01AEO
AEO: answer engine optimisation, for when the assistant answers instead of linking
AEO is optimisation for assistants that resolve a question directly rather than returning a list of results. Searlixa runs AEO where the buyer journey happens inside ChatGPT, Perplexity and similar tools, and the objective is to be the source the assistant draws from and names.
Quick answer
AEO is optimisation for assistants that answer instead of returning results — ChatGPT, Perplexity and similar. Success is a citation or a named recommendation, not a ranking position.
The practical difference from GEO: assistants run their own retrieval. ChatGPT’s exclusive citation rate was 73.5%, which means third-party corroboration carries more weight than your own site.
Key takeaways
- Ranking on Google helps less here than on Google’s own AI surfaces.
- The source landscape is category-specific, which is why a generic AEO programme underperforms.
- Self-contained 40 to 55 word answers beneath question headings are what assistants can actually lift.
- Misdescription is often the finding, not absence, and it is usually the highest-value fix.
- Attribution is incomplete. A large share of assistant answers name no source at all.
- Start with measurement. Absent, uncited and misdescribed need opposite responses.
Definition
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring content and reputation so that AI assistants use, cite and correctly describe your brand when answering a buyer's question. Success is a citation or a named recommendation, not a ranking position.
Why AEO is not simply GEO under another name
The two overlap, and we will say so. But the surfaces behave differently enough to change where the effort goes.
Google's generative features are grounded in Google's index and ranking systems, which makes core SEO the dominant lever, that is generative engine optimisation. Assistants like ChatGPT run their own retrieval and select sources far more exclusively. In the 2026 citation study, ChatGPT's exclusive citation rate was 73.5%, meaning most of what it cited was cited by no other platform in the sample.
The practical consequence: ranking well on Google helps with GEO more directly than it helps with AEO. For AEO, structure and third-party corroboration carry more weight.
What the work consists of
Answer structure
Every question a page addresses gets a direct, self-contained answer immediately beneath the heading, typically 40 to 55 words that make sense quoted with no surrounding context. This is written for readers first; it happens to be what an assistant can lift.
Front-loaded topic
Pages introducing their subject within the first 100 words reached the AI top ten 22.1% of the time against 8.7% otherwise. No throat-clearing, no scene-setting paragraph before the substance.
Factual specificity
Named entities, dated figures, stated sources, concrete numbers. The highest-specificity quartile of pages outperformed the lowest. Vague authority language does nothing here.
Third-party corroboration
Assistants weigh what independent sources say about you. Review platforms, comparison sites, industry publications and community threads often outrank your own site as the source an assistant uses. We map which of those it actually draws on for your prompts — this varies sharply by platform.
Correction of misdescription
A common finding is not absence but inaccuracy: the assistant names you, then describes your pricing, positioning or product wrongly. That is an entity and content problem, and it is often the highest-value fix in the whole engagement.
Where the sources come from, by sector
This is the part that changes most between clients, and it is why a generic AEO programme underperforms. The source landscape is category-specific.
| Category | Sources assistants lean on | Where the effort goes |
|---|---|---|
| SaaS | Review platforms, community threads, independent comparisons, product docs | Documentation and third-party accuracy, not marketing pages |
| Ecommerce | Independent testing, retailer specification data, durability discussion | Complete product data and price accuracy off-site |
| Fintech | Regulators, comparison sites, established institutions | Licensing facts stated consistently everywhere |
| Healthcare | Health authorities, peer-reviewed literature, professional bodies | Operational questions where the provider is the best source |
| B2B technology | Analyst content, technical documentation, practitioner discussion | Separate prompt sets per stakeholder on the committee |
What AEO cannot promise
- No guaranteed inclusion. The same prompt can return different sources on consecutive runs. Anyone guaranteeing an assistant's answer is describing something they do not control.
- Attribution is incomplete. A large share of assistant answers name no source. Your brand can influence a buyer with no trace in any analytics tool.
- Small referral volume, for now. AI referral traffic remains a fraction of organic. Its argument rests on conversion quality and trajectory, not volume — several 2026 datasets put AI-referred conversion well above organic, and we will show you the sources rather than assert the number.
A starting point
With measurement. The two-week baseline establishes whether you are absent, present but uncited, or present and misdescribed. Those three findings lead to completely different programmes, and guessing between them wastes a quarter.
02Common questions
What buyers ask about AEO
What is answer engine optimisation?
Structuring content and reputation so AI assistants use, cite and correctly describe your brand when answering a buyer's question. Success is a citation or a named recommendation rather than a ranking position, which makes it measured differently from SEO.
Why does ranking on Google help less with AEO?
Because assistants like ChatGPT run their own retrieval rather than grounding in Google's ranking. In 2026 research ChatGPT's exclusive citation rate was 73.5%, meaning most of what it cited was cited by no other platform in the sample.
What matters more than my own website?
Third-party corroboration, in most categories. Review platforms, comparison sites, industry publications and community threads frequently outrank your own pages as the source an assistant draws on when describing you.
How long are the answers assistants extract?
Short. A self-contained 40 to 55 word answer directly beneath a question heading is the most reliably usable format. Write it for readers first; the extractability follows rather than being engineered separately.
My brand is mentioned but the details are wrong. Is that AEO?
Partly. Misdescription is an entity problem more than a content one, and it is usually the highest-value fix in an engagement because a wrong answer costs more than no answer. It is handled through entity optimisation.
Is AI referral traffic worth chasing given the volume?
The volume is small and the conversion quality is reportedly high. Both are true. We report both rather than the flattering one, and the honest case rests on trajectory plus quality rather than on today's raw numbers.
→What you are buying
AEO services: what is included
An AEO agency and a GEO agency are usually selling the same work twice. We scope them together and bill them once.
- Answer structure applied to your priority pages
- Definitions and key answers made self-contained enough to be lifted accurately
- Assistant sampling to check what is actually being used
- Source-landscape work on the places assistants read instead of your site
Who this is for
Brands whose buyers ask assistants before they search, particularly in considered purchases.
Who it is not for
Anyone buying AEO and GEO as separate programmes. They overlap by roughly 80% and we will not bill you twice.
From $900 a month. Scoped together with GEO, billed once, because they are roughly 80% the same work. SEO and AI visibility pricing is published in full.
The audit samples assistants directly, so you find out whether this is your problem before committing to it. The $99 SEO and AI visibility audit comes back in three working days, and the fee comes off your first invoice if you continue.
03Related
Continue
The umbrella programme · GEO · Entity optimisation · Perplexity behaviour · Establish a baseline
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from one of the following. Where a claim is ours rather than a source’s, it carries an evidence label instead.
- Rankability — State of AI Search, 1,645 AI citation observations across 31 topics, 2026. Source for the 24.1% cross-platform overlap, the 73.5% ChatGPT exclusive citation rate, the 22.1% vs 8.7% first-100-words finding and the 43.3% vs 15.5% query-breadth finding. Independent study
- Google Search Central — Optimizing your website for generative AI features (published 15 May 2026, updated 10 July 2026). Source for the llms.txt, chunking and AI-schema positions, and for the statement that generative features run on core ranking systems. Primary
- Searlixa sampling across client engagements. Any figure drawn from this carries an Observed label with its sample size and date. Our own
Ask an assistant
Hand this page to an assistant and ask it to summarise or challenge the argument. If it gets something wrong about us, that is itself a useful finding.