Say a homeowner's AC quits on a Saturday. Instead of searching Google, they open ChatGPT and type: "Who's a reliable AC repair company near Brandon that works weekends?" They get a short written answer that names two or three businesses. There's no page two. If you're not in that answer, you weren't an option.
That's the problem AEO is meant to solve. Here's what it is, how it overlaps with SEO, and how to see where you stand today.
What does AEO actually mean?
AEO stands for answer engine optimization. On our site we call it AI engine optimization. It's the same work, and you'll also see it called GEO, for generative engine optimization.
An answer engine is any tool that responds to a question with a written answer instead of a list of links. Today that mostly means ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and the AI Overviews at the top of some Google searches. AEO is about getting those tools to do three things with your business:
- Find: the tool can reach your pages and the other places your business is listed.
- Understand: it can tell what you do, where and for whom, without guessing.
- Cite: when someone asks a question you're a good fit for, it names you, gets your details right and, where the tool shows sources, links to you.
Why bother now? A Semrush AI Overviews study from 2025 found that about 16% of tracked Google keywords showed an AI Overview by late 2025. And in October 2025, OpenAI said ChatGPT had 800 million weekly users, as reported by TechCrunch. Most of those people aren't looking for a plumber. Some are, and for them the AI answer is the first thing they see.
How do AI tools put an answer together?
Each company builds its tools differently and doesn't publish every detail, so be wary of anyone who claims to know exactly how a given model picks its sources. At a high level, an answer about a local business usually comes together in two stages.
Retrieval. Many AI tools now search the web when you ask a question. They pull in a handful of sources: business websites, listings, review sites, directories, local news and forums. Some answers also lean on what the model learned during training, which can be out of date.
The written answer. The tool reads what it gathered and writes a short response in its own words. Some tools show their sources. Others don't.
Two things follow from that:
- If your pages can't be reached or read in the first stage, you can't be cited in the second. The mistakes that hide a site from Google, like a leftover noindex tag, can hide it from AI tools as well. We cover those in how sites accidentally hide from Google.
- If your facts are vague or contradict each other across sources, the tool has to guess. It may get your hours wrong, or name a competitor whose details are clear.
Where do AEO and SEO overlap?
More than most people selling AEO will tell you. Good local SEO is most of the work of getting recommended by AI tools:
- Pages search engines can crawl and index. If Google can't read a page, assume AI tools may struggle with it too.
- A clear page for every service and town you serve. An electrician with one "Services" page listing a dozen things gives Google and AI tools less to work with than one with a page each for panel upgrades, EV chargers and generator hookups.
- A complete Google Business Profile. The right categories, every service and service area, accurate hours and real job photos.
- Real reviews. Ask every customer after every job, the same way each time. No incentives and no filtering who gets asked; both break Google's rules.
- Consistent listings. The same name, address and phone number everywhere.
If your SEO foundation is shaky, fix that first. AEO on top of a site Google can't read is wasted effort.
Where is AEO different from SEO?
SEO is mostly about how your pages rank in a list of results. AEO is about whether an AI tool can lift a clear, correct answer out of your content and attach your name to it. That changes how you write, and it adds a few deliverables.
Answer-first content
A lot of service pages open with a paragraph about passion and quality. That gives an AI tool nothing to quote. Put the direct answer first, then the detail. A drain cleaning page for Tampa should say in its first lines that you clear drains in Tampa, which neighborhoods you cover, whether you take emergency calls and how to book. A short FAQ block with real customer questions helps too.
Clear, checkable facts
AI tools can only repeat what's written down somewhere. State what customers ask about: service area, hours, licenses, what you do and don't do, and how pricing works if you're willing to say. Leave out claims nobody can check, like "best in Tampa." They give a tool nothing it can cite.
Structured data
Structured data, usually written as JSON-LD, is code on your page that labels your facts for machines: business name, phone number, services, area served. Organization, LocalBusiness, Service and FAQ markup are the usual ones for a service business. It's part of technical SEO too, but in AEO it's a core deliverable, because it states your facts without the tool having to interpret your copy.
Consistent business details across the web
AI tools often draw on more than one source about you. If your Google profile says you're open Saturdays, your Yelp listing says you're closed and an old directory has the phone number from two moves ago, the tool has to pick one, and it might pick wrong.
This is the slow, unglamorous part. When we worked with a San Antonio plumbing company, part of the job was exactly this: cleaning up business details across platforms, alongside restructuring the site into service and location pages and adding AEO files.
An llms.txt file
llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of your domain that summarizes who you are and links to your most important pages, written for AI tools rather than people. A companion file, llms-full.txt, can hold the full text of those pages. Ours are at hellionstudios.com/llms.txt and hellionstudios.com/llms-full.txt, generated from the same data our pages use so they don't drift out of date.
Be clear about what it is: a proposal published at llmstxt.org, not a standard every AI tool follows. Some tools may read it and others ignore it, and you usually can't confirm which. It's cheap to add, so we add it, but it's never the whole job.
Being mentioned where AI tools look
AI answers often draw on sources beyond your own site: review sites, local news, trade associations, supplier "find an installer" pages and community forums. You can't control these, but you can earn them through real relationships and real work. Don't fake them. Fake reviews break Google's rules, and planted posts tend to backfire.
What can you control, and what can't you?
You control:
- What your site says and how clearly it says it
- Whether your pages can be crawled and indexed
- Your structured data and llms.txt file
- Your Google Business Profile and your main listings
- Whether you ask every customer for a review
- Whether your robots.txt lets AI crawlers in. OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity publish the names of their crawlers, and some hosting and security services offer a switch that blocks AI bots. Make that choice on purpose.
You don't control:
- Which sources a tool decides to use
- How it words the answer
- Whether a given answer names you, since the same question can get a different answer twice in a row
- Model updates that change how answers are put together
That's why nobody can honestly guarantee you'll be cited, recommended or listed first by any AI tool. Anyone who promises it is guessing. What you can do is make your business the clearest, most consistent and most checkable option, so the right facts are easy to find.
How do you check what AI tools say about you today?
You can do a rough version yourself in an afternoon.
Step 1: Write down the questions your customers ask. Mix two kinds. Category questions, like "Who's a good roofer in Clearwater?" And questions about you by name: your hours, whether you install tankless water heaters, whether you're licensed, which areas you cover.
Step 2: Ask each tool. Try ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, plus a plain Google search to see whether an AI Overview appears and what it cites. Start a fresh chat each time, in a private window where you can, so your own history doesn't shape the answer.
Step 3: Ask more than once. AI tools vary their answers. Ask a few ways, on different days, and look for the pattern rather than one response.
Step 4: Write down what you find. Were you mentioned, was it correct, and which sources did the tool show? Look for wrong phone numbers, old addresses and services you don't offer.
Step 5: Trace the wrong facts. When a tool shows its sources, follow them. If a bad detail comes from an old directory listing, fix the listing. You can't edit the AI, but you can fix what it reads.
Repeat it monthly, and after anything changes, like a move or a new phone number. Our AEO readiness checklist includes a simple monthly test. If you'd rather we run it, the free AI visibility check asks ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers about businesses like yours in your city and tells you what to fix first.
What's still uncertain about AEO?
Plenty, and it's better to say so.
- llms.txt is a proposal. It may catch on or it may fade. It costs little to add, but nobody outside the AI companies can tell you how much weight any tool gives it.
- Measurement is rough. AI tools mostly don't give businesses a report of when they mention you, the way Search Console does for Google, so testing by hand is the main way to see where you stand.
- AI traffic is hard to see. Some visits from AI tools show up in analytics as referrals. Many don't, often because people read the answer and call you directly. Asking callers how they found you, plus call tracking, fills some of the gap.
- The tools change quickly, and best practice is still forming. Be wary of anyone selling a secret trick. The work that holds up is the plain kind: clear pages, accurate facts, consistent listings and real reviews.
Where should you start?
Start with the foundation, because it pays off in Google and AI answers alike. Then add the AEO layer: answer-first content, structured data and an llms.txt file.
To see where you stand first, run the free AI visibility check. To see how we handle the whole job, read about our AEO work. And if search itself needs attention, start with local SEO.