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What Is Answer Engine Optimization? Nobody Agrees on the Name

Hayden BondUpdated 8 min read
What Is Answer Engine Optimization? Nobody Agrees on the Name
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of making your business the answer when someone asks Google, ChatGPT or another AI assistant a question. The idea is simple. The names are messier. AEO, GEO and LLMO overlap a lot, and nobody has settled which name wins. If the acronyms have you confused, that's fair.

2018

When Search Engine Watch wrote up answer engine optimization, back when it meant featured snippets and voice search

Source: Search Engine Watch, February 2018 ↗

What is answer engine optimization, in plain words?

An answer engine is anything that answers a question instead of handing you a list of links. Google's AI Overviews do it. So do ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. Smart speakers did it before any of them, reading out one answer.
Answer engine optimization is the work of being what those tools say. For a business, that usually means getting named. Say, as a made-up example, someone asks an AI assistant for a good kitchen remodeler nearby. AEO is the work of making sure your business is in the answer.
Old-school SEO aims for a click from a list of links. AEO aims for a mention inside the answer, and sometimes a link. The groundwork overlaps a lot.

Where the name AEO came from

The name is older than the AI rush. In February 2018, Rebecca Sentance of Search Engine Watch wrote up a webinar where SEO consultant Jason Barnard and Trustpilot's head of SEO, Chee Lo, explained how voice search was turning search engines into "answer engines." She wrote that "this strategy has come to be known as AEO, or 'answer engine optimization'." Back then it meant featured snippets, the answer box at the top of Google, and the one answer a smart speaker reads out loud.
Barnard's example in that piece still holds up. Ask for a pepperoni pizza, and if Google knows one pizzeria makes it but isn't sure about the other, it shows you the one it knows. "That's the idea of specifics," he said.
After ChatGPT came out in November 2022, the old name got a second life, and a pile of new ones joined it.
GEO is one of them, and it's the only one I've found with a clear starting point. Pranjal Aggarwal and other researchers coined it in a November 2023 paper, "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization," later accepted at KDD 2024, a data science conference. I wrote about that research in my GEO field notes.

What does AEO stand for, and what do the other names mean?

AEO stands for answer engine optimization. Here are the other names you'll run into, and what people mean by them.
  • AEO: answer engine optimization. In use by 2018, when it meant featured snippets and voice answers. It now covers AI answers too.
  • GEO: generative engine optimization. Getting your business named or cited when an AI writes an answer. It comes from the 2023 paper above.
  • LLMO: large language model optimization. Same goal, named after the kind of model behind ChatGPT and tools like it.
  • AIO: artificial intelligence optimization. Optimizely calls it a broad term for the whole field.
  • GAIO: generative AI optimization. Optimizely's guide to GEO says it's "often used interchangeably with GEO."
  • GSO: generative search optimization. Another name in the same family, listed next to GEO and GAIO on GEO Score, a GEO tool's site.
  • SXO: search experience optimization. The odd one out. Optimizely describes it as going past SEO to "the overall user experience within search."
  • AI SEO: the name we use for the agency. When we say it, we mean getting brands named when buyers ask, in search, on social, and in AI. For the work itself, we say AI search optimization.
Forrester lists AEO, GEO, AIO and LLMO together among "today's buzziest acronyms." As far as I can tell, AEO and GEO overlap more than they differ. Our answer engine optimization page covers how we handle AEO, and our AI search optimization page covers GEO.

Why nobody agrees on the name

In 1990, we skated behind an AM/PM at Goldenwest and Heil in Huntington Beach. We waxed the curbs with candles from Pic 'N' Save. We made up tricks and gave them names. Some names would stick. Some names would not.
The AEO naming fight reminds me of that curb. Everybody wants their name to be the one that sticks, because a name that sticks can bring in clients and speaking slots. That's my read of it. I haven't seen a study on it.
People in the industry say a milder version on the record. In November 2025, Forrester analyst Nikhil Lai wrote that the tool companies popularizing these acronyms "tend to exaggerate SEO and AEO's differences to carve a startup-sized hole in marketers' tech stacks."
That same month, Perplexity's head of communications, Jesse Dwyer, told Business Insider: "There's going to be a lot of people who benefit from implying that they're very good at GEO. And then there's going to be a lot of tech companies, specifically AI companies, who benefit from saying that it's all hogwash." Then he added, "The reality is always somewhere in between."
I think he's right. The names are mostly marketing. The work under them is real.

Is AEO real?

AEO is real work. I just don't see it as a separate world from SEO. Lai's line in the same Forrester post is the best summary I've found: AEO is "significantly, but not fundamentally, different from SEO."
Google weighs in too. Its guide to showing up in its AI features says terms like AEO and GEO "are common online," and it's skeptical of a lot of what gets sold under them. Google speaks for Google, though, and ChatGPT and Perplexity look in other places.

What answer engine optimization work looks like now

Some of the "technical requirements" I listed when I first wrote this post in 2025 didn't hold up, and Google's guide now says several don't matter for its search. I go through that list, and where other AI assistants look, in GEO vs SEO.
Here are the three things I'd look at instead.
  • What the AI already knows about you. Sometimes ChatGPT answers with no web search, using only what ChatGPT picked up in training. That's the side I dig into in how ChatGPT gets its information.
  • What an AI finds when it does look things up. Google, for one, says its AI can run several related searches on your question and use the pages those turn up. Google calls that query fan-out. I cover it in why AI quotes Reddit instead of your official page.
  • Your business details. Google says Google Business Profiles and Merchant Center can help your products and services show up "in both AI responses and other Google Search results."
That last one is Barnard's pizza point again, eight years on. Say exactly what you do, so there's no guessing.

How we handle answer engine optimization

Plate Lunch Collective is an AI SEO agency that gets brands named when buyers ask, in search, on social, and in AI. AEO is part of every engagement we run. We don't sell it as a product on its own.
For us, AEO means writing your pages so each one answers a buyer's question plainly, names your business clearly, backs up what it claims and uses structured data where that helps. You can read more about how we handle answer engine optimization for clients. The wider job of getting named across AI tools is our AI search optimization work.
Some of this never shows up as a click, so we watch it other ways. Our measurement page covers what we can track and what we can't.
If you'd rather we take a look first, the AI Search Game Plan shows where you stand in Google and in AI answers, who comes up instead, and what to do first.

Does the name matter for your business?

Not much, in my view. Call it AEO, GEO or AI search optimization. A customer asking ChatGPT for a plumber doesn't care what you call the work.
What I'd watch is the advice that rides in with each new name. If someone pitches you a framework built on things Google says it doesn't use, I'd ask what it's based on.
I could be wrong about where this lands. I said so the first time I wrote this post, and it's still true. But whatever name sticks, I'd bet on the businesses that are easy to describe and easy to find. Start by asking ChatGPT and Google what they say about yours.

Common questions

What does AEO stand for?

AEO stands for answer engine optimization. It's the work of getting your business named when someone asks a search engine or an AI assistant a question. The name was in use by 2018, when it mostly meant Google's featured snippets and voice answers from smart speakers.

Who came up with the term answer engine optimization?

Nobody can say for sure. It was in use by February 2018, when Search Engine Watch wrote it up from a webinar with SEO consultant Jason Barnard and Trustpilot's Chee Lo. GEO has a clearer start: it comes from a November 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and others.

Is AEO real?

Yes, as work, though the name gets oversold. Forrester analyst Nikhil Lai calls AEO "significantly, but not fundamentally, different from SEO." Talking about GEO, Perplexity's Jesse Dwyer told Business Insider that some people benefit from overselling it and some AI companies from calling it hogwash, and "the reality is always somewhere in between."

Do I need schema markup for Google's AI answers?

No. Google's guide says structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup to add. Google still recommends it as part of your SEO, because it helps your pages qualify for rich results in regular search.

How do I start with answer engine optimization?

Write down the questions your customers ask before they buy. Ask them in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google, and note whether your business is named. Then make sure your website, Google Business Profile and listings state plainly what you do and where, in the same words everywhere.

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Plate Lunch Collective is an AI SEO agency that gets brands named when buyers ask, in search, on social, and in AI. If you'd like to talk it through, we're easy to reach.

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Hayden Bond

Hayden Bond, in SEO since 2004, founded Plate Lunch Collective, an AI SEO agency that gets brands named when buyers ask, in search, on social, and in AI.

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