A
Accessibility tree The accessibility tree is the structure a browser derives from a page and presents to assistive technology; it is the page a screen reader sees. Accessibility
Accessible name The accessible name is the name of an interface element as read by assistive technology, and it can differ from the text shown on screen. Accessibility
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the practice of getting content selected as the unit that answers a question directly. Answer engines
What is AEO?
AEO is the practice of getting content selected as the unit that answers a question directly.
The term spread alongside featured answer boxes in search results and the replies of voice assistants. The goal is to be taken as the answer to a question — not to appear in a list of links.
GEO and AEO are often used interchangeably, and the difference between them is subtle. AEO’s unit is the question-and-answer pair, and the answer is usually taken as it stands. GEO’s unit is the passage, and the passage is synthesised with other sources. In practice both demand the same discipline in writing.
That discipline fits in a sentence: give the answer first. The answer to the question has to sit in the section’s opening sentence, with the reasoning and detail coming afterwards. A section that begins “there are several important points here” is never selected as an answer by any engine.
The second discipline is independence. An answer that is taken must stand up once it is detached from the page — a sentence containing a back-reference becomes meaningless when quoted, and the model hesitates to select it.
- Make the question one that is genuinely asked.
- Keep the answer short — two or three sentences.
- Make the first sentence true without context.
- Put the question in the heading and the answer right below it.
- Mark it up with schema — but everything in the schema must also be on screen.
The most concrete side benefit of AEO is that it forces you to actually collect the questions people ask. A good list of questions cannot be invented — it is gathered from customer correspondence, search console queries and the real language of community platforms. That gathering clarifies the whole content plan as well.
And one limit: a question whose answer runs to a page belongs on its own page, not in a question-and-answer block. The block is for questions with short answers; long answers squeezed into it are neither quoted nor read.
- Make the question one that is genuinely asked — gather them from customer correspondence.
- Keep the answer short — two or three sentences; a long answer is not quoted.
- Make the first sentence true without context — use no back-references.
- Put the question in the heading and let the answer follow immediately.
- Mark it up with schema — but everything in the schema must also be on screen.
The fifth item is required by the rules rather than a preference: a question-and-answer block that exists only in the schema is both a violation of search engine guidelines and incomplete for the user.
The boundary between AEO and GEO is blurred in practice, and treating them as separate disciplines produces an unnecessary distinction. Both rest on the same discipline in writing: give the answer first, keep the passage independent, be concrete. That the terms are separate does not mean the work is.
If you want to know how your brand is cited in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, our GEO consulting records which questions and engines cite you and builds the prerequisites.
Answer engines
AI Overviews is the AI-generated summary Google shows above the search results page, synthesised from more than one source. Answer engines
ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is a set of attributes used to convey role, state and property information to assistive technology where HTML cannot express it on its own. Accessibility
B
Brand mention A brand mention is a brand’s name being named without a link, and in the era of answer engines it is a visibility signal independent of links. Answer engines
C
Cache header A cache header is the server response header that tells the browser how long a resource may be stored and how it is to be revalidated. Performance
Canonical address A canonical address is the markup declaring which page is the original when the same or very similar content is reachable from more than one address. Multilingual
Citation A citation is an answer engine mentioning a source in the answer it produces, usually with a link to it. Answer engines
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measures how much content shifts unexpectedly while a page is loading or in use, and Google counts anything under 0.1 as good. Performance
Colour blindness is the inability to tell certain colours apart, and it affects a considerable share of the world’s population, men in particular. Accessibility
Compression is the shrinking of text-based resources before they are sent from the server and their expansion in the browser. Performance
Core Web Vitals is the collective name for the three metrics Google defined to measure a page’s real user experience. Performance
Country domain (ccTLD) A country domain is a two-letter top-level domain extension allocated to a particular country. Multilingual
Crawl budget is the number of requests a search engine allocates to fetching from a site within a given period. Answer engines
Critical rendering path The critical rendering path is the minimum sequence of steps a browser must complete before it can draw a page on screen. Performance
E
Entity An entity means a distinct thing that search and answer engines recognise — a person, an organisation, a place, a product or a concept. Answer engines
F
Field data is the sum of performance measurements experienced by real users on real devices and real networks. Performance
Focus trap A focus trap is when keyboard focus enters a region and cannot leave it again, and WCAG prohibits it explicitly at level A. Accessibility
Font subset A font subset is a font file regenerated with only the characters that are needed. Multilingual
G
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the work of increasing the likelihood that a site is chosen as a source in the answers generated by AI systems. Answer engines
H
hreflang is the markup that declares a page’s different language and region versions to search engines. Multilingual
I
IndexNow is an open protocol that tells search engines immediately that a page has changed. Answer engines
INP (Interaction to Next Paint) is the time from a user interaction until the page responds visually, and Google counts anything under 200 milliseconds as good. Performance
J
JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a structured data format that declares a page’s meaning in a machine-readable form without changing the page’s appearance at all. Answer engines
L
Language tag (BCP 47) A language tag is the standard coding form that tells machines which language a text is in. Multilingual
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is the paint time of the largest content element in a page’s visible area, and Google counts anything under 2.5 seconds as good. Performance
Live region A live region is an area of a page whose changes a screen reader has to announce to the user. Accessibility
llms.txt is an optional file placed in a website’s root directory that summarises, in Markdown, what the site is about and where its most important pages are for language models. Answer engines
Locale A locale is the setting that defines a user’s language and region together and determines the formatting rules. Multilingual
Localisation (Localization) is adapting content to the culture, habits and search language of a target market; it is a wider undertaking than translation. Multilingual
R
Reflow A reflow is the browser recomputing the positions and sizes of elements on a page after a change. Performance
Relative luminance is the value expressing a colour’s perceived lightness between 0 and 1, and it is the basis of the contrast ratio calculation. Accessibility
S
Screen reader A screen reader is assistive technology that turns on-screen content into speech or braille output and lets the user navigate by keyboard. Accessibility
Semantic HTML means choosing each element for its meaning rather than its appearance — a heading element for a heading, a button element for a button, a list element for a list. Accessibility
Structured data is an additional layer that labels a page’s content with a standard vocabulary machines can understand. Answer engines
T
Text expansion is the same content being of different lengths in different languages, and the layout having to flex accordingly. Multilingual
Translation memory A translation memory is a database that stores previously translated sentences and suggests them when the same or a similar sentence comes up again. Multilingual
TTFB (Time to First Byte) is the time between the browser sending a request and receiving the first byte from the server. Performance
W
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is the international standard published by the W3C that defines the accessibility of web content through testable success criteria. Accessibility
X
x-default is a special hreflang value declaring the default page to show when no language version matches the user’s language. Multilingual