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Understanding AEO

What is
AEO?

Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring your organization's information so AI systems can correctly understand, categorise, and recommend you before potential client ever visits your website.

Don´t let AI fill in the blanks 
Only 12.4% of all websites have structured data. The rest are invisible to AI or worse, misrepresented.
If you're not doing AEO

When people ask ChatGPT,
one of three things happens:

State 01
AI says nothing.
You don't exist for it. A potential client asks ChatGPT who to contact for your kind of work, but your name never comes up. You are invisible at the moment of intent.
State 02
AI says something incomplete.
You exist, but with no depth or relevance. The AI mentions you as a vague guess, wrong city, wrong services, no credentials. Worse than nothing: it signals you're unimportant.
State 03 — AEO
AI says the right thing.
Your name, your specializm, your location, your work, stated correctly, with confidence. The AI recommends you by name before a potential client types a single search query.
SEO vs AEO

SEO gets you ranked.
AEO gets you named.

Structured Data · Frase.io, 2025

Only 12.4% of registered domains use structured data. The rest leave AI systems to infer who they are, often from incomplete, inconsistent, or outdated signals..

12.4%
AI Traffic · Frase.io, 2025

AI-referred sessions jumped 527% between January and May 2025. The channel is growing faster than any previous shift in how people discover information online.

527%
AI Overviews · Frase.io, 2025

Pages with structured FAQ schema are 3.2× more likely to appear in Google AI Overviews than pages without it.

3.2×
SEO vs AEO

Different channels.
Different rules.

SEO

Optimizes for search engines. Google ranks your pages based on keywords, backlinks, and click behavior.

You succeed when someone clicks through to your website.

Established discipline. Well-understood playbook. Essential , but not sufficient.

AEO

Optimizes for AI systems. These don't rank pages , they build a model of who you are from structured signals, then synthesize an answer.

There's no click. Either you're in the answer or you're not.

An organization can rank #1 on Google and not exist for ChatGPT. These are different channels with different rules.

AI Visibility

What you really need
to know about
AI visibility.

Why AEO now? +

The vast majority of websites have no structured AEO. Even large, well-known brands often have incomplete or incorrect schema. The market in 2025/2026 is roughly where SEO was in 2005 — most organizations know it exists, very few are doing it properly.

AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Search or Claude, are forming opinions about organizations right now, with or without structured data and Entity building. The ones who build their entity layer first will be the default recommendation. Those that wait will spend time and money catching up to a baseline that early movers already own.


frase.io, March 2026 →
Why isn’t Google enough anymore? +

Because AI systems do not rank pages. They build a model of who you are from structured signals, entity data, sources and context, then synthesize an answer. An organization can rank #1 on Google and still not exist for ChatGPT.

A strong SEO presence is valuable. It just does not translate automatically into AI visibility. The two need to be built separately.

ChatGPT and other AI systems are already becoming measurable acquisition channels, delivering real traffic and conversions businesses can no longer ignore.



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 number one on Google and still not exist for ChatGPT. SEO gets you found in search. AEO gets you named in answers.

My website ranks well on Google. Do I still need AEO? +

Yes. A strong SEO presence is valuable — but it does not translate automatically into AI visibility.

AI systems do not rank pages. They build a model of who you are from structured signals and synthesize an answer. An organization can rank number one on Google and not exist for ChatGPT. The two need to be built separately.

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 builds the entity behind it.

Does my website need to be rebuilt for AEO? +

No. In most cases, AEO is implemented on your existing website. You usually do not need a redesign, a new CMS or a full rebuild.

The work happens on the data and signal layer: structured data, JSON-LD schema, entity signals, metadata, OG tags and AEO copy. If existing elements like H1s, title tags, meta descriptions or OG data are inconsistent or too weak, we can recommend targeted optimizations.

Not to reinvent your website, portfolio or offer — but to help AI systems understand, categorize and recommend your content clearly.

Get started

Ready to be understood by
ChatGPT,
Google AI Search
and Claude?

Let's build the entity signals your entity needs.

how AEO works →