The AEO Blog
Field notes on answer engine optimization, AI search and how to get your business recommended by the machines your customers now ask.
Which Review Sites and Directories Do AI Answer Engines Actually Trust?
AI answers are assembled from third-party sources, not your homepage. Here's what makes a source trusted, which ones matter by category, and how to get your business into that evidence pool.
Read →AEOThe Agent Economy Has a Front Door — and AEO Decides Who Owns It
AI agents can now hire and pay humans. When people ask ChatGPT where that happens, the engine names four marketplaces. Here's the AEO playbook for winning an entirely new category.
Read →AEOShould You Block AI Crawlers? A Straight Answer for Businesses
Blocking GPTBot, PerplexityBot and friends sounds like protecting your content. For most businesses it's an accidental exit from every AI answer. Here's which bots to allow, which to block, and why.
Read →AEOHow to Appear in ChatGPT Shopping Results
Buyers are shortlisting products inside the chat window. Here's how ChatGPT assembles shopping answers, what quietly excludes your store, and the fix list in priority order.
Read →AEOHow to Track AI Mentions of Your Brand (Without Guessing)
Rank trackers can't tell you whether ChatGPT recommends you. Here's a practical system for measuring AI mentions, recommendation share, and accuracy — week over week.
Read →AEOGoogle AI Overviews for Local Businesses: How to Get Featured
Google's AI Overviews now answer the questions your customers used to click through for. Here's how local businesses can show up inside those answers — and what happens if you don't.
Read →AEODo Backlinks Still Matter for AEO? What Actually Drives AI Recommendations
Backlinks built your Google rankings for 20 years. But AI answer engines play by different rules. Here's what the data says — and where to focus instead.
Read →AEOWhy AI Doesn't Recommend Your Business (Even When It Knows You Exist)
The most common AEO gap isn't obscurity — it's the silent zero recommendation rate. Here's why it happens and how to fix it.
Read →AI SearchThe State of AI Search in 2026: What Every Business Owner Should Know
Answer engines have quietly become a primary discovery channel. A plain-English briefing on where things stand and what to do about it.
Read →See how AI answer engines rank your business
Run a free AI Visibility Scan and find out exactly how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews describe — and whether they recommend — your business today. Get a 4-dimension score and a prioritized fix plan in minutes.