I asked ChatGPT "What's the best accessibility testing tool?" last week. It cited three products. Mine wasn't one of them. My site ranks on page 1 of Google for that exact query.
That's the problem. Google rankings don't guarantee AI citations. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews decide what to cite using different signals than traditional search. This shift has created a new discipline: Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO).
AEO is the practice of structuring web content so that AI-powered search engines can extract, understand, and cite it.
How answer engines differ from search engines
Search engines reward relevance. Answer engines reward extractability.
