What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?

AEO grew out of optimizing for featured snippets and voice assistants, where a search engine shows one answer instead of a list. The same habits help with AI Overviews, ChatGPT search and Perplexity, which assemble answers from passages on many pages.

Good AEO pages tend to share a few traits:

• The question appears as a heading, worded the way people ask it.
• The first sentence or two answer it directly, before any background.
• Supporting detail follows: steps, comparisons, conditions and exceptions.
• Facts are specific and checkable, with a source wherever a figure is quoted.
• Each page covers one intent well rather than many intents thinly.

Where AEO and GEO differ is emphasis. AEO is mostly about the page: how a single answer is written and structured. GEO also covers what happens off the page, such as whether AI crawlers can reach you and whether other trusted sites mention your brand.

Structured data such as FAQPage can describe question-and-answer content, but Google says no special schema is needed for its AI features. Treat markup as an accurate description of what is visible on the page, not a shortcut.