Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) — definition
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring content so a search or AI system can lift a direct, self-contained answer out of it.
A definition in common professional use. Where the underlying behavior is disputed, the term page says so rather than settling it.
What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring content so a search or AI system can lift a direct, self-contained answer out of it.
AEO predates generative AI. Featured snippets and voice assistants were answer engines before chat interfaces existed, and the techniques are the same: phrase the heading as the question a person actually asks, make the first sentence after it a complete answer that survives being quoted alone, and format supporting detail as lists and tables rather than dense paragraphs. The test is simple — if a machine quoted only your first sentence, would the reader be correctly served?
More in Glossary
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Generative Engine Optimization is the practice of earning mentions and citations inside answers that AI systems generate, rather than clicks from a ranked list.
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust — the framework Google's human quality raters use to judge whether content deserves to be relied on.
YMYL
YMYL — Your Money or Your Life — describes topics where bad information could damage someone's health, finances, safety or legal position, and which are therefore held to a higher standard.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
Retrieval-Augmented Generation is the technique of fetching live documents at question time and giving them to a language model as source material for its answer.
Entity drift
Entity drift is what happens when the same organization or person is described inconsistently across the web, so systems treat one entity as several weaker ones.
Zero-click
A zero-click result is one where the searcher gets their answer on the results page or inside an AI answer and never visits the source.
Topical authority
Topical authority is the credibility a site earns by covering one subject thoroughly through many interlinked pages, rather than one page per keyword.
Answer-first writing
Answer-first writing puts a complete, self-contained answer in the first sentence under a heading, before any context or qualification.
Schema markup
Schema markup is machine-readable data embedded in a page, usually as JSON-LD, that states explicitly what the page and its entities are.
Entity
An entity is a specific, identifiable thing — a person, organization, place or concept — as distinct from the words used to refer to it.
Knowledge graph
A knowledge graph is a database of entities and the relationships between them, used to answer questions about things rather than about pages.
Crawl budget
Crawl budget is the practical ceiling on how much of a site a crawler will fetch in a given period.
Canonical URL
A canonical URL is the address you nominate as the real one when the same content is reachable at several addresses.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google's three field-measured metrics for loading, interaction responsiveness and visual stability.
Featured snippet
A featured snippet is an extracted passage shown above the regular results that answers the query directly on the page.
NAP
NAP stands for Name, Address and Phone number — the three facts that must match exactly everywhere a local business is listed.
Map pack
The map pack is the block of local business listings with a map that appears for queries with local intent.
llms.txt
llms.txt is a proposed convention for a plain-text file that summarizes a site's content for large language models.
Prompt panel
A prompt panel is a fixed set of questions you re-run across AI engines on a schedule to track whether you are cited.
AI share of voice
AI share of voice is how often you are mentioned or cited across a fixed prompt panel, relative to competitors.
Evidence grade
An evidence grade is this site's required label stating whether a claim is documented by the platform, practitioner consensus, or speculative.
Manual action
A manual action is a penalty applied by a human reviewer at a search engine, reported in Search Console and removable by fixing the problem and requesting reconsideration.
Disavow
Disavowing is telling a search engine to ignore specified inbound links when assessing your site.