Answer engine
An answer engine is any search product that responds with a direct answer instead of a list of links.
In a little more detail
The category covers AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT with search, and Google's AI Mode. AEO is the practice aimed at them specifically.
Related terms
- AEO: AEO, or answer engine optimization, is the work of getting your page used as the source of a direct answer, such as the box at the top of a results page, rather than as one link among ten.
- AI search: AI search is a program you ask questions in plain language, like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity, which writes you an answer instead of handing you a list of links.
See it on your own site
The scan reads your site the way AI search does and reports where you stand on this and sixteen other checks.