What is Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)?

AEO is the practice of structuring your online presence so AI assistants — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews — cite your business when answering relevant queries. Unlike SEO, AI engines select sources, not pages.

How does Citura calculate my AI visibility score?

Citura analyses 6 dimensions: robots.txt/llms.txt configuration, structured data (schema.org), answer-first content depth, agent.json presence, and active citation signals. Each dimension is weighted; the aggregate is your 0–100 score.

How long before I see results with Citura?

AI citation indexes update slowly — expect meaningful movement in 4–8 weeks. Your score improves within days as optimisations are deployed; actual citations follow as AI engines re-crawl your domain.

Does Citura guarantee AI citations?

No. Citura sells the system and the signals — not a placement. Anyone promising "rank #1 in ChatGPT" is misleading you. We make your business structurally citable; the AI engine decides when to cite.

Is my data safe with Citura?

Citura only analyses publicly accessible data on your domain. No credentials are required. All processing runs on EU infrastructure (Google Cloud Run, region europe-west6).

Which is more important in 2026 — SEO or AEO?

Both are necessary because they target different traffic sources. Google traditional search still represents the majority of web discovery for commercial queries. AEO addresses a fast-growing channel (AI answer engines) where first-mover advantage is currently available. Businesses that ignore AEO now risk being absent from an information surface their competitors will dominate in 24 months.

Do AEO and SEO ever conflict?

Rarely. Most AEO tactics reinforce SEO: structured data helps both, answer-first content improves featured snippet eligibility (an SEO signal), and fast pages rank better and get crawled by AI bots. The main exception is AI bot blocking — some SEO-focused crawl management configurations accidentally block GPTBot or PerplexityBot. Always audit your robots.txt for AI crawlers specifically.

What is Google AIO and is it SEO or AEO?

Google AI Overviews (AIO, formerly SGE) are AI-generated summaries that appear above organic results in Google Search. They are part of Google's ecosystem, so traditional SEO signals (E-E-A-T, backlinks, page quality) influence selection. But AIO also applies AEO-specific logic — structured data, answer-first content, and FAQPage schema are disproportionately selected. AIO sits at the intersection of SEO and AEO.

Does investing in GEO training-data inclusion still matter?

For long-tail authority, yes. Appearing in Wikipedia, well-known industry publications, and sources that are heavily indexed in AI training data creates persistent citation probability even for AI systems without live web search (like the base ChatGPT model without browsing). This is GEO in the traditional sense and complements AEO's focus on live retrieval.

AEO vs SEO vs GEO: The Differences Explained

AEO, SEO, and GEO are distinct disciplines targeting different systems. This guide explains exactly what each optimizes for, where they overlap, and what priority order makes sense for SMEs in 2026.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) targets Google's ranking algorithm. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) targets AI systems that generate synthesized answers. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) specifically targets the source-selection logic of AI answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity. All three are legitimate disciplines — they optimize for different systems with overlapping but distinct tactics.

SEO — optimizing for ranked lists

SEO has been the dominant web marketing discipline since the late 1990s. Its objective is to appear as high as possible in a ranked list of search results. The Google algorithm evaluates hundreds of signals — backlinks, page speed, content relevance, E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) — and assigns a position. Success is measured by ranking position and organic click-through rate.

SEO remains essential. Google processes approximately 8.5 billion queries per day (2025 estimate). Even as AI assistants grow, traditional search remains the majority of web discovery traffic for commercial intent queries. SEO is not dead — but it no longer covers the full information surface.

GEO — optimizing for generative outputs

GEO was formally defined by Princeton researchers in a 2023 paper (Aggarwal et al., "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization"). It describes optimizing any content to appear in AI-generated responses, regardless of the specific system. GEO tactics include: adding statistics and quotable facts, citing primary sources, using authoritative language, and ensuring content is in AI training datasets. GEO is the broadest category — it applies to training-time inclusion as well as live web retrieval.

AEO — optimizing for answer engines specifically

AEO is a subset of GEO that focuses on answer engines: AI systems that respond to queries with synthesized answers and cited sources. ChatGPT (web search), Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Claude with web search are answer engines. AEO tactics are specifically about being selected as a cited source in these systems — not about appearing in training data or ranking in a list.

The AEO-specific elements that have no SEO equivalent include: llms.txt, agent.json, allowing AI crawler bots in robots.txt, and answer-first content structure optimized for excerpt extraction.

The overlap and the gaps

Tactic	SEO	GEO	AEO
Backlink building	Core	Secondary	Secondary
Schema.org markup	Secondary	Important	Core
Answer-first content	Helpful	Core	Core
llms.txt	None	Helpful	Core
AI bot access (robots.txt)	None	Core	Core
Citation monitoring	None	Helpful	Core
Page speed	Core	Helpful	Helpful
Wikipedia / directory presence	Secondary	Core	Core

Priority order for SMEs in 2026

For a business that has not invested in either discipline, the recommended order is:

Fix technical SEO fundamentals — title tags, canonical URLs, page speed, structured data. These also help GEO/AEO.
Implement AEO core signals — llms.txt, FAQPage schema, answer-first content on five key pages, AI bot access in robots.txt. These are one-time structural changes with compounding returns.
Build GEO citation mass — Wikipedia presence, industry directory listings, press mentions, partner links. This is ongoing but high-leverage.
Monitor and iterate — track both organic rankings (SEO) and citation frequency (AEO) on a weekly cadence.

The overlap between good SEO and good AEO is significant — a well-structured, fast, authoritative site performs better in both systems. The incremental AEO work (llms.txt, FAQPage schema, answer-first rewrites) is relatively small for a site already doing solid SEO.