Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).

They do not agree with each other.

Each assistant reads different sources and ranks them its own way. The same question, asked on the same morning, can return two different sets of businesses. That is the single most useful thing to know before anyone sells you a score.

ChatGPT

Answers conversationally and will browse when a question needs current information. A business usually appears because something it can reach says so, not because the business asked.

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

Written above the ordinary results and drawn from Google's own index, which means the things that make a page findable in Google still matter here, and your Business Profile carries weight for local questions.

Perplexity

Shows its sources beside the answer, which makes it the easiest place to see WHY a business was named. If you only ever check one, check this one first, because it tells you where to go next.

Claude and Copilot

Answer the same buying questions in their own words, with their own view of which sources are worth repeating. Treat each as a separate audience rather than assuming one result stands for all of them.

Which is why a result that names the assistant and the date is worth more than a number that names neither.

What a real run looks like.

On 24 September 2026 we put five buying questions about hiring an electrician in West Palm Beach to an AI answer engine and published the whole run, including the things we failed to record at the time. Thirteen businesses were named across five answers and five of them appeared exactly once. One engine, five questions, and we say so.

Questions owners ask.

What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

AEO is the work of becoming one of the names an assistant gives when a customer asks who to hire. An answer is not a list of ten links. It is a short piece of writing that names two or three businesses and then stops, usually with a few sources attached. AEO is about being in that writing, and about what it says when you are.

Which assistants actually answer buying questions?

The ones your customers already have open. ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Copilot all answer questions of the form who should I hire for this, near here. They are separate products built on separate indexes, which is why the answers differ.

Why do two assistants give different answers to the same question?

Because they are reading different things. One may be summarising live search results, another a trained model with a cut-off, another a mixture with its own ranking of which sources to trust. The same question, asked of two assistants on the same morning, can return two different sets of businesses. That is why a report that names one assistant and one date is worth more than a score with neither.

Where do the names in an AI answer come from?

From sources the assistant can read and has reason to trust. Directory listings, review profiles, articles, forum threads, and the businesses' own pages when those pages are clear enough to be quoted. If none of the sources an assistant leans on mention your business, no amount of work on your own website alone will put you in the answer.

My website ranks well. Why am I not in the answers?

Ranking and being named are different outcomes with different inputs. A page can sit at the top of a results list and still never be quoted, because an assistant is choosing what to say rather than what to list. The usual causes are a business whose details disagree between listings, pages written for people skimming rather than for a machine quoting, and no mentions anywhere an assistant already reads.

How do I check what the assistants say about my business?

Ask them, and write it down. Put the questions a customer would ask, note every business named in each answer, and keep the date and the exact wording so the test can be repeated. Our free report does this for your trade and your area and records which assistant was asked, which businesses came back, whether yours did, and the sources behind each answer.

Is AEO worth doing for a small local business?

It depends on whether your buyers ask assistants at all, and the honest way to find out is to run the questions before spending anything. For trades and practices where people ask for a recommendation rather than browse a list, being one of three names is worth more than being one of ten links.

What does being described correctly mean?

An assistant can name your business and still get it wrong: the wrong suburb, services you stopped offering, hours that changed, a phone number from an old listing. Being named is the first half. The second is that the sentence around your name is accurate, because that sentence is what the customer acts on.

Find out which assistants name you.

The free report asks five buying questions in your category and shows every company that came back, including whether yours did.