What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO, optimizing content to be selected as the single direct answer) is the older sibling of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization, getting content cited inside AI-generated answers) and the discipline that featured-snippet optimization grew into. The target is being selected as the answer, not as one of several sources: the response read aloud by a voice assistant, displayed inside a featured snippet, or shown as the synthesized answer in an AI Overview. AEO rewards content that is structured to be lifted: a clear question as a heading, a clean two-to-three-sentence answer immediately below, schema markup (tags in a page’s code that tell search engines what the content is) that makes the structure machine-readable, factual specificity, and authoritative attribution within the text. The discipline is closely related to writing for the extract, which is the term we use internally for the same approach.