Frequently asked questions about AEO and AI visibility

AEO is the work of getting AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Copilot to mention and recommend your brand when they answer questions in your category. Instead of competing for a spot in a list of links, you compete to appear inside the answer itself.

In practice they are the same discipline under two names. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is more common in the US market and emphasises the generative engine; AEO emphasises the answer. Both measure the same thing: whether you are mentioned, in what position and from which sources.

No. AEO builds on SEO: assistants cite pages that are already crawlable, fast, structured and clearly written. What changes is the goal: you are not chasing clicks on a results page, you are trying to be the source the model uses to answer.

It is the percentage of answers, across a fixed set of category questions, where your brand appears compared with your competitors. Think of it as market share, but measured inside AI answers.

By asking systematically. You define a set of real category queries, run them against each assistant on a schedule and record whether you appear, in what position, with what tone and which sources are cited. Asking once by hand proves nothing: answers vary between runs.

Models generate text with a random component and many of them browse the web at answer time. The only reliable read is statistical: repeat the same questions over time and look at the trend, not at a single answer.

Four are enough to start: mention rate (how many answers include you), average position inside the answer, the sentiment used to describe you and the sources cited. Then compare against two or three direct competitors.

Partly. Some visits arrive with a chat.openai.com, perplexity.ai or gemini.google.com referrer and show up in analytics, but most of the impact is zero-click: someone reads the recommendation and searches your name later. That is why branded search volume matters too.

Weekly is the sensible cadence for most businesses: often enough to catch real movement, rare enough to filter daily noise. During launches or reputation issues it makes sense to increase frequency temporarily.

Give it material worth citing: pages that answer concrete questions with verifiable data, visible pricing and terms, honest comparisons, correct structured data and presence in the third-party sources models already read (press, directories, reviews, forums).

Organization with logo and official profiles, Product or Offer with price and availability, FAQPage on pages with real questions, Article with author and dates, and LocalBusiness if you serve an area. Schema alone will not get you cited, but it removes ambiguity about who you are.

It is cheap and harmless: a plain-text summary of what you do, which pages matter and how to describe you. It is not yet a standard the major models guarantee to read, so treat it as a bonus, never as a substitute for accessible, solid content.

If you want to be recommended, allow them (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, ClaudeBot). Blocking protects your content from training use but also removes you from answers. It is a business decision, not a technical one.

Technical and content changes usually show up in two to eight weeks, depending on how often your site is re-crawled and how fast the search indexes behind the assistants refresh. Earning mentions in third-party sources takes longer but moves the needle most.

Yes, and it happens more often than people expect: outdated prices, services you no longer offer or confusion with a similarly named company. The fix is publishing the correct information in the sources models read, and monitoring sentiment on a schedule.

You start from your domain: it audits your site for AEO, generates the real queries of your category, asks the AI assistants, records mentions, position, sentiment, competitors and cited sources, and hands you a prioritised action plan plus a plain-language report.

ChatGPT and Gemini out of the box. Claude and Perplexity can be added by connecting their official APIs from your account.

Yes. The free audit analyses your domain instantly without an account. Scanning real assistant answers requires an account because it consumes credits.

Yes. Queries are generated from your category and location, so a neighbourhood clinic and an online store are measured with different questions: the ones their actual customers would ask.