What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring pages so answer engines and AI assistants can extract, trust, and quote them: a direct definition up top, scannable steps, quotable facts, and FAQ or Article schema behind them.
Related terms
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Generative Engine Optimization improves how often a brand or page is cited inside AI-generated answers. It combines classic SEO (crawlability, relevance) with quotability: clear facts, named entities, sources, and machine-readable structure.
Citation Readiness
How easily an AI answer can find, extract, and cite a page: direct definitions, self-contained paragraphs, named entities, published dates, author bylines, sources, and clean semantic HTML with matching schema.
Answer-First Writing
Answer-first writing puts the direct answer in the first 40–60 words, then expands with evidence and steps. It serves featured snippets, AI extraction, and impatient readers with the same structure.
AI Overviews
Google’s AI-generated summaries at the top of some results pages. They synthesize multiple sources and link to them, which can reduce clicks to publishers even when a page ranks well organically.
Zero-Click Search
A search that ends without a click to any website, because the answer appears directly on the results page or inside an AI summary. Zero-click behavior pushes measurement beyond clicks toward mentions and citations.
Citation Share
The share of AI-answer citations in a topic that point to your pages versus competitors. It is the GEO analogue of share of voice: who gets quoted when the model answers money queries.