AI search terminology
Answer Engine Optimisation
Also written as AEO.
What is Answer Engine Optimisation?
Answer Engine Optimisation is the practice of structuring and publishing information so that a search or AI system selects it as the direct answer to a question.
Who uses the term Answer Engine Optimisation?
Answer Engine Optimisation is written out in full in agency service pages, conference talks and job titles, where the abbreviation AEO would be unclear to a buyer. Practitioners use the full form when introducing the concept and the abbreviation thereafter.
The full form is also the more common phrasing in procurement documents and client-facing proposals.
How does Answer Engine Optimisation differ from related terms?
Answer Engine Optimisation and AEO are the same discipline under two spellings. Generative Engine Optimisation covers the closely related goal of being cited within generated prose rather than returned as a discrete answer.
Entity SEO describes the foundational work that Answer Engine Optimisation depends on, which is making the subject identifiable in the first place.
What does AEO GEO LLM Seeding AI SEO - Or Whatever The F$ck You Want to Call It say about Answer Engine Optimisation?
The book lists Answer Engine Optimisation alongside Generative Engine Optimisation, LLM SEO, AI SEO, LLM seeding, answer engine marketing and generative search optimisation as, in its words, the same clients, the same questions, the same deliverables, seven names. It argues the AI era produced the most spectacular naming land grab yet precisely because the underlying change is genuinely big, which makes the confusion genuinely monetisable.