More and more customers start their search with AI. Instead of scrolling through results, they ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overviews for a direct answer, and a short list of recommended businesses. If your business isn’t part of those answers, you’re invisible to a fast-growing share of buyers. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) makes sure you’re the business AI recommends.
Craters & Freighters Boston, organic clicks up 143% and #1 in Boston for crating companies.
What is Answer Engine Optimization?
AEO is the practice of optimizing your content, structure, and online authority so AI-powered answer engines understand your business and cite it in their responses. It shares DNA with SEO, but it’s tuned for how large language models find, trust, and surface information, favoring clear, factual, well-structured content from credible sources.
Why AEO matters now
- AI Overviews and chat assistants increasingly sit above, or replace, traditional search results.
- Buyers trust AI recommendations and often act on the first answer they’re given.
- Early movers build visibility and authority before competitors catch on.
How we optimize you for AI search
- Structured, answer-ready content: formatted to directly answer the questions your customers ask.
- Schema & structured data: markup that helps AI and search engines understand your business.
- Authority & citations: the credible mentions and consistent info AI models rely on to trust a source.
- Entity optimization: your brand, services, and expertise clearly defined across the web.
AEO + SEO, working together
AEO doesn’t replace SEO, it extends it. The same authority and quality that earn top Google rankings also make you a trusted source for AI. We run both in one coordinated strategy so you capture customers wherever they search. See our full SEO & AI Search services →
How we get your business cited by AI
Getting cited by AI answer engines comes down to three things we can control: clear structure, credible sourcing, and freshness. We build answer-first content around the real questions your customers ask, add the structured data and authority signals AI looks for, and keep it current, because tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews each favor well-structured, trustworthy, up-to-date sources.
What it looks like in practice
On the national Craters & Freighters site, leads from ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and other AI tools went from 33 in all of 2024 to 402 in the first nine months of 2026, and those visitors take a lead action 26% of the time, nearly twice the rate of regular search visitors. More people using AI explains part of that, but the share of Google’s AI Overviews citing the site as a source also rose from 5% to 14% (23 searches to 124). The site’s schema markup now describes all 63 locations, so AI tools get the same facts everywhere. For Craters & Freighters Chicago, more than half of the Chicago-area searches we track now show a Google AI Overview at the top, and Google visits dipped 10%. Visitors sent by ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude grew from 26 in the year before we started to 98 in just five months, and they take a lead action 35% of the time, twice the rate of regular search visitors. Leads from search and AI together rose 9%. For Craters & Freighters Pensacola, pages written to be quoted took the site from barely appearing to more than 1,000 Google appearances a quarter for MIL-SPEC and defense crating.
A US-based partner for the AI search era
Answer engine optimization moves fast, citation preferences shift and tactics change monthly. That’s why we keep experienced, 100% US-based strategists on it, not overseas contractors chasing yesterday’s playbook. We measure how AI visibility contributes to pipeline, so this is tied to real outcomes, not vanity metrics.
AEO pairs naturally with SEO & AI Search and organic social. Let’s talk about getting cited by AI.
