Get Your Business Named by ChatGPT
Your customers are asking AI assistants who to hire. Right now, those answers name someone else. AEO changes that.
What is AEO?
AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimisation. It is the practice of making a business visible inside the answers AI assistants generate, rather than only in a list of search results.
Where SEO targets ranking positions on Google, AEO targets being named and linked when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google AI Overviews a question in your category. SEO wins clicks. AEO wins mentions — and a mention inside an AI answer arrives with the assistant's implied endorsement attached.
AEO vs SEO vs GEO
Three terms, two actual disciplines.
| SEO | AEO / GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in the list of results | Be named inside the answer |
| Surface | Google, Bing results pages | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews |
| Content shape | Depth, engagement, keeps you reading | Self-contained passages built for extraction |
| Key lever | Backlinks and topical authority | Structured data and entity consistency |
| Measured by | Rankings, clicks, impressions | Share of answer, citation frequency |
| Competition | Saturated | Largely unclaimed |
On AEO vs GEO: the two terms describe the same goal from different angles. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) emphasises structuring content so it can be extracted as a direct answer. GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) emphasises influencing what generative models say about a brand. In practice the terms are used interchangeably and the underlying work is identical: structured data, extractable answer passages, entity consistency, and presence in the third-party sources that models cite.
How you get mentioned by AI
Four levers. Most agencies pull one of them and call it AEO.
Structured data
Schema markup that tells a model exactly who you are, what you sell, where you operate and what you charge — in a format it does not have to guess at.
Answer-shaped content
Passages written to stand alone. If an answer only makes sense with the paragraph above it, a model cannot lift it, and it will lift a competitor instead.
Entity consistency
The same business name, description, address and founder everywhere you appear. Every inconsistency across the web dilutes the entity and weakens confidence.
Third-party citations
Models cite what they encounter repeatedly across independent sources — directories, review platforms, forums, trade press. This is off-site work, and it is the biggest lever of the four.
How do you measure AEO?
AEO is measured by share of answer: how often your brand is named when AI assistants are asked buying-intent questions in your category.
Each month we run a fixed set of around twenty prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and record three things — whether your brand appears, how it is described, and which competitors appear instead. That gives a trackable percentage, alongside referral traffic from AI platforms in your analytics. The prompt set stays fixed so the numbers are comparable month to month.
See how AI describes you today
We'll run live prompts for your category across ChatGPT and Perplexity on a screen share, and you'll see exactly what comes back — who gets named, how, and where you sit. Takes about twenty minutes.
AEO — Frequently Asked Questions
AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimisation. It is the practice of making a business visible inside the answers that AI assistants generate, rather than only in a list of search results. Where SEO targets ranking positions on Google, AEO targets being named and linked when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google AI Overviews a question in your category.
The two terms describe the same goal from different angles. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) emphasises structuring content so it can be extracted as a direct answer. GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) emphasises influencing what generative models say about a brand. In practice, agencies use them interchangeably and the underlying work is the same: structured data, extractable answer passages, entity consistency and presence in the third-party sources models cite.
Four things drive it. First, structured data that clearly defines who you are, what you sell and where you operate. Second, content written as self-contained answers to real questions, each answer complete without surrounding context. Third, consistent entity signals — the same business name, address and description everywhere you appear online. Fourth, presence in the third-party sources models draw from, such as industry directories, review platforms, Reddit threads and trade publications. AI assistants cite sources they encounter repeatedly and consistently.
We run a fixed set of buying-intent prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews each month and record whether your brand is named, how it is described, and which competitors appear alongside you. That gives a share-of-answer figure you can track over time, alongside referral traffic from AI platforms in your analytics.
AEO programmes start at £900 per month and are usually run alongside SEO, since the two share technical foundations. A standalone AI visibility audit is £350 and includes a recorded session showing exactly how AI assistants currently answer questions in your market.
It is worth doing precisely because most competitors have not started. AI assistants now handle a meaningful share of research queries, and the businesses being cited in those answers were optimised for it early. The cost of entry is currently low; it will not stay that way once the category matures.