GEO & AI Search
What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?
Answer Engine Optimization is optimizing content so it gets extracted and quoted directly as the answer to a question, in AI assistants, featured snippets and voice results.
AEO vs GEO vs SEO
The three overlap heavily and the labels are used loosely. SEO aims at a ranked link. AEO aims at your text being lifted as the answer. GEO is broader and aims at your brand being named in a composed answer, which usually depends more on third-party sources than on your own copy. In practice most programs need all three and the label matters less than knowing which lever you are pulling.
What makes a passage extractable
A claim that stands alone without the paragraph around it. A direct answer in the first sentence rather than after three sentences of throat-clearing. Concrete specifics - numbers, names, conditions - rather than hedged generalities. Structure the engine can parse: a clear question as a heading, then the answer immediately underneath.
The formats that get quoted
Definitions, step sequences, comparison tables, and short FAQ answers. Long narrative prose gets summarised rather than quoted, which means the engine paraphrases you without attribution. If citation is the goal, write in units that can be lifted whole.
The honest limit
Being quotable helps you get cited once an engine has already decided to retrieve you. It does very little to get you into a shortlist you are currently absent from - that is a placement problem, not a formatting problem. Teams often spend months rewriting pages when the actual blocker was a firewall rule or a missing category presence.
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