AEO (answer engine optimisation)
AEO is the practice of shaping content so that a search engine or AI system can use it as the direct answer to a question, in featured snippets, voice answers or AI-generated responses.
AEO, answer engine optimisation, is about being the answer itself: the passage a system quotes back to the reader. The term was in use before generative AI, for featured snippets and voice assistants, and now also covers AI Overviews, AI Mode and chat assistants that answer in full sentences.
In practice AEO is information design: state the answer early and plainly, put each question under its own heading, keep the facts in visible text and support them with sources.
Why it matters now: Google’s May 2026 guide to generative AI features names AEO and GEO and says that, from Google’s side, optimising for generative AI search is optimising for the search experience, which is SEO. The same guide says there is no need to break content into tiny chunks for AI systems and no special markup to add.
Practical note: write the one or two sentence answer a reader would want quoted, then the working underneath it. If the page is not indexed and eligible for a snippet, no amount of answer formatting will get it shown in Google’s AI features.