What Is AEO? Answer Engine Optimisation, Tested (2026)

On 4 October 2026 we asked ChatGPT, with web search on and set to Malaysia, a question a business owner might ask before hiring us: how much do SEO agencies in Malaysia charge, and which ones publish their prices? The answer listed eleven agencies. One of them was Total Web Solutions, with our two packages at the correct prices, RM1,500 and RM3,000 a month, and a link to our pricing page. That same page sat at #53 in Google for “seo price malaysia” when third-party rank tracking last checked it, on 3 September 2026.

That gap, between where Google ranks a page and whether an AI assistant quotes it, is what people now call AEO. This guide explains what it means, what Google, Microsoft and OpenAI say about how their answer engines choose sources, and what our own tests on real Malaysian and Singapore questions showed, including the times our clients were not quoted.

What AEO means

AEO, answer engine optimisation, is the work of making your website easy for AI assistants to understand, trust and quote when they answer a question. An answer engine is any tool that replies with an answer instead of a list of links: Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and others. You will also see GEO (generative engine optimisation) and “AI SEO”; in practice they describe the same goal.

Is it different from SEO? Mostly not, and Google says so plainly: “You can apply the same foundational SEO best practices for AI features as you do for Google Search overall.”^[1] What is new is the shape of the win. In classic search you win a click on a blue link. In an answer engine you win a sentence: your fact, your price or your definition, quoted with a link. We have written separately about why AEO and GEO are not a replacement for SEO; this guide is about doing it.

How answer engines choose what to quote

Each company publishes a little about how its system works. Read together, they point the same way.

Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode “may use a ‘query fan-out’ technique”, running several related searches to build one answer. To be shown as a supporting link, “a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet”, and “There are no additional technical requirements.”^[1]
Microsoft explains that “Assistants like Copilot break content down, a process called parsing, into smaller, structured pieces that can be evaluated for authority and relevance.” It adds that “Consistent alignment between title, H1, and description improves both discoverability and confidence signals for AI systems.”^[2]
OpenAI uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot, which “is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT’s search features.” Sites that block it “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers”.^[3]

In plain terms: the engine must be able to reach your page, the page must be indexed, and each part of it must make sense on its own when it is pulled out and checked. A paragraph that only works if you read the three before it is hard to quote. A sentence that says “Our SEO Foundation package costs RM1,500 a month” is easy.

Our test: three questions, three lessons

On 4 October 2026 we asked ChatGPT three questions with web search on, the way a real customer might, set to Malaysia or Singapore. Here is who it quoted.

Question	What the answer quoted	The lesson
How much do SEO agencies in Malaysia charge, and which publish their prices?	Eleven agencies, including Total Web Solutions at RM1,500 and RM3,000, linked to our pricing page	Plain, specific, checkable facts get quoted, even from a page that ranks low in Google
From 1 October 2026, which Singapore projects must use CORENET X?	Only government sources: URA, BCA and the CORENET X help site	For rules and regulations, answer engines go to the source, not to the businesses explaining it
I need a dietitian in Kuala Lumpur who can see my elderly father at home. Who should I contact?	Several providers, including a dietitian practice whose website we look after, shown with its rating and review count	The answer added that the practice’s website didn’t clearly say whether it offers home visits. AI reads your site literally

ChatGPT with web search, 4 October 2026, one run per question. AI answers change between runs and between users, so treat this as a snapshot, not a ranking.

Lesson one: publish the fact people are looking for. We publish our SEO prices and a market range on one page. When someone asked who publishes prices, that page answered the question directly, so it was quotable. Most agencies say “contact us for a quote”; an answer engine has nothing to lift from that.

Lesson two: on rules, you are not the source. Our client Beyond+, a BIM consultancy in Singapore, published an explainer on the CORENET X change that reached #2 in Google Singapore for “corenet x code of practice” on desktop (a live check on 2 October 2026). Yet for the rule itself, ChatGPT quoted only URA, BCA and the official CORENET X site. That is reasonable: the regulator is the authority on the regulation. A business explainer earns its place on the next question, “what does this mean for my project?”, where experience matters more than the rule text.

Lesson three: say plainly what you do, and what you don’t. The dietitian practice was found, and its review rating was shown. But the answer flagged that the website didn’t clearly say whether home visits were available, and it put other providers first. A human might assume; an answer engine reports what the page says. If you offer a service, name it on the page, in words. If you don’t, say that too.

AEO in practice: what we do on a page

Answer first. The opening two sentences answer the page’s main question. Detail comes after.
Publish specifics. Prices or price ranges, areas served, opening hours, what is included and what isn’t. Specific facts are what get quoted.
One page per service or question. A page that tries to answer ten things answers none of them clearly.
Make the title, H1 and description agree. That is Microsoft’s point above, and it is the same advice we gave in our guide to title tags and title links.
Write headings as the questions people ask, and use lists and tables for anything that is naturally a list or a comparison.
Keep structured data honest. Google’s list for AI features includes “Making sure your structured data matches the visible text on the page”.^[1] Structured data helps a machine read a page; it does not earn a place by itself.
Keep your business details the same everywhere. Google’s list also includes keeping your Business Profile up to date.^[1] The dietitian result above showed the practice’s review rating next to the answer. See our Google Business Profile guide.
Let the crawlers in. Check that robots.txt, your security plugin and your hosting firewall allow Googlebot, Bingbot and OAI-SearchBot.

What not to do

Don’t buy a guaranteed AI placement. No one controls what an answer engine says, and the same question can give a different answer an hour later. A provider who promises you will be “recommended by ChatGPT” is promising something they cannot deliver.
Don’t assume you need special files. Google says there are no additional technical requirements for its AI features.^[1] For the record, totalwebsolutions.co had no llms.txt file on 4 October 2026, and ChatGPT still quoted our prices that day.
Don’t block the search crawlers by accident. Some firewalls and “block AI” settings stop OAI-SearchBot along with the training crawler, GPTBot. They are different bots: OpenAI says disallowing GPTBot means content “should not be used in training generative AI foundation models”, while OAI-SearchBot is the one that decides whether you appear in ChatGPT search.^[3] Decide on each separately.
Don’t rewrite your site for robots. Clear writing for people is what parses well for machines. Stuffing pages with question-and-answer filler makes them worse for both.

How to measure AEO

Google counts its AI features inside normal Search Console data: sites appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode “are included in the overall search traffic in Search Console”, reported in the Performance report under the “Web” search type.^[1] There is no separate AI report there, so we add a simple manual check: the same three to five customer questions, asked in two or three assistants each month, with the date and what was quoted written down. We will repeat the three questions above in our monthly SEO in Public record, including if our own result disappears.

Check it yourself

Ask the question your customer asks. In ChatGPT (with search), Copilot or Google’s AI Mode, type the exact question a customer would, including your town. Note who is quoted and what they said.
Read your robots.txt. Visit yoursite.com/robots.txt and look for any line that blocks Googlebot, Bingbot or OAI-SearchBot.
Read your own page like a machine. Pick your main service page and ask: does the first paragraph answer “what, where, how much”? If not, that is the first fix.
Test your structured data in Google’s Rich Results Test and confirm it matches what visitors see.

Frequently asked

What is AEO?

AEO, answer engine optimisation, is making your website easy for AI assistants such as Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT search and Copilot to understand, trust and quote when they answer a question. In practice it means clear, specific answers on well-structured pages that search engines can crawl and index.

Is AEO different from SEO?

Mostly no. Google says the same foundational SEO best practices apply to its AI features, with no additional technical requirements. The difference is the goal: instead of only winning a click, you want a specific fact or answer from your page to be quoted, so pages need clear, self-contained answers.

Do I need an llms.txt file for AEO?

Not for Google, which says its AI features have no additional technical requirements beyond normal indexing. Our own site had no llms.txt file on 4 October 2026 and ChatGPT still quoted our prices. It may help some tools, but it is not a substitute for clear pages.

How do I know if AI assistants are citing my business?

Ask them. Put your customers’ real questions into two or three assistants each month and record who is quoted, with the date. Google also includes AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic in the Search Console Performance report, under the Web search type.

Want to know what AI says about your business?

Send us your website and three questions your customers ask. We will put them to the main AI assistants, show you who gets quoted and why, and reply in writing with the changes most likely to make your pages quotable. Request a free written review, or see how our SEO agency work covers AI search.

References

Google Search Central, “AI features and your website”, last updated 10 December 2025. Accessed 4 October 2026.
Microsoft Advertising Blog, “Optimizing Your Content for Inclusion in AI Search Answers”, 8 October 2025. Accessed 4 October 2026.
OpenAI, “Overview of OpenAI Crawlers”. Accessed 4 October 2026.
Total Web Solutions records: ChatGPT answers with web search to three questions (location set to Malaysia or Singapore), 4 October 2026; third-party rank tracking for “seo price malaysia”, last checked 3 September 2026; live Google check from Singapore for Beyond+, 2 October 2026, published with the client’s agreement.

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