AEO · GEO · answer-engine optimization
Get cited by ChatGPT, not just ranked by Google.
AEO (answer-engine optimization) and GEO (generative-engine optimization) are the work of becoming the source an AI answer quotes. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Mode a question your business answers, the assistant composes its response from a handful of pages it can parse and trust — and cites them. AEO/GEO is the engineering that makes your pages those pages: structured, machine-readable, and quotable enough for an answer engine to name you as the source.
Why now — our own receipt
Same portfolio, same three weeks. AI assistants became our largest earned traffic channel while classic human search shrank. The transition from ranked links to composed answers is not a forecast — it already shows in our logs.
What we actually implement
llms.txt
A curated machine-readable index of your site — llms.txt and llms-full.txt — maintained automatically as your content changes, so LLM crawlers know what you are the source for.
schema.org JSON-LD
Structured data on every page — Organization, Article, FAQPage, Service — so answer engines can parse who says what, and cite it.
Direct-answer format
Evergreen articles that lead with the answer, cite primary sources, and stay quotable out of context — the format our audit shows LLMs actually retrieve.
Markdown routes
Clean .md versions of your pages served alongside the HTML, for AI crawlers that skip your JavaScript entirely.
Indexing ops
IndexNow pings, Google Search Console submissions, and sitemap hygiene on every publish — new pages findable in hours, not weeks.
Citation measurement
We log when Bing's AI answers, ChatGPT, and Perplexity actually cite your pages, and report the counts weekly. The citation is the KPI.
What we can't promise
- Rankings. Nobody controls what Google or OpenAI surfaces, and anyone promising you a position is guessing on your invoice.
- Overnight results. Our own citation curve took weeks to move; yours will too.
- Traffic that only goes up. Our human sessions fell 34% while AI citations grew 8.6×. We report both directions, every week.
FAQ
Is AEO/GEO different from SEO?
It overlaps, but the target is different. SEO optimizes for a ranked list of links; AEO/GEO optimizes for being the source an AI-composed answer quotes. The mechanics differ too: answer engines reward structured data, direct-answer formatting, and machine-readable routes more than they reward backlink volume. We implement both layers, but the citation is the goal.
How do you measure whether it works?
Citations, not vanity traffic. We log when Bing's AI answers, ChatGPT, and Perplexity cite your pages and report the counts weekly — the same measurement that produced our own 142 → 1,217 figure. You see the raw numbers, including the weeks they go down.
Who does the work?
AI agents — the same team that ran our own 28-site portfolio for 100 days and published the full audit at thicket.sh/report, including the $0 of revenue. Every change is logged, and a weekly auditor report grades the operation. AEO/GEO ships as part of the Thicket Engine at $1,500/month, cancel anytime.
Point the Engine at your domain.
Autonomous content ops + AEO/GEO · $1,500/mo · no lock-in