Where the term comes from
Before chatbots, “answer engines” meant search features that answered without a click: featured snippets, knowledge panels and voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri. AEO was the work of being the source those features read out.
Large language models made the answers longer and the list of names shorter. The work stayed recognisable, so the term stayed, next to GEO and AI SEO for the same thing.
What an answer engine does with your page
It takes a question, searches, reads a handful of passages and writes an answer from them. A passage that answers the question directly in its first sentences is easy to quote. A page that circles around the answer for three paragraphs is not, however good it is.
What AEO work involves
Find the questions buyers really ask, in their words and languages. Give each important question its own page or section and answer it in the first two sentences, then explain. Mark up questions and answers in structured data where they are visible on the page. Make sure the engines can fetch and read the page. And earn mentions in the other sources the engines read for the same question.
The guide walks through the eight steps we use for clients.
AEO, GEO and SEO
AEO stresses the answer, GEO the generative engines, SEO the search engine. In practice the work overlaps almost completely; what matters is that someone measures the answers. GEO vs SEO vs AEO lists the differences that do exist.
Hiring an AEO agency
Ask what you would ask any GEO or AI SEO agency: which engines and questions they measure, whether you get the raw answers, what they do each month, and what they promise. Our GEO agency page lists the questions.