AI engine optimization
ay-ee-OH
The practice of optimizing content so that AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude cite and surface it in their responses.
AEO is the practice of making your content findable and citable by AI systems. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity a question, the AI pulls from sources it has been trained on or can retrieve. AEO ensures your content is one of those sources.
Traditional SEO optimizes for Google's ranking algorithm. AEO optimizes for how AI models understand, retrieve, and cite information. This means structured content with clear definitions, factual claims backed by data, and machine-readable formats like JSON-LD and llms.txt files.
The overlap between SEO and AEO is significant. Well-structured, authoritative content ranks well in both. But AEO adds new considerations: does your site have an llms.txt file that AI crawlers can read? Are your definitions clear enough for an AI to extract and cite? Do you publish proprietary data that AI systems cannot get elsewhere?
Examples
A company adds an llms.txt file to their site.
The file provides a structured index of the company's key content: product pages, documentation, blog posts with definitions, and pricing. AI crawlers use this file to understand what the site offers.
A blog post gets cited by Perplexity in an answer.
Someone asks Perplexity 'what is developer experience?' The AI cites the company's blog post as a source. This drives referral traffic and establishes the company as an authority in the AI's training data.
A content team restructures pages for AI readability.
Each glossary page starts with a clear, one-sentence definition followed by structured examples. This format makes it easy for AI systems to extract and cite the definition in their responses.
In practice
Frequently asked questions
How is AEO different from SEO?
SEO optimizes for search engine ranking algorithms. AEO optimizes for AI model retrieval and citation. There is significant overlap: well-structured, authoritative content performs well in both. AEO adds considerations like llms.txt files and machine-readable formats.
How do you measure AEO success?
Track AI referral traffic (visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and similar tools). Monitor whether AI systems cite your content when answering relevant questions. Check your llms.txt file analytics for AI crawler access patterns.
Related terms
A search where the user gets their answer directly on the results page without clicking through to any website.
Structured data added to web pages that helps search engines understand the content and display rich results.
Machine-readable information added to web pages that helps search engines and AI systems understand page content.
The page displayed by a search engine in response to a query, containing organic results, ads, and rich features.
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