What is AEO? Getting AI assistants to describe you properly

A question we hear more each month: "Why doesn't ChatGPT mention us?" Sometimes it's a founder who asked an assistant to recommend a supplier in their category and found three competitors and no sign of themselves. Sometimes it's worse. The assistant did mention them, and got what they do wrong.

Both problems are quiet. There's no ranking drop to notice and no traffic cliff to investigate. A buyer asks a question, reads a three-paragraph answer, and forms a view of you from a description you didn't write.

Answer engine optimisation, or AEO, is the work of making that description accurate, and making sure you're in it.

What AEO means

An answer engine is anything that responds to a question with a written answer instead of a list of links. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode all count. Most of them search the web, pick a handful of sources, write an answer, and attach a few citations.

AEO is making your site one of those sources. That means the engine can reach your pages, can read what's on them, and finds something specific enough to use.

You'll also see GEO (generative engine optimisation) and AI SEO. Same work, different labels.

How answer engines pick their sources

The biggest misconception is that AEO is a separate discipline that replaces SEO. For Google at least, it isn't.

Google's own guide to optimising for its generative AI features says AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on the same ranking and quality systems as normal Search. To be eligible as a source, a page needs to be indexed and allowed to show a snippet. There are no extra technical requirements, no special markup, and no AI-specific files. Google also uses what it calls query fan-out, running several related searches behind the scenes, so a page can be cited for a question it doesn't rank for directly.

The other engines run their own crawlers and indexes and don't publish their criteria in detail. What changes is the shape of the win. In classic search you want a click. In an answer you want to be named and described correctly, whether or not anyone clicks.

Nobody outside these companies knows the exact rules. What we see consistently across client sites comes down to four questions.

1. Can it reach you? If the engine's crawler is blocked, or your server turns it away, nothing else matters.
2. Can it read you? The important content has to be in the page as text, not inside images or behind scripts a crawler might not run.
3. Is there anything worth quoting? Specific statements get used. Generic ones don't.
4. Does everything agree? When your site, your Google Business Profile and the directories that list you all tell the same story, an engine can describe you with confidence. When they contradict each other, it hedges, and hedged answers rarely name anyone.

Check 1: can the engines reach you?

Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and read it. Many sites block AI crawlers by accident, through an old template, a security plugin or a hosting default that nobody chose on purpose.

The detail that trips people up is that each company runs more than one crawler, and they do different jobs. Blocking the training crawler and blocking the search crawler are different decisions.

• OpenAI: OAI-SearchBot decides whether you can appear in ChatGPT search. GPTBot collects training data. Blocking GPTBot doesn't remove you from search.
• Anthropic: Claude-SearchBot indexes pages for Claude's search results. ClaudeBot collects training data. Claude-User fetches pages when a person asks Claude to.
• Perplexity: PerplexityBot builds its search index. Perplexity says neither of its agents crawls for model training.
• Google: AI Overviews and AI Mode use normal Googlebot. Google-Extended controls whether your content is used for training and grounding in Google's other AI products, such as Gemini, and has no effect on Search.

Fetches a person asks for, such as ChatGPT-User and Perplexity-User, may not follow robots.txt at all. The names do change, so check each company's crawler documentation before you edit anything.

Cheap fix: remove any accidental blocks on the search crawlers. Then decide on purpose whether you're comfortable with training crawlers, and write that decision down.

Real fix: check your firewall and CDN bot settings as well as robots.txt. A robots.txt that allows a crawler doesn't help if your security layer blocks it before it gets there.

Check 2: can they read what's there?

Turn off JavaScript in your browser and load your homepage. Or view the page source and search for your main claim. If the sentence that explains what you do isn't in the HTML, some crawlers will never see it.

The common causes we find:

• The value proposition is text baked into a hero image.
• Pricing or product details only load after a script runs.
• The page has no real heading structure, so a parser sees one long block and quotes whatever happens to be near the top.

Cheap fix: make sure each important page has one clear heading and a paragraph of plain text that states the point completely, without relying on the image next to it.

Real fix: render your key content on the server or at build time, so it's in the page from the first byte. It's one reason this site is built on Astro, which renders every page at build time.

Check 3: is there anything worth quoting?

"We help businesses grow with innovative solutions" answers no question anyone types. "We build websites and booking systems for physiotherapy clinics in south-east Queensland, usually in six to eight weeks" answers several.

Read your key pages and ask whether a stranger could repeat what you do, who for, roughly what it costs and how long it takes. If they couldn't, an answer engine can't either.

What works:

• State the specifics competitors leave vague. Price ranges, timeframes, service areas, who you're not a fit for.
• Answer the questions buyers actually ask, in their words. "How much does a kitchen renovation cost in Brisbane?" not "Our pricing philosophy".
• Put the answer first, then the explanation. Engines, like busy readers, tend to take the first complete statement they find.

Google's guide says much the same: original content with first-hand experience matters most over time, and rewriting pages in a special style for AI isn't needed. Write like someone who knows the work.

Check 4: does everything agree?

Search your business name and read what comes up. Your site, your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, industry directories, review sites. Do they agree on what you do, where you are and how to contact you?

Mismatches are common after a rebrand, a move or a change of focus.

Cheap fix: update the profiles you control. Google Business Profile matters most for local businesses.

Real fix: keep one source of truth for your core facts, and update it first whenever something changes. Structured data on your site (Organization, LocalBusiness and so on) helps here. Google says it isn't required for its AI features, but it still powers rich results and gives every system the same facts in the same form.

One caution. Chasing mentions for their own sake, through paid placements or link schemes, doesn't help. Google says so explicitly. Real mentions come from doing work worth writing about.

How to tell if it's working

Answers vary from person to person and day to day, so there's no single ranking to track. What we use instead:

• Search Console. Google has started rolling out a Generative AI performance report showing impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It isn't on every site yet.
• Referral traffic. Look in your analytics for visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and similar. The numbers are usually small, but the trend is worth watching.
• Ask the questions yourself. Once a month, ask three or four assistants the questions your buyers ask. Note whether you appear, who appears instead, and whether the description is right. A simple spreadsheet is enough.

Common questions

Is AEO different from SEO?

They share most of their foundations. For Google's AI features, good SEO is most of the job. Other engines have their own crawlers and indexes, so you also need to make sure those crawlers can reach you.

Should I block AI crawlers to protect my content?

That's a legitimate choice, especially for publishers. Just make it on purpose, and remember the training and search crawlers are separate. Many businesses block training and allow search.

Do I need llms.txt for AEO?

Google Search ignores it, and none of the major answer engines has committed to reading it. It's cheap and harmless, and we add one to every site, but it won't fix any of the four checks above. We wrote more about it in What is llms.txt.

If you'd like a second pair of eyes on how AI assistants describe your business, book a 30-minute call.