Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)

Answer Engine Optimisation is the practice of formatting your business information so answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, Claude — can read, trust and quote you inside a single answer.

Two kinds of engine

Search engines return a list of links and send the visitor to your site to find the answer.

Answer engines assemble the answer themselves and cite one or two sources. If you're not among the cited sources, the click often never happens.

Both matter. This hub covers both, because they overlap more than they compete.

How answer engines read your business

Based on how these systems work and what practitioners are observing, three things appear to matter most:

1. Extractable sentences. Answer engines pull short, self-contained statements. Facts buried inside long paragraphs are harder to lift.
2. Structured data. A JSON-LD block states your details in a format that requires no interpretation.
3. Consistency. When your website, Google Business Profile and directory listings disagree, there's no clear fact to quote.

An honest caveat: AEO is a young field. Nobody — including us — can guarantee that a given change will get you cited. What you can control is whether your information is readable, accurate and consistent. That's the part worth doing.

What to do today

1. Rewrite the first sentence of each service page as a definition: "Acme Plumbing is a licensed emergency plumber servicing Richmond and Melbourne's inner east."
2. Add a short Q&A block to your main service pages.
3. Check your business name, address and phone number match everywhere they appear.

Common mistakes

• Opening service pages with marketing copy instead of a plain description of what you do
• Assuming AEO replaces SEO rather than sitting alongside it
• Chasing AI mentions while your basic business details are inconsistent