What are AEO and GEO? How to get your business into AI answers

More people now ask an AI assistant instead of typing a search and scanning ten blue links. Someone in Regina asks ChatGPT for "a good web designer for a small restaurant" or asks Google a question and reads the AI Overview at the top. If the answer names three companies and yours isn't one of them, that customer may never see a results page at all.

Answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) are the work of changing that. Neither is magic, and neither replaces SEO. They're a set of habits that make your business easy for machines to understand, trust and quote.

What is AEO?

Answer engine optimization is structuring your content so a search engine or voice assistant can lift a direct answer from it. It grew out of featured snippets and "People also ask" boxes: Google looks for a page that asks the question plainly and answers it in the next sentence or two.

A page written for AEO puts the customer's question in a heading, answers it immediately in plain language, and only then adds the detail. That's also how people read on a phone, so it helps human visitors as much as it helps machines.

What is GEO?

Generative engine optimization is improving the chance that AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews mention or cite your business when they write an answer. Unlike a snippet, a generated answer blends several sources, so GEO is about being one of the sources the AI trusts and can describe accurately.

How do AI tools decide which businesses to mention?

Each tool works a little differently, but they share a pattern. They pull from search indexes (Google's for Gemini and AI Overviews, Bing's for Copilot, and a mix for ChatGPT and Perplexity), from pages they can crawl directly, and from what they learned in training. They then favour sources that are clear, specific and consistent with each other.

That last point matters most for local businesses. If your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places listing, directories and reviews all agree on your name, what you do and where you work, an AI can describe you with confidence. If they disagree, for example two addresses, an old phone number or a business name written three ways, you become a risky thing to recommend.

Six steps that help your business show up

1. Answer real questions on your pages. Collect the questions customers ask on the phone and by email. Put each one in a heading and answer it in the first sentence underneath.
2. Add structured data. Schema markup tells machines what a page is about: your business, the services you offer, your service area, your FAQs and your articles. It removes guesswork.
3. Let the right crawlers in. Check that robots.txt doesn't block Googlebot, Bingbot or the AI search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, and keep your XML sitemap current.
4. Keep your details identical everywhere. Same business name, phone number and service area on your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and industry directories.
5. Earn mentions you didn't write. Genuine reviews, local news coverage, association memberships and partner pages are independent evidence that you exist and do good work.
6. Publish specific, useful content. Explain how you actually work, what a project involves, what it costs to plan for and what can go wrong. Vague marketing copy gives an AI nothing to quote.

What does an AI-friendly page look like?

Think of a page for one service. It opens with a one-sentence summary of what you do and who it's for. Each section heading is a question a customer would ask: how long it takes, what's included, how pricing works, what you need from them. Each answer is short and complete, with detail below. The page has schema for the service and its FAQs, a clear way to contact you, and links to related services. Our own AI search optimization page follows this pattern.

How is AEO and GEO different from SEO?

They build on SEO rather than replacing it. Traditional SEO makes your site fast, crawlable and relevant so it ranks. AEO sharpens how your answers are written and marked up. GEO adds attention to the wider signals around your brand: consistency across listings, reviews and independent mentions. A site that's technically sound and well-structured for Google is most of the way there already.

How do you measure AI visibility?

There's no single report yet, so use a few signals together. In Google Analytics 4, watch referral traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com. In Bing Webmaster Tools, check the AI performance report. And once a month, ask the main assistants the questions your customers ask and note whether you're mentioned, and whether the description is correct.

Common mistakes

• Blocking all bots in robots.txt to "protect content", which also hides you from AI search.
• Hiding key information in images, PDFs or chat widgets that crawlers can't read.
• Publishing dozens of thin, near-identical pages written for keywords instead of people.
• Leaving old listings with outdated details live, so the AI finds conflicting facts.

Where to start

Pick your three most important services. Rewrite each page so it answers the top five customer questions clearly, add service and FAQ schema, and check your Google Business Profile matches the page word for word on name, phone and service area. That alone puts you ahead of most local competitors. If you'd like help, send us a few lines about your business.