What's answer engine optimisation?
It's the work of making your content the thing an AI system quotes when it puts an answer together, instead of a blue link somebody might get around to clicking. People call it AEO, or GEO for generative engine optimisation. Same idea under both names, and honestly the acronym matters a lot less than the shift underneath it.
Search has split in two. There's still a results page, and there are now answers being assembled by Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, by ChatGPT, by Perplexity. Those systems read pages, work out which ones look reliable, and cite a handful. If your pages aren't in that handful, you're effectively invisible to a growing share of the people looking for exactly what you sell.
Do you need special schema to appear in AI Overviews?
No, and I'm not going to lie, this is the one that frustrates me most, because there are people charging real money for it. Google's own documentation says plainly that there's no special structured data required and no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. AI features and your website So if somebody is selling you an AEO package built around a bespoke schema type, they're selling you something Google has explicitly said isn't a prerequisite.
Structured data is still worth doing, and we do it on every build. It's a bit of machine-readable markup, usually the vocabulary published at Schema.org, that tells a crawler what a page actually is rather than making it guess. It makes you eligible for rich results in ordinary search, like the expandable questions you see under some listings.
FAQ structured data Just don't buy it as a magic ticket into an AI answer, because that isn't what it is.
So what does actually get you cited?
The boring answer, which happens to also be Google's answer. The generative features are built on the same ranking and quality systems as ordinary Search, so all the existing fundamentals are still what decide it. Optimising for generative AI Content that's genuinely yours rather than a rewrite of everybody else's, a page that loads and behaves itself, a clear structure, and some evidence that a person who has actually done the work wrote it.
That last part is E-E-A-T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust, and the first E is the one nearly everybody skips. Google added Experience to the rater guidelines specifically to reward content written from firsthand knowledge rather than paraphrased off other websites. Adding Experience to E-A-T
Helpful, reliable, people-first content Which is why, when we write for Glenn at G-TEC, the switchboard page talks about the specific Queenslanders in Toowoomba where the old board is sitting behind a wardrobe. No agency writing about electrical work in the abstract can compete with that, and the AI systems seem to agree.
Does the question-heading trick work?
It does, but not for any mystical reason. If your heading is the question somebody typed and the sentence underneath it is a direct answer, then a system trying to extract an answer has a very easy job. If your heading is a noun phrase and the answer is buried in paragraph four, it has a hard job, and it will probably just use somebody else.
Practically, put the answer in the first two sentences of a section, in about forty words, plain language, no windup. Then spend the rest of the section on the detail a human reader actually needs. The extraction gets the short version, the reader gets the long one, and nobody is short-changed.
Can you measure any of this?
Now you can, yes. Google Search Console, which is the free tool that shows you what Google does with your site, added dedicated reporting for impressions inside the generative features, so you can see whether you're showing up in AI Overviews and AI Mode instead of guessing from your total impressions.
Search Console gen-AI reports Before that landed, everyone in this industry was inferring from noise, and I think that's worth saying out loud.
Out of curiosity, just go and ask. Put your actual buying question into ChatGPT and Perplexity and see who gets named. If it comes back with three competitors and a directory, that's your gap right there, and it's a far more useful morning than staring at another rank tracker.
Where should a small business start?
One page. Take the service page that matters most to you commercially, and rewrite the headings as the questions your customers actually ask you on the phone, then answer each one in the first two sentences. You don't need to overhaul the whole site in a weekend, and trying to is how these projects stall.
Then fix the entity basics, because they're cheap and they compound. Same business name, address and phone number everywhere. A Google Business Profile that's genuinely complete rather than half filled in. Consistent details across the site, the profile and any directory you're listed in. At the end of the day these systems are trying to work out whether two mentions are the same business, and inconsistency is what makes them decide they aren't.
- Pick the one page that matters commercially.
Not the homepage. The service page attached to the work you most want more of. One page done properly teaches you more than a site-wide rewrite you will abandon.
- Turn every heading into a question somebody asks you.
Use the actual words customers say on the phone. Not Our Process but How long does a switchboard upgrade take? You already know these questions, you answer them weekly.
- Answer in the first two sentences, in about forty words.
Plain language, no windup, no marketing throat-clearing. Then expand underneath for the human reader who wants the detail.
- Add the specifics only you have.
The suburb, the type of house, the thing that goes wrong locally, the price band. Firsthand detail is what Google's guidance is actually rewarding when it talks about Experience.
Helpful, reliable, people-first content
- Mark the page up so it's unambiguous.
The
Schema.org type that matches what the page really is, and FAQ markup if the page is genuinely a set of questions and answers.
- Fix the name, address and phone everywhere.
Site, profile, invoices, directories, the footer. Same format, same abbreviation, same phone. Boring, cheap, and it compounds.
Is AEO different from SEO?
Not in the work, mostly in the target. The same fundamentals decide both, because the generative features run on the same ranking systems. Optimising for generative AI What changes is the shape of a winning page: a direct answer near the top rather than a long windup.
Should I block AI crawlers?
Only if you genuinely don't want the traffic. Google lets site owners opt out of being used to ground generative answers, and sites that opt out get no impressions or traffic from those features. For most service businesses that's giving up a channel to protect nothing.
How long before it shows up?
Weeks for structural changes on pages that already rank, longer for anything new. There's no way to force a citation, and anybody offering one is guessing.