AEO - Answer Engine Optimization - is how businesses get recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. If you have not done it, you are invisible to the 200 million people who use AI instead of Google every month.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of making your business the one AI recommends. It is different from SEO because AI does not show a results page - it gives a single confident answer.
When someone asks ChatGPT "who is the best accountant in Manchester?" they do not get a list. They get a name. AEO is how you become that name - and your competitor does not.
AI pulls its answers from your website, your reviews, your structured data (the technical labels in your code that tell AI what you do), and the directories you appear in. If these all tell a consistent story, AI trusts you. If they contradict each other, AI skips you.
Less than 3% of UK businesses have done any AEO work. The businesses that build AI authority now will be the ones AI names for years. It is the same window SEO gave businesses in 2005 - but this time it is faster.
You might have heard all three terms and wondered if they are the same thing. Here is a straight answer.
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Answer 5 quick questions and get your AEO score out of 100 - instantly, no signup needed. You will see which band you are in and exactly what is holding you back from being the business AI recommends.
5 questions - instant result - no account needed
Want a technical audit of your actual website URL? Run the full Agent Console HQ audit instead.
The audit is free, instant and needs no signup.
Type your URL into the audit tool. It fetches your live site and checks 9 AEO signals in real time.
See a score out of 100 with a breakdown of exactly which signals are passing, failing or missing.
Each failing signal shows you what is wrong and which agents inside Agent Console HQ - our sister company - can fix it automatically.