AI Search
What is answer engine optimisation (AEO)?
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so it directly and clearly answers specific questions, making it usable by answer-oriented systems, featured snippets, voice assistants and AI answer engines. In practice that means question-led headings, concise standalone answers and clean structure. AEO and GEO overlap and the labels are not used consistently across the industry; the underlying work, genuinely answering questions well, is largely shared.
AEO vs GEO
The two labels overlap heavily and the industry has not settled them. As commonly used, AEO centres on the answer: structuring content so a specific question is met with a direct, extractable response, the discipline behind featured snippets extended to AI systems. GEO is often used more broadly, taking in entity consistency and off-site presence as well. In practice the work converges, and arguing over the boundary matters less than doing the shared part well.
What answer-led structure means
The pattern is visible on this page: a question as the heading, a self-contained answer immediately beneath it, before any elaboration. Applied across a site it means each page knows the questions it exists to answer, answers them near the top in plain language, and keeps each answer able to stand alone if extracted, with detail, evidence and nuance following for the human reader who stays.
Related terms
AEO serves AI visibility and classic SEO at once; whether the answers are being used is revealed by prompt tracking and earned AI citations.