Guide
AEO explained: how to get your business recommended by AI assistants
Customers now ask ChatGPT and Google's AI for recommendations. Answer engine optimization decides whether your business is the answer.
March 2, 2026 · 5 min read
- What AI engines cite
- Structured data essentials
- Question-first content
When a customer asks an AI assistant 'who's the best med spa near me?' or 'affordable web design for restaurants', the answer is assembled from sources the engine trusts: structured business data, review profiles, and content that directly answers questions.
What answer engines actually read
Three inputs dominate: your Google Business Profile and its reviews, schema markup on your website (LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ), and content written in question-and-answer format. Businesses strong on all three get cited; businesses with thin profiles simply don't exist to the model.
The practical playbook
Write pages that pose the customer's exact question as a heading and answer it in the first two sentences. Mark up FAQs with schema. Keep your profiles complete and your reviews fresh — AI engines weight recency and volume just like humans do.
This is why every Elevaro site ships with schema markup and every content plan includes question-first pages: classic SEO and AEO are now the same discipline done properly.