How do AI answer engines choose which sources to cite?
They retrieve passages, not whole pages, and favour content that is well-structured, self-contained, factually clear, and corroborated by other trusted sources. Clear definitions, statistics with sources, comparison tables, and strong entity signals all raise the odds of being cited.
How long does AEO take to show results?
Structural changes — schema, answer formatting, machine-readable files — can be picked up within weeks. Authority and citation gains build over months as engines recrawl, third-party signals accumulate, and content earns trust.
See how AI
sees you.
An AEO audit shows exactly where you stand today — and the fastest path to being cited.