Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): Does AI Recommend Your Brand?
Search is becoming "answers"
A growing share of buying research never reaches a list of blue links. People ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google's AI Overviews a question and act on the single answer they get back. If that answer names your competitor and not you, you never even enter the consideration set, and you can't see it happening in your analytics.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of understanding and improving how these AI systems represent you.
The three questions AEO answers
- Do the answer engines mention you at all for the questions your buyers actually ask?
- Who do they recommend instead, and why, what sources are they citing?
- What's missing from the web (your site, third-party pages, reviews) that's causing the gap?
Why it's different from SEO
Classic SEO optimises for ranking a page. AEO optimises for being cited in a synthesised answer - which depends on clear, structured, frequently-corroborated information across many sources, not just your own page ranking #1. The two overlap, but the tactics and the measurement differ.
How to run a baseline check
You can do a manual version today:
- Write down 15-20 questions a buyer would ask in your category ("best X for Y", "X alternatives", "is X worth it").
- Ask each one in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews.
- Record: are you mentioned? Which competitors are? What sources get cited?
- Look for patterns, the gaps are your roadmap.
It's tedious to do well and to keep consistent, which is exactly why we packaged it.
Get a done-for-you baseline
Our AI Visibility Baseline Report runs 20 buyer-intent questions across the major answer engines and returns a brand-vs-competitor mention matrix, a cited-source breakdown, and a prioritised list of the content gaps to close first. It's a fixed-scope snapshot, a clear starting point before you invest in fixing anything.