Learn · Basics
What is AEO (answer engine optimization)?
By Cloute · Published October 1, 2026
The short answer
AEO, answer engine optimization, is the work of making sure AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews name your business in their answers. Where SEO aims for a place in a list of links, AEO aims to be the answer itself. GEO, generative engine optimization, is another name for the same goal.
AEO, GEO and AI visibility
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| AEO · answer engine optimization | Getting named in the answers AI engines give. |
| GEO · generative engine optimization | The same goal, named after the generative models that write the answers. |
| AI visibility | How often AI engines name a business when people ask the questions it wants to win. The measurement AEO and GEO try to move. |
| Answer share | The share of relevant AI answers that name the business. The headline AI visibility metric. |
Why it matters for local businesses
A search results page shows ten businesses. An AI answer usually recommends a few, and puts one first. On a first measurement, before any work, 70% of the AI answers we analysed named a competitor or nobody, rather than the business being measured.
What decides the answer is mostly what the engine reads while it writes it. In 64,441 answers, engines named a business 84% of the time when they had opened one of its own pages, and 16% when they had not.
What AEO involves
- Measuring: asking the engines the questions customers ask, many times, and counting who gets named.
- Being readable: pages the engines can open and understand, answering the questions customers actually ask.
- Being consistent: the same facts about the business everywhere the engines look.
- Being present where the engines read: the reviews, directories and local sources they draw on in a given market.
- Measuring again: answers vary from run to run, so only repeated measurement shows real movement.
Read next
AEO vs SEO for a local business How to measure AI visibility Study: AI recommends what it has readQuestions people ask
Is AEO the same as GEO?
In practice, yes. Both describe getting a business named in AI-generated answers. AEO is the more common term for local businesses, GEO comes from academic work on generative engines.
Is AEO replacing SEO?
No. AI engines still search the web to write their answers, so a crawlable, well-ranked site helps both. AEO adds a different goal: being named in the answer, not just listed.
Which AI engines does AEO cover?
The ones customers use to decide: ChatGPT, Google Gemini and AI Overviews, Claude, and Perplexity.
About Cloute. Cloute is an AI visibility company for local businesses. It measures how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews recommend a business against its local competitors, and works every month to move it to the top.