AEO, answer engine optimization, focuses on being the source of a direct answer. SEO focuses on being found in search results. AEO is best seen as a writing and structure habit on top of SEO: make the answer easy to find on the page. Google says you don't need to write in a special way for AI, so write for readers first.
What does AEO add to SEO?
AEO adds one question to your SEO work: if someone asks this directly, is the answer on our page, and can it stand alone? SEO asks whether a page can be found and whether it deserves to rank. AEO looks at what happens once the page has been found.
| SEO | AEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Main question | Can people find this page? | Can this page answer the question? |
| Unit of work | Site and page | Page and passage |
| Success looks like | A ranking and a visit | Being used or cited as the answer |
| Typical work | Technology, content, links | Clear statements, questions as headings, facts up front |
AEO and GEO are used almost interchangeably. Google's guide to generative AI features treats both as terms for work on visibility in AI search experiences, and concludes that this work is still SEO. Don't let anyone sell you the two as separate services.
Do you have to write differently for answer engines?
Not according to Google. Its guide says you don't need to write in a specific way for generative AI search, that there is no ideal page length and that you needn't break content into tiny pieces, because its systems understand synonyms and general meaning.
Microsoft's advertising team gives different advice: question-and-answer blocks, lists and tables that can be lifted cleanly into an answer. It adds that nothing guarantees selection. OpenAI and Perplexity have published no writing guidelines that we could find in their help and crawler documentation.
So the sources don't fully agree, and we won't pretend otherwise. Our opinion is that this conflict matters less than it seems. A clear answer under a clear heading is good for a hurried reader, whatever a machine does with it. Mangling good writing into short fragments is not.
What does a page that answers well look like?
Take one important page and run this test. It takes about ten minutes.
- The question test. Write down the question this page exists to answer. If you can't, the page has a bigger problem than AEO.
- The first-sentence test. Read only the first sentence under each heading. Does it answer that heading, or does it warm up?
- The quote test. Could a sentence be quoted without the rest and still be correct? "We deliver tailored solutions" fails. "We install flat roofs for commercial buildings in Utrecht" passes.
- The number test. Are prices, areas, dates and terms written in text, and not hidden in images?
- The original test. Is there anything here that couldn't have come from any competitor's site?
When should you not bother with AEO?
When the page isn't there to answer a question. A portfolio piece or a brand story has another job, so leave it alone. Pure factual questions are also a weak target, because the answer is common knowledge and the reader has no reason to visit. Google's guide makes a similar point about commodity content. Spend your effort on questions where your experience changes the answer.
How should you judge AEO advice?
Ask for the source. Good advice points to documentation, or says openly that it's an assumption from testing. Be careful with fixed recipes, such as an exact answer length or a required number of headings. Google calls some of this a myth, and the others don't publish such numbers. Also check whether a schema markup promise comes with evidence.
