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Answer engine optimisation (AEO)

Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the work of making a business easy for AI answer engines to find, understand and name when people ask them questions.

How it works

Answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews write one answer and name a few businesses in it. They build that answer from pages they can read and sources they trust.

AEO improves the odds of being named: clear facts on your own pages, structured data, a consistent name and address across the web, pages that crawlers are allowed to fetch, and a presence on the third-party sites the engines already cite.

Why it matters for a business

When a customer asks an AI engine who to buy from, there is no second page of results. Being one of the few names in the answer, or missing from it, decides whether the customer hears about you at all.

How AEOHIT helps

AEOHIT asks seven AI engines the questions your customers ask, records whether and where you are named, writes the fixes for the gaps, and re-measures after you publish them. Nobody can guarantee a placement; the aim is to measure honestly and improve the odds.

AEO: common questions

Is AEO the same as SEO?

They overlap. SEO aims to rank pages in a list of links; AEO aims to be named and cited inside a written AI answer. Many AEO basics, such as crawlable pages and clear facts, are good SEO too.

Can anyone guarantee AEO results?

No. AI engines are run by other companies and change often. Honest AEO measures where you stand, makes the improvements most likely to help, and tracks the trend.

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