Answer engine optimisation
AI search optimisation: being the business the assistant names
When someone asks ChatGPT, Google's AI Overview or Perplexity for “a good accountant in Shrewsbury” or “which air conditioner suits a 30 square metre room”, the assistant names two or three businesses it has read about and trusts. Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the work of being one of them. It rests on the same foundations as SEO, because the engines read the same pages Google indexes, and it adds a short list of checks that decide whether a page is quotable: an answer in the first two sentences, facts that agree everywhere, structured data that says who you are. The AI-readiness pass is included from the Growth tier at £599 a month.
What an assistant does with a question
- 1. Runs one or more web searches behind the scenes, usually through Google or Bing.
- 2. Reads the top results, favouring pages that answer plainly and can be quoted in a sentence.
- 3. Cross-checks the business's facts across its site, its profile, directories and reviews.
- 4. Names the two or three it can describe confidently, with a reason for each.
Every step depends on being indexed, fast and consistent. That is why AEO cannot be bought separately from the rest.
The checks
The AI-readiness pass, item by item
These are the checks we run on a client site each quarter and on any new page before it goes live. Two clients, a recording studio in Wrexham and a translation agency in Varna, have passed every item; the pass is a measured state, not a badge.
| Check | What passes | Why the engines care |
|---|---|---|
| Crawler access | GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended allowed in robots.txt; no page behind a script the crawler cannot run. | An assistant cannot cite a page it was not allowed to read. |
| Answer-first pages | The first two sentences of each service page answer the page's question with a fact: what, where, for whom, from how much. | The engines quote sentences. A page that opens with a slogan gives them nothing to quote. |
| Consistent facts | Name, address, phone, hours and services identical on the site, the Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles. | The assistant cross-checks. A business with three phone numbers is a business it is unsure about. |
| Structured data | Organisation, service, FAQ, article and product markup where true, validated with Google's tool. | Markup tells the engine what the page is about without guessing. |
| Questions answered on the page | Each service page carries the four to six questions customers ask, with short direct answers, in FAQ markup. | Prompts are questions. A page that already holds the question is the easiest match. |
| Evidence of a real business | A named person, a real address, photographs of real work, real reviews, a registration number. | Engines are trained to prefer sources with experience and accountability behind them. |
| Indexing and speed | Every service page indexed; Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds on a phone. | The engines start from the search index. Not indexed means not considered. |
| Monthly prompt check | The ten prompts a customer would ask, run each month across ChatGPT, Google AI and Perplexity, with who was named recorded. | It is the only way to know whether the work is being read. |
Honest expectations
What AEO will and will not do
It will make your site the kind of source the engines can quote, and it will tell you each month whether they did. For informational searches, Google's AI Overview now sits above the results and takes clicks from every site below it; being named inside the Overview is the only way to get some of them back.
It will not guarantee a mention. The engines choose from what they have read, their answers change between runs, and a business with no reviews and a thin site will not be named however well the markup is done. It will not work on a site that is not indexed, which is why the technical pass comes first. And it will not replace SEO: an assistant's search runs through the same index, so a page that ranks nowhere is not read.
Two accounts
What a pass looked like on a studio and an agency
A recording studio in Wrexham and a translation agency in Varna, Bulgaria, both went through the technical pass and then the AI-readiness pass. The pass is the same checklist for every site, the one in the table above: crawlers allowed, answer-first pages, consistent facts, validated structured data, the customer questions on the page, indexed and fast.
Both passed every item. What that means is exact: the sites are readable, quotable and consistent, and the monthly prompt check now has something to measure. Whether an engine names either of them for a given question is a result we record, not one we claim in advance, and it is the difference between this page and most pages about AI search.
Questions about AI search
Is AEO different from SEO?
It is the same foundations with a different finish line. An AI assistant reads the same pages Google indexes, so a site that is not indexed or is slow is invisible to both. On top of that, AEO cares about whether a page answers a question in its first two sentences, whether the business's facts are consistent everywhere, and whether the structured data says who you are. Our AI-readiness pass is part of the Growth tier and up, and the checks are on this page.
Can you get us mentioned in ChatGPT?
We can make the site the kind of source the engines cite and check monthly whether they do. We cannot guarantee a mention, and nobody can, because the engines choose from what they have read and their answers change between runs. The Varna translation agency and the Wrexham recording studio passed our AI-readiness checks; whether an engine names them for a given prompt is measured, not promised.
Does llms.txt help?
Google has said it does not use it. Some assistants read it and it costs nothing to serve, so every site we build has one, but it is at the bottom of the list. The top of the list is being indexed, being fast, answering the question first, and being consistent about your name, address and services everywhere the engines look.
Will AI Overviews take our clicks?
For informational searches, yes: Google's AI answer sits above the results and fewer people click through. For searches where the person wants to buy or book, the Overview tends to name businesses, and being one of them is the point of this work. We track clicks and impressions per query so you can see which of your searches have an Overview and what it did.
Do you block AI crawlers?
No. Every site we build allows GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended in robots.txt, because a business that wants to be recommended by an assistant has to let the assistant read it. We would block them only for a client with a reason, such as a publisher protecting paid content.
Is there a one-business rule for AEO?
The same rule as everything on the Local tier: one business per town and sector, confirmed personally in the reply. An engine asked for a plumber in a town names two or three; we will not work for two of them.
Find out whether an assistant would name you today
Send your business name and your town. We ask the three engines the questions your customers ask, tell you who they named and why, and list the checks your site fails, with the quote.