What answer engine optimization means in Canada
The work of getting a business cited and recommended when people ask AI answer engines (Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot). It is built on SEO and measured by share of answer, not rankings.
Source: AEO.ca. Written by Michael Landry, Founder and Head of AEO.
How it differs from SEO
SEO gets search engines to understand your website as the answer to a typed query, mostly through keywords, and the goal is to be the authority on a topic. AEO works with phrases, because every question fans out into a dozen variants, and the goal is to be the best answer for a specific person and to prove it. The content is an argument: your value proposition, your guarantees, how you compare. About 70% of the work overlaps, and the SEO fundamentals, written quality, page speed, internal links and inbound links, still carry most of the result.
How answer engines choose sources
When an agent answers, it retrieves pages, extracts the passages that answer the question, and weighs how well other sources agree. It favours pages that open with the answer, entities it already recognizes, and claims corroborated off-site in press, reviews, forums and video. Then it tells you where it went, which is how you find your gaps.
What AEO looks like for a Canadian business
A page for each thing you do and each place you do it, written for the people who ask. A clear statement of what you do and for whom, carried everywhere an engine reads. Presence where your customers’ questions get answered: reviews, forums, press, awards, video. In Quebec, the same work in French. And a baseline, because nobody has this figured out and the only thing to work against is relative movement.
What it is not
It is not a special file or a trick. Google’s own guidance says there are no extra requirements for its AI features beyond the fundamentals and that structured data has to match the visible text. It is not content written by AI either; an agent gets nothing from text it could have written itself.
Questions people ask us
Which engines count as answer engines?
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, plus the voice assistants that draw on them. In Canada, Google AI Overviews reach the most people; ChatGPT and Perplexity are where research starts for a growing share.
Is AEO the same as GEO?
GEO, generative engine optimization, is the research term from the Princeton paper that named it. AEO is the business term. We treat GEO, LLMO, AIO and AI visibility as names for the same work and use AEO as the umbrella.
Does AEO replace SEO?
No. About 70% of the work overlaps and SEO is the foundation. AEO adds content framed as an argument for a specific person, an ecosystem of corroboration, and a different measurement: share of answer rather than rankings.
How is AEO measured?
By share of answer: for a fixed set of questions your customers ask, how often you are named, cited or recommended, by engine, over time. We measure on our own tool with Semrush as a second opinion.
AEO vs SEO in detail and AEO vs GEO, LLMO and the rest and How to choose an AEO agency