What are AEO services?
AEO services, or answer engine optimization, are the work of getting a brand named inside an AI-generated answer rather than ranked in a list of links. The work covers third-party mentions, review programs, structured data, and entity consistency across the web. For an ecommerce brand it overlaps heavily with SEO and PR.
Is AEO different from SEO?
The inputs overlap by most of their surface. The difference is what the system reads for. A search engine reads for keywords and links and returns a list. A model reads for entities and corroboration and returns a short answer. So structured data and third-party mentions carry more weight than they do in a ranking, and there is no position two to occupy.
What is generative engine optimization?
Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the same work under a different name. Some of the market calls it AEO and some calls it GEO, and the distinction people draw between them is not consistent enough to be useful. If an agency treats them as two products, ask what the second one includes that the first does not.
How much do AEO services cost?
Nothing on its own. It is inside the search engagement, which starts at $2,500 a month after a $2,875 setup. If someone is quoting you a separate AEO retainer, it is worth asking which of the four things above they are doing that regular search work does not already cover.
How long before we show up in AI answers?
Structured data and entity work land soonest, often inside a couple of months, because they are technical changes a model picks up when it next reads the site. The part that takes longer is third-party coverage, since a roundup has to be written before it can be read. Brands with existing reviews and press move faster than brands starting from nothing.
Is this worth doing yet?
Google still sends most of your traffic and we build for that first. What has changed is the step before the search, where some buyers ask an assistant for options and start their comparison from that answer. Since the work that earns a citation is mostly the work that earns rankings, the near-term return arrives through search either way.
Can you guarantee we get cited?
No, and anyone who does is describing something they do not control. There is no submission, no index, and no ranking factor to satisfy. What we control is whether the inputs exist, and we report monthly on what the prompts return so you can see whether they are moving.
Do we need to do anything ourselves?
Two things help and neither is heavy. Reviews, meaning whatever post-purchase flow you have should be asking for them. And access to your product data, so the structured markup describes what you actually sell rather than what the theme guessed.
