What AEO is and why it matters now
Answer engine optimization (AEO), also called GEO, is the work of getting ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews to recommend your business when someone asks them. Assistants do not rank pages the way Google does: they synthesize what credible sources say about a category and name the businesses that appear consistently, with clear attributes, in trusted places. If nobody describes you, or every site describes you differently, you do not appear.
What changed in 2026
AI assistants are no longer a curiosity. Google shows generated answers above the normal results for a growing share of searches, and a measurable share of customers now start their search directly in ChatGPT or Perplexity. The businesses that appear in those answers are the ones that have been described consistently by trusted sources for years. The ones that do not have work to do, and the sooner it starts, the sooner it compounds.
How to use these guides
First, run the test: ask an assistant who is best in your category in your city and see whether you appear. Then read why it recommends your competitor and which sources it uses. The llms.txt guide gives you one concrete ten-minute task. If you want it done for you, AI Search Optimization is $5,000 a month and includes monthly tracking of your key prompts.
Who they are for
For the owner of a restaurant, a practice, a firm, a service company or a store who wants to understand what is happening with their visibility before paying anyone. No marketing knowledge is needed; every term is explained the first time it appears. If you run marketing for a larger company, the guides also work as a quick check on whether your current agency is doing the basics.
Terms you will see in these guides
- AEO / GEO
- Answer or generative engine optimization: getting AI assistants to recommend you.
- LLM
- Large language model, the engine behind ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
- Prompt
- The question someone asks an assistant. In AEO you track prompts, not keywords.
- Entity
- How an AI system understands your business as one specific thing: name, type, place, attributes.
- llms.txt
- A text file on your site that summarizes your business for AI crawlers.
- AI Overviews
- The AI-generated answers Google shows above the normal results.
