What is AEO?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) means making content clear, structured and trustworthy enough for an answer engine to choose it as the answer to a question. SEO tries to rank a page among links; AEO tries to get your text and your brand cited in the answer itself.
There are many answer engines: AI assistants (ChatGPT, Le Chat, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini), Google's AI Overviews, featured snippets and voice assistants. They all behave the same way: they read several sources, keep one or a few, and write a single answer.
AEO, GEO, AIO and SEO: how do they fit together?
AEO is the broadest discipline. GEO is the part that deals with AI assistants, AIO the part that deals with Google's AI Overviews. SEO remains the foundation: a page that search engines don't index won't be picked up by any of them.
| Target | Goal | Type of query | |
|---|---|---|---|
| AEO | Every answer engine | Be the answer that gets cited | Full questions, in natural language |
| GEO | ChatGPT, Le Chat, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini | Be cited or recommended by the assistant | Conversations, requests for recommendations |
| AIO | Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode | Be among the sources of the summary | “How”, “which”, “how much” searches |
| SEO | Google, Bing | Rank well | Short keywords |
How do you write a page an answer engine will use?
Answer the question in the first two or three sentences after the heading, then expand. This is the inverted pyramid: the answer first, then the details, examples and exceptions. An engine looking for “how long does it take to build a website?” should find a timeframe in the first sentence, not an introduction.
- Headings phrased as questions. Use your customers' real questions as H2 and H3: “How much does… cost?”, “How do I choose…?”, “What is the difference between…?”.
- Lists for steps and criteria.
<ol>and<ul>tags are easy to lift into an answer. - Tables for comparisons. Prices, features, lead times: a
<table>leaves no room for doubt. - Plain, direct language. Short sentences, precise terms, no sales copy getting in the way of extraction.
- An FAQ on the pages that matter. Service pages, product pages, articles: start from the questions prospects ask you and from Google's “People also ask” suggestions.
Which structured data matters for AEO?
JSON-LD structured data describes content unambiguously. The most useful types for AEO:
| Schema | Use it for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
FAQPage | Question-and-answer blocks | Questions and answers must be visible on the page |
HowTo | Step-by-step tutorials | One step per item, in order |
Article | Guides and articles | Author and last-updated date (dateModified) filled in |
Organization / LocalBusiness | The business itself | sameAs links to your official profiles to establish the entity |
Product / Service | Your offers | Price and availability matching the visible text |
Add an llms.txt file at the root of the site: a Markdown summary that introduces the business to language models and tells them which pages to read first. It is not a standard yet, but it is easy to produce and keep up to date.
Why does trust matter so much?
An answer engine only cites a handful of sources, so it picks the ones it considers reliable. Google calls this E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness). In practice, that means:
- An identified author, with a short bio and links to their professional profiles.
- Dated, up-to-date content: recent figures and a visible last-updated date.
- Verifiable facts: prices, lead times, certifications, reviews, consistent from one page to the next.
- A presence beyond your own site. AIs rely heavily on third-party sources: review sites, the press, forums such as Reddit, directories, Wikipedia. What they say about you weighs as much as your own website.
How do you measure AEO?
You no longer measure only rankings and clicks: you measure the brand's place in the answers. On a fixed set of questions asked to the engines every week, GEO Invader tracks:
- Visibility and share of voice: the proportion of answers that cite you, against your competitors.
- Rank: first in the recommended list, or fifth.
- Sources: which sites the AIs read to answer, separating your site, your competitors' sites and third-party sites (reviews, press, forums, directories).
- Brand image: the tone of the answers, and the strengths and reservations the AIs highlight.
- Blind spots: the questions where a competitor is cited and you never are.
- Citations won and lost from one week to the next, to spot an answer that no longer cites you.
How we work
- 01
Check the page is readable and answers the question
AI crawler access, structured data, question headings, a direct answer up front, verifiable facts: 32 criteria measured on the page, with the fix that earns the most points.
Free scan · Full GEO audit · 1 credit
- 02
Mark up the site and introduce it to AIs
The missing JSON-LD ready to paste, and an llms.txt written from the pages that actually exist on your site.
JSON-LD architect · llms.txt generator · 1 credit
- 03
Track your answers every week
Visibility, rank, share of voice, cited sources and brand image, question by question and engine by engine.
AI visibility · included in the plans
- 04
Act on your site and beyond it
A page ready to publish for every question where you are missing, an AEO score for your drafts before publishing, and the list of third-party sites (reviews, press, forums) that feed your competitors' answers.
Content to publish · AEO score for a text · 1 credit · AI visibility