Answer Engine Optimisation is the work of getting your business quoted in the answers that AI tools like Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity hand back, rather than only ranking in the old list of blue links.
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That is the short version. For how it works, what to do about it and what it means for Australian businesses, read the full guide, What is AEO? Answer Engine Optimisation explained. AEO has a sibling term, GEO, and the AEO, GEO and SEO guide sets the three side by side.
Key points
- AEO is about being cited in AI answers, not just ranking in the list of links below them.
- It builds on SEO rather than replacing it: the same foundations, plus signals AI systems can read.
- The main levers are structured data, question-and-answer content, and E-E-A-T; an llms.txt file is worth adding but no major AI crawler has confirmed it reads one yet.
- It matters more as a growing share of searches end in an AI answer the user never clicks past.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about answer engine optimisation.
They overlap far more than the acronyms suggest. SEO gets you ranking in search results; AEO gets you quoted in the AI-generated answer that increasingly sits above those results. AEO is SEO done with answer engines in mind, with extra care on structured data and clear, quotable answers. If your SEO foundations are weak, AEO has nothing to build on. I treat them as one job, which is why my SEO service covers both.
Ranking well is a strong start, but it measures the old game. If a growing share of your audience gets their answer from an AI Overview or asks ChatGPT directly, a page-one ranking nobody scrolls to see is worth less than it used to be. AEO is about making sure that when those systems answer the question your customers ask, your business is the source they reach for. I wrote a plain-English piece on what AI search is doing to traffic if you want the fuller picture.
It is harder to measure than a keyword ranking, and anyone promising a tidy dashboard is overselling it. The honest signals are: appearing as a named source in AI Overviews for your key questions, referral visits arriving from ChatGPT and Perplexity, and your business being described accurately when you ask those tools about your area. It is early and the measurement is imperfect. I would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.
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