Answer Engine Optimisation
The practice of structuring content so that AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini) cite and surface your business in AI-generated responses.
In detail
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the emerging discipline of making content legible and citable to AI systems that answer user questions directly rather than returning a list of links. Where traditional SEO aimed to rank on the Google results page, AEO aims to be the cited source when a user asks an AI assistant a question. Techniques include structured, factual, question-answering content; clear entity markup; an llms.txt file; structured data schemas; and ensuring the content reads naturally in a retrieval context. AEO works alongside traditional SEO rather than replacing it, since AI systems often ground their answers in indexed web content.
Why it matters for Australian business
Australian businesses that rely on organic search to generate enquiries are at risk if AI answer engines reduce click-through rates on informational queries. The mitigation is to ensure your business appears in AI-generated answers as a credible, cited source. We offer AEO strategy and implementation for Australian professional services, consulting, healthcare and trade businesses that want to build AI-channel presence before it becomes commoditised.