What Is AEO? How to Get Your Business Cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI
By Apex Lab Team · · 6 min read
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) means making your website easy for AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode to find, understand and cite when they answer a customer's question. You may also see it called generative engine optimisation (GEO). Both terms describe the same goal: getting your business named as a source in AI answers, not just ranked in a list of links.
Key Takeaways
- AI answer engines retrieve web pages first, then quote the ones that answer the question most clearly. If they can't crawl or rank your page, they can't cite it.
- Google says there are no special requirements for AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond normal SEO best practice.
- Research on generative engines found that adding sources, quotations and statistics raised a page's visibility in AI answers by roughly 30-40%. Keyword stuffing made it worse.
- Smaller sites gained the most from these changes, so AEO is one of the few areas where a local business can outperform bigger competitors.
How AI answer engines choose sources
Most AI search tools work in two steps. First they retrieve a set of web pages that match the question, using a search index. Then a language model reads those pages and writes an answer, citing the pages it drew from.
That has two practical consequences:
- You still need to be findable. Google's AI features draw on pages in Google's index. ChatGPT search uses its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot, to surface sites (OpenAI), and Perplexity uses PerplexityBot (Perplexity). A page that is blocked, slow to load or buried deep in your site is unlikely to be retrieved.
- Clarity beats length. Once your page is in the candidate set, the model favours passages that answer the question directly and can be quoted without extra context.
Google can also run what it calls "query fan-out", issuing several related searches across subtopics to build one answer (Google Search Central, updated December 2025). A page that covers the follow-up questions around a topic has more chances to be pulled in.
What Google says you need to do
Google's guidance is short: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." To be eligible, a page must be indexed and able to show a snippet in normal search. Google also says there is no special schema.org markup and no AI-specific text file you need to add (Google Search Central).
In other words, for Google, AEO is good SEO done properly. Its listed best practices are the fundamentals: allow crawling, use internal links, give visitors a good page experience, keep important content in text (not only in images or video) and keep structured data consistent with what the page shows.
What research shows actually works
The most cited study on this topic is GEO: Generative Engine Optimization by researchers at Princeton, Georgia Tech, the Allen Institute for AI and IIT Delhi, published at KDD 2024 (Aggarwal et al.). They tested how different edits to a web page changed its visibility in AI-generated answers. Compared with the unedited page:
| Change to the page | Effect on visibility in AI answers |
|---|---|
| Adding relevant quotations | About +41% |
| Adding statistics | About +33% |
| Improving fluency and readability | About +29% |
| Citing credible sources | About +28% |
| Keyword stuffing | About -9% |
Two findings matter most for smaller businesses. First, the old trick of repeating keywords hurt visibility. Second, the gains were largest for pages that ranked lower in normal search results. Pages in fifth position saw their visibility roughly double with sources, quotations and statistics added. The authors suggest this could help smaller sites compete, because the AI weighs what a page says, not only how authoritative the domain is.
One caution: these results came from a benchmark, not a live search engine, and each answer engine behaves differently. Treat the numbers as direction, not a guarantee.
An AEO checklist for your website
1. Answer the question in the first two sentences. Each important page and section should open with a direct answer, then explain. "A 5-page business website in Malaysia typically costs from RM 2,999" is quotable. "Pricing depends on many factors" is not.
2. Use specific facts, with sources. Prices, timelines, numbers of projects, locations served, and data from credible sources give an AI something concrete to cite. Link to where each number comes from.
3. Write one clear page per question your customers ask. Service pages, pricing pages, comparison guides and FAQs map neatly onto the questions people type into ChatGPT. Our guide on how much a website costs in Malaysia is built this way.
4. Make your business an unambiguous entity. Use the same business name, address, phone number and description on your website, Google Business Profile and social profiles, and add Organization or LocalBusiness structured data that matches. AI tools are more confident citing a business they can identify clearly.
5. Let AI search crawlers in. Check that your robots.txt doesn't block OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Googlebot. We explain each bot in Should you let AI bots crawl your website?
6. Keep pages fast and in plain HTML. Content that only appears after heavy JavaScript runs, or text inside images, is harder for crawlers to read. Fast, server-rendered pages help both SEO and AEO.
7. Keep content current. Update facts, prices and dates when they change, and show a real "last updated" date. Changing the date without changing the content doesn't help.
How to measure AEO
Measurement is still immature, but you can track a few signals:
- Google Search Console: traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in the Performance report under the "Web" search type (Google Search Central).
- Referral traffic in Google Analytics: look for visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com.
- Manual checks: once a month, ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google the 10 questions your customers ask most, and note whether your business is mentioned or linked.
- Enquiry forms: add "ChatGPT or another AI tool" as an option in "How did you hear about us?"
Where to start
If you only do three things this month: make sure AI crawlers can reach your site, rewrite the opening of your top five pages to answer the main question directly, and add sourced facts to your service and pricing pages. Our free website audit checks the technical basics in under a minute, and our SEO and Google presence service covers AEO as part of every engagement.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between SEO and AEO?
SEO aims to rank your pages in search results so people click through. AEO aims to have AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews cite or mention your business inside their answers. They overlap heavily: AI answer engines usually retrieve pages from a search index first, so strong SEO is the foundation of AEO.
Is AEO the same as GEO?
Mostly, yes. Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the term used in academic research, and answer engine optimisation (AEO) is more common in marketing. Both describe optimising content so AI systems retrieve and cite it.
Do I need special schema or an llms.txt file to appear in Google AI Overviews?
No. Google says there are no additional requirements or special schema for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Pages need to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet in normal Google Search.
How long does AEO take to show results?
Changes to crawl access can take effect within days; OpenAI says robots.txt changes for ChatGPT search take about 24 hours. Content improvements usually take several weeks to be re-crawled and reflected in AI answers, similar to normal SEO.