What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimization: the emerging practice of optimizing content to appear directly in AI-powered answer engines (like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews) rather than just traditional search result pages. As users increasingly get answers without clicking links, AEO is becoming as important as SEO.
My perspective
In practice
Content structured to directly answer specific questions, with clear definitions, concise summaries, and authoritative sourcing, tends to perform well in answer engines. Unlike SEO, AEO prioritizes being the definitive answer over being the most-visited page.