When buyers ask AI a question, are you in the answer?
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the practice of making sure AI engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews — describe, cite and recommend your business when potential customers ask high-intent questions.
How buyer research has changed in 24 months
Ten blue links
Google returned a list of pages. Buyers clicked, compared 3–5 sites, and made a decision. SEO was about ranking page titles and earning backlinks.
The shift to AI answers
ChatGPT crossed 100M users in 2 months. Perplexity, Claude and Gemini followed. Google launched AI Overviews. Buyers stopped clicking — they read the AI summary instead.
The AI answer is the new homepage
Up to 30% of buyer research now starts inside an AI engine. The AI's answer — including which brands it names — replaces the old search results page entirely.
The signal you used to track is gone
In the old world, you measured success by:
SERP rank
Where do I sit on page one of Google?
Click-through rate
What percentage of impressions click my listing?
Backlinks
Who links to me, and how authoritative are they?
Whether ChatGPT mentions you when someone asks "best family hotels in Bali."
Whether Anthropic (Claude) cites your site as a source.
Whether Google (Gemini) named your competitor and not you.
What an AI answer looks like — and why it matters
Below is a stylised example of how a single buyer question now gets answered. The "old" SERP is the blue-link list everyone knows. The "new" answer engine result is what the user actually reads. Notice that the AI's answer has two layers: the brands named in the prose, and the clickable source citations underneath. Both matter, and they're scored separately.
2018 — Old SERP
If Hilton ranks, the family sees their listing. They click and compare.
2026 — AI Overview / ChatGPT
For families visiting Bali, the most popular options are large international resorts like Marriott (multiple Bonvoy properties in Nusa Dua), Hyatt (Regency Bali, well-reviewed for kids' clubs) and The Mulia. Airbnb and Vrbo also list hundreds of family villas in Seminyak and Ubud with pools and kitchens.
Hilton is invisible — not named in the answer text, and not cited as a source the user can click. The family books elsewhere without ever seeing a Hilton listing.
The two layers explained: AI engines return prose and a list of source URLs. The brands named in the prose are who the AI recommends. The cited URLs are what the AI trusts — they're real, clickable links the user can follow. A brand can be named without being cited (often: well-known, but no obvious source page) or cited without being named (often: a comparison page that lists you among options). Strong AEO covers both.
What you actually want to measure
Why it's different from SEO
SEO is about ranking pages
Optimise titles. Earn backlinks. Match keywords. Win the click. The page that ranks #1 wins.
AEO is about being included in the answer
Be cited as a trusted source. Be named in the prose. Be the brand the AI recommends. There is no #1 — there's "named or not named."
What changes if you ignore AEO
- Your brand traffic stays flat or shrinks because AI answers steal the click your homepage used to get.
- Your category traffic goes to whichever competitor the AI happens to name — typically the 2–3 brands AI engines have decided are the "default."
- Your review and comparison traffic gets summarised and dismissed by the AI before the buyer ever clicks a real review.
- Your brand-defence position erodes — if a competitor pays for SEO that ranks an unflattering comparison, the AI may quote it.
Where to start
Run a free 8-question preview to see whether you appear in Google AI Overviews today. It takes 30 seconds and costs nothing. The full audit shows you the same picture across Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, plus exactly what to publish to fix the gaps.