Answer engine optimization

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of preparing your content so that AI assistants and answer engines can find it, understand it and use it in their answers. Microsoft Advertising's guide, From discovery to influence: A guide to AEO and GEO, defines it as optimizing content "for AI agents and assistants (like Copilot or ChatGPT) so they can find, understand, and present answers effectively," and expands the acronym to answer or agentic engine optimization.

AEO and GEO

AEO and generative engine optimization overlap, and the two terms are often used for the same work. Microsoft separates them. In its framing, SEO focused on clicks, AEO focuses on clarity by giving assistants complete and current facts, and GEO builds credibility through an authoritative voice. Its retail example starts with "waterproof rain jacket" as the SEO version of a product. The AEO version adds details such as a stuff pocket, ventilated seams and reflective piping, and the GEO version adds proof: a magazine's top rating, a return policy, a warranty and a star rating.

Why it matters

An answer engine gives the buyer one answer instead of a list of links to compare. When your facts are missing, out of date or hard to read, the engine takes its facts from other pages or names someone else. Google, for its part, says that optimizing for its generative AI features is still SEO and needs no special files or markup (Google Search Central).

How it's measured

Measure AEO in the answers. Run the questions buyers ask on each engine you care about, and log whether the answers name you, describe you correctly and cite your pages. A quick check: ask each engine five factual questions about your product, such as price, plans and integrations, and record every wrong answer with the page it cites. Then report the share of runs that name you, your AI visibility, on a fixed set of prompts, so you can see whether changes to your pages moved it.