What you really need
to know about AEO.
What is AEO - why does it matter now?
AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. It's the practice of structuring your organization's information so that AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Gemini can correctly understand, categorize, and recommend you.
Before a potential client types a single search query, they may have already asked an AI about you. That AI has formed an opinion. AEO determines what that opinion is.
If you're not doing AEO, one of three things is happening: AI says nothing, you don't exist for it. AI says something incomplete, you exist, but with no depth or relevance. AI says something wrong, hallucinated facts, a wrong city, wrong services. All three cost you trust you didn't know you were losing.
ChatGPT and other AI systems are rapidly becoming a measurable acquisition channel.
Semrush ChatGPT Traffic Analysis, April 2026 →
What's the difference between AEO and SEO?
SEO helps your pages rank. AEO helps AI systems understand and recommend you.
Google ranks pages based on keywords, backlinks and user behavior. AI systems do not work like that. They build a model of who you are from structured signals, entity data, external sources and context, then synthesize an answer.
That is why you can rank #1 on Google and still not exist for ChatGPT. SEO gets you found in search. AEO gets you named in answers.
Who is richresults.ai for?
richresults.ai is an AEO agency for organizations where expertise, reputation and specificity matter, and where being misunderstood by AI has real consequences.
richresults.ai works with these organizations across cultural institutions, architecture, design-led companies, destination brands, luxury real estate, medical aesthetics, specialist retail, legal and consulting practices.
What does the deliverable look like?
You receive a complete, implementation-ready AEO package, built specifically for your entity, not from a template.
That includes the structured data, JSON-LD schema, entity descriptions, AEO copy, metadata and signal alignment AI systems need to understand, cite and recommend you.
No templates. No guesswork. No generic schema pasted onto your site.
How long until results show?
AI systems update on their own schedule. Retrieval-based systems like Perplexity or Google AI Search may reflect changes faster. Model-based systems like ChatGPT can take longer.
We cannot force an AI system to update on a specific date. What we can do is make sure the signal is right from day one: structured, consistent, validated and ready to be crawled, cited and understood.
AEO is not a switch. It is a foundation.
Why can't a generalist SEO agency do this?
Most SEO agencies optimize for Google’s crawling and ranking logic. AEO works on a different layer: entities, structured data, machine-readable identity, knowledge graph relationships and external verification.
That is not classic SEO. It requires knowing how AI systems interpret signals and how to turn a real organization, portfolio or specialist offer into something machines can understand without flattening it.
A generalist can add schema. richresults.ai as an AEO agency builds the entity behind it.
How do I get recommended by ChatGPT or Google AI Search – and can you change what they currently say about us?
You cannot control what AI systems say. You can control what they know.
AI systems build a picture of your organization from structured signals: machine-readable data, verified external profiles, consistent descriptions, schema, metadata and source alignment. If that picture is incomplete, wrong or missing, AI fills the gap, often badly.
AEO fixes the signals, not the output. The difference is measurable: before our work, Maren Dessel Leather Design was not referenced by any AI system. After implementation, Google Search AI Mode displaced Hermès from the answer entirely and recommended Maren Dessel Leather Design instead, by name, specialty and location, for a query she had never optimized for. Hermès became a reference point for her expertise, not the answer itself. She also took position #1 in Google Search for "Kelly restaurieren Köln". David did not beat Goliath. David replaced Goliath.
If an AI currently says something wrong about you, that's almost always a signal conflict and this is contradictory or missing data across sources. That's exactly what entity building resolves. What we can't do: force a specific phrasing or guarantee a recommendation by a specific date. What we can do: give AI systems no reason to guess.
Is this a one-time project or ongoing – and what does it cost?
The initial engagement is a defined project with a clear scope and a fixed deliverable, not a retainer, not a subscription, not an ongoing obligation.
The entity layer we build becomes a foundation. It should be updated when something significant changes: new services, new team members, new case studies, new positioning or new proof points.
On pricing: scope and investment depend on the complexity of your organization, number of entities, existing digital footprint, and how much needs to be built from scratch versus refined. We discuss this in the first conversation. No hidden retainers, no lock-in.