What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the practice of shaping how AI systems — ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and similar tools — understand, trust and cite a business when generating a direct answer or recommendation, rather than a ranked list of links to click through. By Sadiq Dantanko, Founder of Dala Forge. Published September 2026.
Related, not interchangeable.
SEO and AEO both depend on a technically sound, well-structured website — but they optimize for a different outcome and are judged by different signals.
| Dimension | SEO | AEO |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in a search results list | Be understood, trusted and cited in a generated answer |
| Output for the user | A list of links to evaluate and click | A direct answer or recommendation, often with no click at all |
| Primary signal | Keywords, backlinks, technical crawlability | Entity clarity, independent evidence, structured data, consistency |
| Example query | "real estate agency Abuja" | "which real estate agency in Abuja should I use" |
The gap most businesses have not closed yet.
AI-assisted search is already part of how people research products, services and businesses — and adoption is moving faster than most businesses' digital presence is keeping up with. A business can be well-known and well-regarded and still be functionally invisible to a system that has nothing independently verifiable to draw on. Being early to address this is the actual opportunity: the businesses that shape their AI representation now are more likely to be the ones AI systems default to citing later.
AEO is built on evidence, not tricks.
There is no way to directly pay for a citation or manipulate an AI system into recommending a business it cannot verify. AEO works by closing the actual gaps — inconsistent business information, missing structured data, thin or unsupported claims, weak independent evidence — that make a business hard for AI systems to understand and trust. Dala Forge's full framework for this is documented on the Methodology page.
Your reputation already exists.
The question is whether the systems helping your customers decide can understand it.