What Is AEO – Answer Engine Optimization?

AEO is short for answer engine optimization. It is a discipline that ensures your digital content is recognized as the correct answer by answer engines and surfaced to users.

Have you ever wondered what you need to do to ensure platforms like ChatGPT, CoPilot, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews describe you correctly?

This is a crucial question for any brand, product, or service. Because all the efforts made to answer this question fall under AEO, and these efforts bring benefits like increased brand visibility and involvement.

Although this new discipline is developing rapidly, it does not yet have a fully established framework. Since everything is developing so quickly, many terms may seem confusing even to experienced marketers.

The good news is that competition is low and there are plenty of opportunities. That’s the goal of this AEO guide: to help more people understand the opportunities created by AI search technologies.

Key Takeaways:

• AEO stands for answer engine optimization. It helps brands be accurately understood and presented by answer engines.

• Answer engines (AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity) allow users to access information directly without visiting any website. As search habits shift rapidly in this direction, brands that stick only to traditional search engines (like Google) risk losing visibility.

• Competition is low and growth potential is high. Brands that adapt early can gain strategic advantage through authority and trust.

• Brands can track and shape their presence within AI-generated responses. Capturing user attention at the most critical point—the answer field—can provide numerous benefits ranging from visibility to customer loyalty.

• AEO and SEO are two distinct disciplines with different terminologies. Good SEO does not mean good AEO.

• AI technologies are evolving rapidly, so the best way to learn AEO is to understand its core components and keep up with innovations.

How AEO Differs From SEO?

They both share the goal of providing useful content to users.

But the types of strategies, content, and the way they’re processed are entirely different:

💡Analogy: SEO is like the seed 🌱 you plant. AEO is the high-quality growth serum helping that seed sprout, grow, and bear fruit faster. It helps answer engines quickly understand your content so your brand can appear directly within answers.

📊 Data point: According to this study, while traditional SEO tactics fall short in answer engines, the best-performing AEO methods can lead to up to a 37% improvement in subjective impression (how results are perceived). This kind of data proves that the effects of AEO are not just theoretical, but also practically measurable.

Brief History of AEO

Early answer engines —unlike the latest versions—operated without real-time internet connectivity. For instance, the first version of ChatGPT released on November 30, 2022.

The primary knowledge source for these versions was limited to their training data up to a specific point in time — based on large text datasets and not including information beyond that date. As such, the first versions of the model were like a traditional encyclopedia: they knew what they were trained on and had no knowledge of subsequent developments.

That’s why brands had no ethical or practical way to intervene in those isolated training loops. In other words, their ability to influence what the language model thought of them was virtually nonexistent. But AI evolved rapidly, and learning sources diversified — and continue to do so.

Now, answer engines have internet access. They can collect and synthesize content from various sources on our behalf in real time. Therefore, this technology, which represents the future of search, has become open to optimization in the process. All these developments accelerated the structuring and institutionalization of AEO.

The Importance of AEO: Blue Ocean 🌊

The most important output of AEO is to increase brand visibility and positive perception. Although it is currently applicable to all brands, it attracts the attention of relatively few brands compared to its potential benefits.

AI-answered queries still represent a small share of total queries; however, this share is rapidly increasing. Therefore, answer engine optimization has the potential to become a cornerstone of digital marketing.

All of this makes AEO a field where brands can gain first-mover advantages. Those who recognize what others are missing right now are enjoying the Blue Ocean.

Currently, these practices are low-cost with high chances of success. However, as the market matures, increased competition and higher costs are inevitable.

🔑 Key finding: The fact that over 400 million people use OpenAI products (such as ChatGPT) every week shows how critical AEO strategies have become and the great potential they hold.

Benefits of AEO

Answer engine optimization offers many benefits for the present and future of your brand.

• You can track and improve your brand’s visibility within AI’s concise and synthesized responses.

• By discovering what your users and potential users are asking AI, you can better understand their interests and needs.

• You can position your brand in front of users at critical decision-making moments.

• Even if users don’t click on your website during a search, you can still maintain brand visibility.

• Due to the perceived infallibility of AI, being featured in AI-generated responses increases your brand’s visibility, credibility, and authority.

• You can position your brand as an industry leader and gain high user engagement and conversions.

• By using AEO tools, you can generate advanced, data-driven analyses and market insights.

All these benefits help make your brand customer-focused and ensure long-term sustainable success.

🔑 Key finding: While NerdWallet’s monthly website traffic dropped by 20%, its annual revenue increased by over 35%. This data shows that users are not shopping less, just differently—highlighting the importance of new disciplines like AEO that aren’t solely traffic-focused.

The 3 Pillars of AEO: Which Factors Influence Answer Engines?

AEO is about optimizing information sources to increase brand visibility in artificial intelligence systems.

There are many things that can be done for this, and they can be grouped under the following three headings:

1# Technical AEO

Technical AEO refers to adjustments made to the infrastructure and technical aspects of the information source — such as adding llms.txt or schema markup to your website. These adjustments aim to enable AI systems to access real-time data accurately and seamlessly.

If the target answer optimization engine can easily and accurately understand the content you’ve created, it may include you in the responses it generates.

For this, the information source must be optimized considering the bots of the target crawler. This way, the bot can analyze the content, store it in its database, and create live indexing for answers.

Additionally, to enable AI agents that can perform actions on the internet to engage with your site, technical optimization is needed — for example, so that prices on your site can be tracked by a price-monitoring agent.

2# Core Optimization (On-Core AEO)

On-core AEO is the backbone of Answer Engine Optimization. It corresponds to the “on-page SEO” in traditional SEO. However, instead of a page, what is optimized is the information core. That’s because answer engines no longer process data as an entire “page” or “article,” but as discrete particles, cores, which don’t necessarily need to be written or published online.

Here, “core” refers to data that has been structured, placed within meaningful context, and transformed into a form that systems—especially answer engines—can easily access and utilize. In other words, a core is the machine-readable, contextually relevant fragment of content that directly answers a specific query.For example, a concise sentence within an article or a specific segment within an audio file can be considered a core.

Even a podcast or data returned from an API can be a core. Thanks to multimodal capabilities, AI can now understand various types of data including visuals, audio, and sometimes video. So, the source we need to optimize isn’t always a webpage.

The ‘core optimization’ we propose here refers to the process of optimizing a meaningful expression (e.g., a piece of media or information)—whether in the form of text, audio, visual, or data—so that it becomes structured, understandable, and accessible by answer systems, by optimizing both the core and its originating source.

🔑 Key info: We embraced the term “core” because it’s not tied to a page or format. Rather than surface-level tags, it focuses on the essence of data — the direct structure and source. You can examine the concept and basic features of this Core AEO🔗 here.

💡 Analogy: An article is a sandwich 🥪. Pages, headings, intros, images — all ingredients. But sometimes, it’s just a single slice of cheese or a specific sauce that catches the system’s attention. That “tasty but isolated piece” is the core. The system doesn’t serve the whole sandwich — it extracts and delivers that specific slice of cheese to the user. Sometimes, it even synthesizes it with other ingredients to serve the best product — if that’s what you’re looking for.

3# Off-Core AEO

Off-core AEO focuses on building reputation with answer engines through external strategies and sources beyond our direct control. For instance, the answer to “Who owns X brand?” that appears in ChatGPT has an external originating source, if we don’t have it.

To change such an answer, you first need to identify the source of that response and then develop a strategy — like creating a well-crafted knowledge graph and uploading it to the database that the target answer engine uses as a source.

If the source adopted by the answer engine references your brand, it’s a kind of vote of trust. Once you secure this, the answer engine begins to trust you too.

However, when it comes to off-core AEO, you must push boundaries. Sometimes a strategic partnership, a quote on social media, or a talk at a specific event can be part of your strategy.

How Does AEO Work?

AEO operates as a combination of these three elements:

• Human: A team carrying out experimental, strategic, tactical, and operational AEO work.

• Technology: Platforms and AEO tools used during the work.

• Process: Monitoring AI developments and taking action to make the work more efficient.

Some fundamental knowledge and process components we need include:

1# Understanding How AI Search Works

The correct way to begin with AEO is by grasping AI search. This technology, which has revolutionized how content is understood, processed, and delivered, is different from what traditional search engines use. Consequently, interpreting AEO from an SEO perspective doesn’t yield accurate insights.

What separates AI Search from traditional search is its smarter and more contextual behavior. It identifies meaning and user intent to deliver direct answers.

Now, users are no longer looking for keywords, but for responses that make sense within a complete context. As a result, searches become faster, more personalized, and more comprehensive.

Traditional search engines don’t give direct answers — they show results, often thousands of websites. The internet is essentially a massive library. Search engines are limited index systems trying to categorize the books.

🔑 Key point: The internet is still the main source of information — not AI itself. At this stage, AI is like software that helps you find the right quote in the library without browsing manually. But with its ability to learn, predict, and adapt, AI is likely to evolve into an information source over time.

2# Understanding the Difference in Answer Engines

Answer engines are search systems that provide direct and precise answers using advanced AI search technologies, such as Perplexity AI and ChatGPT.

They differ from traditional search engines in several critical ways:

🔎 Brief overview: These fundamental differences are revolutionizing how users access information. As a result, optimizing for answer engines is becoming an essential discipline.

🔑 Key Finding: Today, 65% of Google searches end without a single click. This makes Answer Engine Optimization a necessity — even for traditional search engines.

---

3# Research

Good research forms the foundation of the right AEO perspective and strategy. This research should consist of the following components:

• Presence: The first step should be to research your current presence in AI-generated answers. When you see what this presence conveys to users, you gain the chance to interpret your users’ current behavior.

• AI-generated responses: You must discover what AI says about your brand and related topics. Analyzing current AI-generated responses helps you understand what you’re doing wrong.

• Citation: You should identify how the answer engine finds and interprets its current sources. This is important to understand how you can influence those sources later.

• Conversation: It’s important to understand what your target audience is asking AI. You can do this using a conversation explorer tool. Once you discover your users’ questions, you can start developing responses for them.

• Competitor research: Seeing your competitors’ visibility, success, strengths, and weaknesses in AI-generated responses can open new perspectives for you.

4# Planning

You’ve explored user conversations and gained various answer engine insights. Now it’s time to chart a roadmap in light of the data.

• Gather and interpret meaningful KPIs and metrics.

• Define your target answer engines* and set expectations.

• Create timelines & milestones.

• Decide how projects will be created and executed.

• Identify the technologies and tools you need.

• Reassess the human element we mentioned at the beginning. If your team doesn’t meet your needs, plan to hire, train, or restructure accordingly.

• Plan stakeholder coordination and communication.

• Set your budget.

• Measure and report results.

• Document your strategy and process.

🎯 *Challenge point: Most search engine optimization campaigns focus on a single engine: Google. But although ChatGPT and Perplexity lead the answer engine space, no single company dominates the market yet. While most engines generate responses similarly, each one is actually unique. This requires a diversified optimization strategy.

5# Build

AEO is not just a process to be created and executed—it’s a process built with creativity.

The implementations in this process can vary greatly but usually include:

• Content and core creation: Guide your content team on what needs to be created. These can be in various formats and for internal/external platforms. Depending on your strategy, your target may be to convince either traditional search engines or AI bots belonging to specific platforms.

• Technical interventions: Implement optimization techniques that make it easier for AI bots to access, understand, and index your content live.

• Off-core efforts: To gain online credibility, accuracy, and consistency, sometimes the cores and content you create must appear on external sources. Identifying those sources and how to appear in them is a crucial part of building AEO.

6# Monitoring

The changes you make require a follow-up and maintenance process.

This is important both for observing the impact of the changes and detecting what’s going wrong or breaking.

Here are a few key questions to ask at this stage:

• Which AI crawler visits your content, when, and how frequently?

• Does the referral traffic from AI search behave according to your goals?

• What are the potential disasters that could disrupt your strategy?

7# Analysis

The way to improve AEO is to measure it. You should learn and track AEO KPIs.

You can do this by using AEO analytics tools and platforms.

There are still only a few of them, but they meet the needs. Also, you can be sure that many entrepreneurs are continuing to develop new and revolutionary products—because the future lies exactly here.

This means that these tools will rapidly evolve in the near future, and we’ll have the chance to use their best versions.

8# AEO: Constant Adaptation and Growth

How answer engines see you can change at any moment. So brand visibility in AI-generated responses cannot be guaranteed to be permanent—but it can be sustainable.

Think of it as your brand moving along a dynamic road. As long as you’re in the driver’s seat, you can be sure you’re on the right path. But if you fall asleep, a crash is inevitable.

So, you must always be alert to technical issues, stale content, and other risks that could lead to road accidents.

When user feedback is added to the mix, your attention leads to sustainable improvement in brand visibility across AI-generated answers.

AEO Specialties

Answer engine optimization consists of various specialties, reflecting different skills, capabilities, and strategies.

Each of them presents unique challenges beyond standard AEO and requires additional tactics.

Here are the five most common specialties:

• Enterprise AEO: The category that originated AEO. Applied on a national scale for large companies and brands. It may involve managing the entire digital presence and tens of millions of answers.

• International AEO: This is the multilingual version of answer engine optimization. It’s carried out separately for the most-used answer engines in each region.

• Local AEO: Requires region-based analysis and promotion capabilities. The goal is to ensure your local business appears in answer engine responses.

• AI agent AEO: AI agents are programs that work integrated with answer engines and can autonomously carry out assigned tasks. For example, they can collect data, make comparisons, and recommend clothing. Therefore, brands must optimize to appear in sources trusted by these agents.

• E-commerce AEO: Done to optimize answer engine responses about companies and product recommendations. The goal is to optimize the AI agents that help consumers in their buying journey—or even directly handle purchases.

🔑 Key finding: AEO as a marketing discipline evolves alongside AI, society, and technology. Since it’s a continuously growing field as a career choice, new specialties will inevitably emerge within this discipline over time.

How to Learn AEO?

Learning a new discipline can feel intimidating at first. Figuring out where to start is often overwhelming.

There are no universally established and recognized courses or professional certification programs—yet. So you’ll have to put in extra effort to prove yourself.

But there are many ways to start, and if you’re passionate enough, it can be a lot of fun. The keyword for learning AEO is just that: passion.

There are no universal truths, big secrets, or single sources that will get you immediate results. The only way to learn is by enjoying experimentation and discovering what works. That’s why only those passionate enough can succeed.

Roadmap to Learn AEO

Now that you’ve understood the building blocks of AEO, if the topic still interests you, let’s explore how to learn more.

• Follow AEO professionals, resources, and the technological developments of answer engines.

• Discover and learn to use AEO tools.

• Replicate working methods and/or develop new ones.

• Develop experimental projects aiming to appear in AI-generated responses and apply these methods.

• Track your progress using data analytics tools.

• Analyze the results.

As this cycle repeats, your experience grows. But growth must be continuous, because technology, user expectations, and behaviors are in constant—and often dizzyingly fast—evolution.

👩🏻‍💻 Pro tip: Keeping up with the latest answer engine news and research should become a regular habit of yours.

Recommended AEO Resources

AEO Radar is a free resource created to serve the purpose of learning answer engine optimization. On this site, you can find answer engine news and analyses, industry trends, useful optimization tips, and tactics.

Of course, we’re not the only resource for learning AEO; there are many paid and free sources available:

• OpenAI News: A news platform by one of the most important AI players.

• Perplexity Blog: Includes articles, announcements, product updates, and advice published by the Perplexity answer engine.

• Copilot Blog: Another key search engine blog. Primarily includes release notes, tips, tricks, and news.

• Google Deepmind News: The best source to follow Google’s transition into an answer engine.

📌 Pinned: There are many outdated, incorrect sources out there that describe AEO as a simple game. To stay in control of your results, we recommend testing any information before applying it to actual projects.

📢 Open call: Have you discovered a useful website, book, YouTube channel, podcast, newsletter, event, or community about AEO? Please let us know! We want to feature every component that adds value to the industry.

🔑 Key point: Answer engines have not yet released official optimization guidelines. However, such guidelines will likely be shared in the future, so it’s important to follow answer engine blogs.

Next Steps: Setting AEO Goals in 2025

Many marketing professionals themselves may still be unfamiliar with key AEO terms. That’s understandable—it’s the chaos of shaping something for the first time.

Overcoming this chaos quickly and setting achievable goals can put you far ahead of your competitors.

Recommendations for Brands

• Since monitoring your brand visibility in AI-generated responses is rapidly becoming crucial, you should start tracking it immediately.

• You shouldn’t ignore the fact that the opportunity window will shrink over time.

• Short-term returns may be limited. But the small steps you take in this early stage are likely to yield a layered return on investment in the coming years.

Recommendations for Agencies

• Your clients whose digital marketing strategies rely on organic traffic are at risk.

• Educate them on why SEO is no longer sufficient and how AEO enables a website to be more effective and increase brand visibility, even with reduced traffic.

• Even your clients who have nothing to do with SEO might be interested in AEO. Because this is a completely different subject — it’s now about building a strong brand.

AEO as a Service

The size of the SEO market — estimated at $100 billion — shows the potential and credibility of AEO, especially as it’s likely to pivot from SEO.

Traditional search engines like Google (AI Overview), Bing (Copilot), and Yandex (Neuro, Yazeka), which make up over 95% of the market, are rapidly advancing their AI capabilities. New answer engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity are already playing a game-changing role.

Considering this data and the significant change in user search behavior, it’s no surprise that AEO is becoming established as a professional service. Therefore, AEO is both the name of a discipline and the name of a service.

In the coming years, as answer engines gain more market share, the share of AEO services is expected to grow. These services won’t magically make brands appear in AI-generated answers, but they can significantly ease the process by applying best practices and industry-standard strategies.

Final Thoughts: On the Verge of Dominating the AI Search Market

Answer engine usage is growing rapidly. It is estimated that billions of queries are answered by AI engines every day. More users are shifting from traditional search engines to answer engines daily. In response, traditional engines are accelerating their AI integration.

The evolving role of AI in search proves that AEO strategies will play a key role in shaping online brand visibility. AEO is becoming a more important focus every minute — significant enough to reshape digital marketing and how people access information.

Today, no professional can afford to ignore their brand visibility in AI-generated answers. Adapting to the changing search expectations of modern users requires learning AEO — a fundamentally different and new approach — or risk losing online visibility altogether.

In conclusion, we’re not talking about a temporary trend, but a permanent transformation in how people search for information. This strategic approach, with its rules being written from scratch, brings users closer to relevance and intent, offering vast opportunities to early adopters.

Frequently Asked Questions