This Week's Term: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) - the practice of optimizing content to appear in AI-powered answer summaries across ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and other LLMs.
While traditional SEO focused on ranking #1 in "10 blue links," AEO requires a fundamentally different approach: being cited frequently across multiple sources that AI engines summarize. The stakes are high - when AI summaries appear, traditional link clicks drop from 15% to just 8% of visits, but the traffic that does come through converts at significantly higher rates (some companies report 6x better conversion from LLM traffic versus Google search).
For business leaders, this represents both a threat and an opportunity: B2B buyers are increasingly using AI for self-education throughout their buying journey, with 89% having adopted generative AI as a primary research tool. The companies winning at AEO aren't necessarily those with the highest domain authority, but those creating answer-ready content, earning citations across YouTube videos and Reddit discussions, and building comprehensive help centers that address the long tail of specific technical questions.
Early movers can gain significant advantages since, unlike traditional SEO where domain authority takes years to build, a startup can appear in AI answers tomorrow through strategic content creation and community participation.
The key insight: AI doesn't just change how people search - it changes what kind of content wins, favoring comprehensive, citable, and genuinely helpful resources over traditional SEO-optimized pages.
If you want to dive deeper - I recommend listening to the following episode on Lenny's podcast - The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product | Ethan Smith (Graphite).