Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of optimizing a brand’s information and content so AI answer systems can retrieve it, verify it, and cite it accurately inside generated responses. AEO focuses on making your brand “easy to answer with” by strengthening entity identity, publishing validator-clean, entity-linked JSON-LD, aligning to knowledge graph signals, and upgrading pages into answer-first, quote-ready formats.

In industry usage, AEO overlaps heavily with Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and broader “AI visibility” work. At Growth Marshal, we use AI Search Optimization (ASO) as an umbrella label for these overlapping practices, centered on the same outcome: being the named, accurate, citable recommendation in AI-generated answers.