Refract Group2026
Glossary
AEO (answer engine optimisation)
AEO (answer engine optimisation) is work to make a page the source of the answer a search engine or AI assistant gives directly, such as a featured snippet, an AI Overview or a ChatGPT reply.
Direct answer
- One passage, shown in place
- Reader may not click
- Source linked beside it
Ranked link
- Title and snippet in a list
- Reader clicks to read
- Position decides the click
AEO in detail
- Also called
- Answer engine optimization, Answer-first content, Featured snippet optimisation
- Updated
What it is
An answer engine replies to a question with the answer itself. Google’s featured snippets and AI Overviews do it, and so do voice assistants, ChatGPT and Perplexity. AEO is the work that makes your page the one the reply comes from.
Most of it is SEO. The page has to be crawled and indexed first, and Google only links to a page from AI Overviews if it is indexed and eligible to show a snippet. What AEO adds is the shape of the writing: the question as a heading, in the words people use, and a complete answer in the first two or three sentences under it, with conditions and exceptions after. A passage written that way still makes sense when it is lifted out of the page.
Nobody can choose the page. Google’s systems decide what becomes a featured snippet, and no markup makes one.
Why it matters
A buyer who gets the answer at the top of the results, or in an assistant’s reply, may stop there. If the reply to whether your starter plan includes single sign-on comes from a review site’s table that is two years old, that is the answer the buyer believes. Pages that state the answer plainly give the engine a current, first-hand source to take it from. They also help the person who lands halfway down the page, which is the better reason to write them.
How we do it
In answer and AI search work for a client, the first pages we rewrite are the few that answer a buying question, such as what the company does, who it is for and what it costs, so the answer sits in the opening lines.
On our own site we added questions to several articles, each answered from that article’s own text, with FAQ markup describing them. That markup earns no special result in Google, and we keep it because it describes the page accurately. Every entry in this glossary opens with a one or two sentence answer written to be quoted alone, for the reader who stops there and for an assistant looking for a definition.
An example
Say a project management tool shows its plans in a pricing table where single sign-on is a tick in the third column. An engine asked whether the starter plan has SSO has to work it out from a grid. The rewrite adds a heading, “Which plans include SSO?”, and one sentence under it: “SAML single sign-on is included on the Team and Enterprise plans; Starter has Google sign-in only.” The table stays below for anyone who wants the detail.
Common mistakes
- Splitting one guide into thin pages. A page for every phrasing of a question leaves each one less to say, so keep related questions together when the same reader asks them.
- Answering in product vocabulary. An opening line written in the company’s own terms answers a question nobody typed, so use the words buyers use on sales calls.
- Expecting markup to pick the page. No structured data makes a page a featured snippet or an AI Overview source, and the markup only has to match what the page visibly says.
- Leaving a stale answer up. An old specification gets quoted as if it were true today, so date the pages that state facts and change them when the facts change.
AEO vs SEO
SEO is the whole practice of being found in search, and AEO is the part aimed at having a page’s own words given as the answer, with or without a click.
| AEO | SEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Aim | Be the answer given | Be found, ranked and clicked |
| Unit of work | A passage under a question | The whole site and each page |
| Shows as | Snippet, AI Overview, assistant reply | Rankings, clicks and visits |
| Depends on | SEO being in place first | Crawl access, content and links |
Questions
What people ask about AEO.
AEO stands for answer engine optimisation: making a page the source of the answer a search engine or assistant gives directly, such as a featured snippet, an AI Overview or a ChatGPT reply. Google treats it as part of SEO, and most of the work is the same: indexable pages, written so the answer comes first.
AEO and GEO are mostly one piece of work under two names. AEO covers any direct answer, including a featured snippet, which quotes a passage from one page. GEO covers answers a generative AI model writes, which may paraphrase several sources and cite some of them. The work is the same; the measuring differs, because generated answers change between sessions.
No. Google says that optimising for its generative AI features is still SEO, and AI Overviews only link to pages that are indexed and eligible for a snippet. AEO sits on top of SEO: without pages that can be crawled and indexed, an answer engine has nothing of yours to quote.
Not as a shortcut. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in May 2026, and it says no special schema is needed to appear in its AI features. FAQ markup is still a fair description of a page that has real questions and answers on it, as long as it matches the visible text.
Where this shows up in our work
Related terms
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