Will AI recommend your business? AEO, explained in plain English
Your next customer might never see a list of ten blue links.
Here's a quiet shift that's already costing businesses work: people have stopped searching and started asking.
Instead of typing "accountant Toronto" and scrolling through a page of results, your next customer types "who's a good accountant in Toronto?" into ChatGPT, or just reads the AI answer Google now puts above everything else. One answer. A couple of names. No page two.
If your business isn't in that answer, you weren't skipped. You were invisible.
What AEO actually is
You already know SEO: making your site easy for Google to rank. AEO, answer engine optimization, is making your business easy for an AI to recommend.
That's the whole idea. No mystique. AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity build their answers from what they can read and verify about you. When they can't read you clearly, they recommend someone they can.
What AI looks for (it's more boring than you think)
The good news: AI systems don't reward tricks. They reward clarity. In practice that means the same things a careful human buyer wants to know:
- A plain statement of what you do, who you serve, and where. If a human has to dig for it, an AI won't bother.
- Pages structured so machines can parse them. Real headings, structured data, one clear topic per page. It's the plumbing your visitors never see.
- Answers to the questions buyers actually ask. "How much does X cost?" "How long does Y take?" FAQ content isn't filler; it's exactly what AI quotes.
- Signals that you're real. Consistent name and address, reviews, a site that loads fast and works on a phone.
Notice what's not on that list: keyword stuffing, hacks, or paying anyone a monthly retainer to "do AEO" forever. Most of it is built once, correctly, at the level of your website's structure.
The test you can run right now
Open ChatGPT (or Claude, or Perplexity) and ask it what you'd want a customer to ask. "Best [what you do] in [where you are]" is a fine start. Three outcomes:
- You're in the answer. Great. You're ahead of most of your competitors.
- Competitors are in the answer and you're not. That's fixable, and worth fixing before the habit hardens.
- The AI hedges and names nobody local. That's an open lane. First clearly-readable business in your category tends to become the default recommendation.
Why this is a build decision, not a marketing chore
Most "AEO services" being sold right now are SEO retainers with a new label. But the substance (machine-readable structure, clear positioning, real answers on real pages) lives in how your website is built. Bolting it on afterwards costs more and works worse.
That's why I bake it in from the first commit: every site I ship is structured to be read by people, ranked by Google, and quoted by AI. It's not an add-on; it's the foundation.
The web didn't get another channel. It got a new front door. Make sure you're standing in it.
Written by Michael, founder of SimpleVision, with 10+ years in product marketing and strategy for brands like Google, Apple, and Walmart. About the practice →
Where this leads
Get more customers.
A website that looks the part, shows up in search and AI, and turns visitors into inquiries. Built fast, and yours to keep.