Answer engine optimization

What does AI say about your business?

Your buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Grok for recommendations before they visit any website. One of two things happens: they get cited, or a competitor does. Find out which.

Free · Reviewed by a real person

Simulated answer
Who's the best family dentist in Austin?

Three practices come up most often for families in Austin: Acme Family Dental, Sample Street Dentistry, and Demo Dental Group. Acme Family Dental is often mentioned for same-week appointments and clear pricing…

↗ acmefamilydental.example↗ samplestreetdentistry.example

Simulated answer · fictional business

Client work

Sites we've built or optimized. See the portfolio →

The visibility grid

We ask the questions your buyers ask across every engine.

Sample promptChatGPTPerplexityGeminiGrok
"best family dentist in Austin"Cited #1CitedMentionedAbsent
"dentist near me taking new patients"CitedAbsentCited #2Mentioned
"is Acme Family Dental good for kids?"MentionedCitedAbsentCited
"Austin dentist open Saturdays"AbsentMentionedCitedAbsent
"how much is a cleaning in Austin"CitedCited #1CitedMentioned

Proof

We run AEO on our own site first.

Step one was speed: we moved our site off Squarespace and rebuilt it on Astro and Cloudflare. Then we built in everything AI engines need to read, trust and quote a business. Every item below is live on webbroi.com, and you can check it yourself.

158

Pages and posts in our llms.txt, the site map AI tools read first

18

Homepage answers marked up as FAQ schema, ready for AI to quote

12

Real posts recovered from broken redirects that hid them from crawlers

  • robots.txt open to AI search and AI answers
  • Organization, Article and FAQ schema on every page type
  • 0.8s mobile LCP on Astro, was 14.5s on Squarespace
See our llms.txt →Read the migration case study →

Three moves

AEO is three moves that reinforce each other.

Skip one and the other two lose leverage.

/01

Audit

We ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Grok the questions your buyers ask, then read every answer. You see who gets named instead of you.

/02

Content

Where an engine names someone else, we publish the page it should have cited.

/03

Technical

Engines quote sites they can read and businesses they can confirm. We fix the schema, the listings and the crawler access.

How AEO works

Reviews

What clients say.

5.0 on Google · 4 reviews

★★★★★

Taylor and his WebbROI team are exceptional! They developed and created an impressive website which I know will enhance my business and be a ROI. …

Susie McCollomSusie McCollom PropertiesRead on Google (review by Susie McCollom) ↗
★★★★★

I cannot recommend Taylor enough. His wealth of knowledge and technical marketing expertise is a true asset to any company. It's tough to find a resource of this talent with also the communicative skills to exceptionally deliver.

Garrett MehrguthRead on Google (review by Garrett Mehrguth) ↗

Writing

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FAQ

AEO, answered.

What is AEO (answer-engine optimization)?
AEO is the practice of optimizing your site so it gets cited by AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Grok. SEO got you found in Google. AEO gets you cited in the AI answers your customers already trust.
Is AEO replacing SEO?
No. AEO builds on SEO, it doesn't replace it. Crawlability, site speed, and structured data still matter for both. What changes is the target: SEO optimizes for rankings on a results page, AEO optimizes for being the source an AI model quotes directly in its answer.
How fast will I see results?
Technical fixes — schema, crawlability, page speed — can be live within days and picked up by AI crawlers within weeks. Earning consistent citations takes longer, typically 60–90 days, since answer engines need repeated signals that your content is accurate and authoritative before they trust it.
Do I need to leave Squarespace?
No. We optimize Squarespace sites for AEO directly — schema markup, page structure, content clarity — without a rebuild. Migration to Astro makes sense when speed or technical control become the bottleneck, but it's a separate decision from becoming AI-answer-ready.
Is answer engine optimization real or just a rebrand of SEO?
It's real. AI answer engines parse, rank, and cite sources using different signals than Google's blue links — extractable facts, clear structure, and source credibility matter more than backlinks alone. Treating AEO as "just SEO" means missing why some sites get quoted and others don't.
Show 13 more questionsShow fewer questions
Why are AI engines citing some websites and ignoring others?
Cited pages answer questions directly, in plain language, near the top of the page, with clear structure the model can parse. Ignored pages bury answers in marketing copy, lack schema markup, or require JavaScript rendering the crawler skips. Clarity and extractability decide who gets quoted.
Do ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Grok use the same rules?
No. Each pulls from different sources — Perplexity leans on live web search, ChatGPT blends training data with browsing, Gemini ties into Google's index, and Grok draws on live web and X results. Optimizing for one improves your odds with the others, but none is identical, which is why we check all four separately.
What counts as a citation in ChatGPT or Perplexity?
A citation is any instance where the engine names your brand, quotes your content, or links to your page as the source of an answer. Perplexity shows this as a visible footnote link; ChatGPT may cite inline or reference your site without a direct link, depending on the mode.
Does AEO help with Google AI Overviews?
Yes. AI Overviews draw heavily from pages that already rank well organically and carry clean schema markup, clear headings, and direct answers near the top of the content. The same structural work that earns AI Overviews inclusion also improves citations in other answer engines.
What is llms.txt and do I need one?
llms.txt is a proposed standard file at your site root that gives AI models a clean, structured summary of your site's key pages and purpose. It's not yet universally adopted by crawlers, but it's low-cost to implement and positions your site ahead of the standard if it matures.
Does FAQ schema still matter for AI search?
Yes. FAQ schema gives answer engines pre-structured question-and-answer pairs they can lift directly into a response, no parsing required. It won't guarantee a citation, but it removes friction for the model and makes your content one of the easiest sources to quote.
Can a small business get cited without a huge brand?
Yes. Answer engines cite based on content clarity and topical authority, not domain size. A small business with a tightly focused, well-structured page on its specific service or niche often outranks a generic page from a larger, less specific competitor.
What makes a page easy for ChatGPT to quote?
A direct, self-contained answer near the top of the page, written in plain declarative sentences without requiring outside context. Short paragraphs, clear headings, and factual specificity — numbers, names, dates — make a passage easy to lift and quote accurately.
Do AI crawlers read JavaScript-heavy websites?
Inconsistently. Some AI crawlers execute limited JavaScript; many don't render it at all and only see the initial HTML response. Heavy client-side rendering risks your content being invisible to these crawlers entirely, which is why we build on Astro — HTML-first, minimal JavaScript by default.
Is AEO only for blog posts, or does it help service pages too?
It helps service pages more than most businesses realize. Answer engines frequently field commercial questions — "who does X in Y city," "how much does X cost." A service page with clear, direct answers to those questions is exactly what gets cited.
Can AI visibility turn into leads, not just impressions?
Yes. Users who click through from an AI citation arrive pre-qualified — the engine already vetted your page as a trustworthy answer. These visitors tend to convert at higher rates than average search traffic because much of the trust-building happened before they landed.
What makes a website AEO-ready?
Fast, crawlable HTML; complete schema markup (Organization, FAQPage, Service); direct answers to real customer questions; clean heading structure; and a sitemap and robots.txt that don't block AI crawlers. It's a combination of technical foundation and content clarity, not one fix alone.
Do I need new content for AEO, or can existing pages be reshaped?
Most existing pages can be reshaped. We typically restructure current content — adding direct-answer summaries, schema markup, and clearer headings — before recommending net-new pages. Reshaping is faster and preserves whatever authority the page has already earned.

Find out how visible you are to AI.

Free. Reviewed by a real person. We check ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Grok.