AI search
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Also: AEO
Optimizing content to be cited inside AI-generated answers.
Definition
AEO targets inclusion in answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews, Grok). Where SEO competes for SERP rank, AEO competes for citation share. Technical foundation overlaps heavily with SEO — crawlable HTML, structured data, semantic clarity — but content shape (clear answers, citation-ready facts) and measurement differ.
See also
More in AI search
AI Overviews
Google's AI-generated answer block that appears above traditional search results.
llms.txt
A proposed file at site root that hints to AI crawlers what content to prioritize.
GPTBot
OpenAI's training crawler. Distinct from OAI-SearchBot.
OAI-SearchBot
OpenAI's search crawler. Indexes content for ChatGPT search-time grounding.
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