AI search terminology
AEO
Also written as Answer Engine Optimisation.
What is AEO?
AEO is the abbreviation of Answer Engine Optimisation, the practice of making a source likely to be used in the direct answer a search or AI system returns.
Who uses the term AEO?
AEO is used most often by SEO practitioners and agencies in the United Kingdom and United States who position their service around answers rather than rankings. The term predates generative AI and was originally applied to featured snippets, voice assistants and question boxes.
Usage widened after 2023 to cover answers produced by large language models. Many practitioners now use AEO and GEO interchangeably despite the two having separate origins.
How does AEO differ from related terms?
AEO emphasises being the answer that gets returned. GEO emphasises being cited inside text that a model generates. AI SEO and LLM SEO are broader labels covering the same work plus conventional search optimisation.
The practical difference between AEO and GEO is small enough that most published methodologies for one apply directly to the other.
What does AEO GEO LLM Seeding AI SEO - Or Whatever The F$ck You Want to Call It say about AEO?
The book treats AEO as one of seven competing names for a single discipline, and is blunt about the distinction: grown adults with agencies and speaking slots are drawing diagrams distinguishing AEO from GEO with the confidence of people mapping the human genome, while their clients remain completely invisible to every AI system on earth. Its test is simple. Nobody can describe a campaign that would be inside one acronym and outside another.