AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization — optimisation for AI-based search engines. Instead of 10 blue links, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google Gemini show a direct answer. And that answer cites a source. The question is: is your website being cited?
Why AEO is becoming important now
- ChatGPT has over 900 million weekly users
- Perplexity processes over 500 million queries per month
- Google AI Overviews reach 1.5 billion users in 200+ countries
- Gartner forecasts: by 2028, traditional search traffic will fall by 50%
AEO vs. SEO: The difference
SEO (traditional)
Goal: appear on page 1 of Google. The user sees your page in the search results and clicks.
AEO (new)
Goal: be cited as a source by the AI. The user sees your information directly in the AI answer — with a link to your site.
How to optimise your website for AI
1. Provide clear answers
AI systems prefer passages that answer a question directly and completely. Write your content in a question-and-answer format.
2. Structured data
Schema.org markup helps AI crawlers understand your content. FAQ schema, Organization schema and Article schema are the most important.
3. llms.txt
A machine-readable file that explains to AI models what your website is about. Like robots.txt for search engines, but for AI.
4. Allow AI crawlers
GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot must be explicitly allowed in your robots.txt. Many websites block these crawlers by mistake.
5. Demonstrate expertise
AI systems prefer to cite sources with demonstrable expertise: author profiles, case studies, original research, industry knowledge.
What Adlegio does for AEO
Every website we build is AEO-optimised from the start. llms.txt, structured data, AI crawler access and citable content blocks are standard — not an extra charge.