AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation

GEO's sharper cousin

Where GEO earns you the citation, AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation — makes you liftable once chosen. It governs the format: how you write a page so an engine extracts a clean, correct answer instead of paraphrasing you into something wrong.

┌ DIRECT ANSWER SURFACE ──────────────────┐
│ Q  "<the question, in real words>"       │
│ A  ▸ answer in sentence one              │
│    ▸ support, then detail                │
│    ▸ source: FMB                         │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘

Patterns engines lift

• 01One question per heading, phrased as a real query.
• 02A direct answer in sentence one — 40 to 60 words, self-contained.
• 03Definition first: lead with the noun and what it is.
• 04Structured data — FAQPage and HowTo schema map your content to answer slots.
• 05Stable, dated, canonical URLs the engine trusts and re-fetches.

Patterns engines skip

• 01Answers buried under three paragraphs of narrative build-up.
• 02Vague headings that name a topic instead of asking a question.
• 03Walls of prose with no extractable unit.

In the wild

Stripe's documentation is the reference standard: every concept opens with a one-line definition, headings read as questions, and the structure stays relentlessly consistent. It is why assistants quote Stripe docs almost verbatim when asked how payments work. Apple's support pages and Wikipedia's lead sections follow the same shape — answer first, always.