Glossary
What is Answer engine optimization (AEO)?
Answer engine optimization is shaping content so AI assistants and answer boxes can quote it: clear answers, solid sourcing and structure.
Updated
More searches are now answered directly, by AI assistants, summaries above the results, and answer boxes, rather than by sending people to a link. Answer engine optimization (AEO) is making your content a good source for those answers.
What these systems tend to favour
- Direct answers. The question stated plainly, and answered in the first sentence or two.
- Clear structure. Headings that match questions, short paragraphs, lists and tables.
- Credibility. Named authors, cited sources, accurate facts, and signs of real experience. See E-E-A-T.
- Consistency. The same facts everywhere on your site.
- Being the original. First-hand data and findings that others cite.
Practical steps
- Add a short, direct answer under each question-style heading.
- Use schema markup where it applies.
- Cite your sources visibly.
- Keep important pages up to date. See content refresh.
AEO builds on good SEO rather than replacing it: the pages that earn answers are mostly the pages that already rank and are trusted.
Related
- Featured snippetA featured snippet is an answer extracted from a web page and shown at the top of Google's results, above the normal listings.
- Schema markupSchema markup is structured data added to a page, usually as JSON-LD, that tells search engines exactly what the page contains so it can qualify for rich results.
- E-E-A-TE-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness: the qualities Google's quality guidelines use to judge whether content deserves to rank.