Its goal
That the answer a person sees uses your information, and uses it correctly.
AEO guide
Becoming the answer, with the right facts.
AEO, answer engine optimization, is the work that makes a website’s information ready to become a direct answer. Find out where these answers appear, how to write a page that answers and how to check it without promises.
In brief
AEO explained in one answer.
AEO stands for answer engine optimization: looking after a website’s questions, answers and facts so that an engine can reuse them as a ready answer, citing the source.
Its material
Real questions, short answers up front, dated and verifiable facts.
Its limit
No one chooses on the engine’s behalf which page to reuse: you prepare and you check.
Three related lenses
AEO, SEO and GEO: three different questions.
The three acronyms overlap, but each one looks at a different moment: the page that is found, the information reused in an answer, the brand an assistant recommends.
SEO, AEO and GEO compared on the question they answer, the evidence you observe and the place where you work to improve.
| Lens | Question | Evidence to observe |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Do people find your pages among the results? | The position and clicks of your pages for each query. |
| AEO | Does the engine use your information to answer? | The text of the direct answer and the source it shows. |
| GEO | Do assistants name and recommend you? | Mentions, recommendations and citations in generated answers. |
Where an answer comes from
The surfaces where a direct answer appears.
A direct answer does not live in one place only. Each surface takes something different from your site, which is why each is observed separately.
Five places where a person receives a ready answer, what each one shows and which part of a page it tends to reuse.
| Surface | What it shows | What it reuses |
|---|---|---|
| Featured snippet | An excerpt above the search results. | A paragraph, list or table that answers straight away. |
| People also ask | Related questions, each with an excerpt. | The short answer below an explicit question. |
| AI summaries in search | A generated text with linked sources. | Facts and steps from several pages, cited alongside. |
| Voice assistants | A single answer read aloud. | A self-contained sentence that needs no context. |
| Conversational assistants | A written answer, sometimes with sources. | Clear information the model can summarise. |
A page that answers
How to write for a direct answer.
A page suited to a direct answer puts the question in a heading, the answer in the first lines and the details after, with source and date in view.
The structure of a support page for a fictional brand: the question as heading, a direct answer up front, details, source and date of update.
/support/warranty · Northstar Audio, demonstration brand
- Heading
- How long is the warranty on Northstar headphones?
- Answer up front
- Two years from the date of purchase, in every country where we sell.
- Details
- What it covers, how to open a claim, the excluded cases.
- Source and date
- Terms of sale, updated on 1 March.
Structured data
Markup helps understanding; it does not decide.
Schema.org markup makes the type of content explicit, but it is not a switch: Google has restricted FAQ rich results and states that its AI summaries need no special optimisation.
The sources are public: Google Search Central’s announcement of 8 August 2023 limits FAQ rich results to authoritative government and health websites; Google Search Central’s page “AI features and your website” states that SEO best practices apply to AI features in search, with no additional requirements.
Three common beliefs about structured data set against a more careful reading, based on the public guidance of search engines.
| Common belief | Careful reading | |
|---|---|---|
| FAQ | FAQ markup always brings the box with the questions. | Rich FAQ results now appear only for a few authoritative sites. |
| AI overviews | There is a special markup to get into the summaries. | What counts is indexable, clear pages with useful content. |
| Consistency | Markup can say more than what the page shows. | Markup describes only what the page actually shows. |
Checking AEO
A check you can repeat every month.
AEO is judged on fixed questions and recorded dates: which answer appears, which source it shows and whether your information is correct. Then you work on one page at a time.
Five steps to check whether direct answers use your site’s information and use it correctly, repeatable every month.
Fix the questions
Customers’ real questions, written once and kept the same.
Record the answer
The text shown, the surface, the country and the date.
Read the source
Which page is shown: yours, a third party’s or none.
Fix one page
Where the answer is missing, outdated or wrong.
Check again
The same questions, under the same conditions, after the change.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions about AEO.
What AEO means, how it differs from GEO, what role FAQs play and whether direct answers can be bought.
What does AEO mean?
Answer engine optimization: the work that makes a website’s information suitable to be reused as a direct answer by a search engine or an assistant.
Are AEO and GEO the same thing?
They are close. AEO looks at the ready answer and the source behind it; GEO looks at how generative assistants name and recommend a brand.
Is it enough to add an FAQ section to the site?
No. Questions help if they are customers’ real questions and the answer is correct and up to date. Markup alone does not bring the box.
Can you pay to appear as a direct answer?
No. Organic direct answers cannot be bought: you prepare clear pages and check over time what gets reused.
Related paths
After “AEO guide”, the next step.
The guides explain the concepts with examples on fictional brands. From here you continue with the other guides, the methodology and the features that apply them to your brand.
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