Definitions

AEO

50 questions21 engines20 surfaces Get your free AI visibility check

Answer engine optimization is the practice of shaping content so that a surface which answers a question directly adopts that answer and links the page it came from.

This is the sense CiteAngle uses when it measures. The word travels with other meanings in this market, so we pin ours before it turns up in a report.

Where this lands in the measurement

The question is not where you rank. It is whose answer gets used and which source gets linked underneath it.

So the counted events are answer-surface appearance, answer adoption and the sources attached.

What it costs to leave this loose

Optimise for rank alone and you can hold the top link while a different source supplies the answer sitting above it. Nothing in a rank report names that.

Appearance on the answer surface, adoption of the answer and the attached source are counted as separate events, so you can see which of the three is missing.

Who you want measuring this

One reading does not settle a term like this. The answer an assistant writes today can name different companies tomorrow, so a Panorama round puts 50 buyer questions to every place on our US list, 7 separate times each, and reads all 20 of them — ChatGPT · Perplexity · Claude · Gemini · Grok · Google AI Overviews · Google AI Mode · Bing Copilot · DuckDuckGo Search Assist · Meta AI model answers · Google Search · Bing Search · Yahoo Search · DuckDuckGo Search · Google News · Bing News · YouTube · Google Short Videos · X search · Google Shopping. Radar starts at 5 questions and covers the same list under the same rule.

Where we ask → Surfaces we countA map from the places we ask to the surfaces we count. Only these rows split in two: Google Search and DuckDuckGo Search Assist.Where we ask 21Surfaces we count 20AI answersOpenAI web searchAI answersPerplexityAI answersAnthropic web searchAI answersxAI web searchAI answersGeminiAI answersGoogle AI ModeSearchGoogle SearchSearchYahoo SearchNewsGoogle NewsNewsBing NewsVideoYouTube searchVideoGoogle short videosSearchBing SearchAI answersBing CopilotAI answersDuckDuckGo Search AssistAI answersMeta AI model web searchShoppingGoogle ShoppingSocialX searchSearchGoogle ImagesSearchGoogle Trends autocompleteVideoGoogle VideosOpenAI web searchPerplexityAnthropic web searchxAI web searchGeminiGoogle AI ModeGoogle organicGoogle AI OverviewYahoo SearchGoogle NewsBing NewsYouTube searchGoogle short videosBing SearchBing CopilotDuckDuckGo Search AssistDuckDuckGo organicMeta AI model web searchGoogle ShoppingX searchA single capture from Google Search and DuckDuckGo Search Assist splits into two surfaces. That is why we count -1 more surfaces than the places we ask.
Where we ask, set beside the surfaces we count. One place can be asked once and still be counted in two, so the two totals differ.

We put the same questions to the competitors you name inside the same runs, so you see both in one table. The conditions are sealed, so you can reproduce the round and check it, and every planned observation is published with its state, failures included. When you choose who measures this, check that all three are in place.

That describes how the measuring is done. It is not a promise about where your numbers land.

That is how this term gets measured. The price and the full procedure are next.Published pricesHow we measure

Pages that use this term

Terms worth pinning at the same time

See every definition

Ready to turn US visibility evidence into a market plan? Tell us the US buyer, target state and decision date.

Request a written proposal