Answer engine optimization
Answer engine optimization: about half of what an AI answer quotes is the business's own site. We counted 755 citations and 403 of them pointed home.
AEO is the work of being quotable when an assistant answers instead of listing links. We classified every source behind 175 recorded answers: 755 citations across 459 distinct domains, of which 403 pointed at a named business's own website and the rest at directories, forums and platforms.
403 of 755
citations behind an AI answer that pointed at a business's own site, not a directory or a forum
What we measured
- Across 175 recorded answers we classified 755 citations spanning 459 distinct domains; 403 of them pointed at a named business's own website and 352 at directories, forums and platforms.
- That is 53% of citations landing on a business's own pages, which makes the business's own site the single largest source class an answer engine draws on.
- The remaining 47% sits on domains no business controls, so a site alone cannot account for everything an answer is built from.
- In one trade the share of citations reaching businesses' own sites fell to zero, so the 53% is an average across trades and not a floor.
What an answer engine is quoting
An answer engine does not hand back ten links. It writes a paragraph and cites what it read. The practical question for a business owner is simple: is it reading my site, or is it reading somebody else's page about me?
We counted. Across 175 answers we recorded and classified every source: 755 citations, 459 distinct domains. 403 of those citations pointed at the website of a business the answer named. 352 pointed somewhere else - a directory, a forum, a video, a platform.
What that means for where the work goes
A little over half the material is yours to change. Your own pages are the largest single class of source an answer engine draws on, which is why making them readable and quotable is not a fringe activity.
The rest is not yours. Directories, review platforms and forums carry the balance, and no amount of on-site work moves them directly. Any vendor implying that fixing your website addresses the whole citation surface is overstating what half the evidence allows.
| Where the citations went | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| The named business's own website | 403 | 53% |
| Directories, forums, platforms, video | 352 | 47% |
| Total citations classified | 755 | 100% |
| Distinct domains behind them | 459 | |
| Answers those citations came from | 175 |
755 citations classified across 175 recorded answers and 459 distinct domains. 'Own site' means the domain of a business the answer named; borderline cases were counted conservatively, against our own interest.
The number is an average, not a promise
The 53% is a mean across the trades we measured, and the spread is wide. In one trade not a single citation reached a named business's own site - every source was a third party.
So 'optimize your answers' is trade-specific work. The honest first step is counting where the citations go in your trade before deciding where the effort belongs.
The questions this page answers
answer engine optimization
2,400/mowhat is aeo in marketing
880/moaeo model
880/mowhat does aeo stand for
590/moaeo marketing
590/moaeo optimization
480/moaeo search
480/moanswer engine optimization aeo
480/moaeo definition
320/moaeo ai
320/moaeo in marketing
110/mowhat does aeo stand for?
27/mowhat does the aeo stand for?
16/mo
13 questions, 7,573 searches a month between them. All 14 answers we examined on them were produced by a web search, which means a page can reach every one.
Who an assistant cites on these questions today
- hubspot.com 11
- youtube.com 9
- reddit.com 8
- tryprofound.com 8
- coursera.org 7
- seo.com 5
- forbes.com 3
- marceldigital.com 3
- contentmarketinginstitute.com 2
- siteimprove.com 2
53 distinct domains are cited across these questions; the 10 above are the most frequent, with the number of answers each appears in. Counted from the answers captured in our corpus, not from a market census.
What to ask before you buy
- Ask an AEO vendor what share of citations in your trade currently reaches businesses' own sites. If they cannot answer with a count, they have not measured your trade.
- Be sceptical of an offer that is entirely on-site work. Roughly half the citation surface sits on domains you do not own.
- Schema and FAQ markup do other useful jobs, but our comparison of cited against uncited pages found them slightly more common on the uncited side. They are not the mechanism.
Honest limits of what we measured
- 755 citations from 175 answers is a real sample but a bounded one, taken on a logged-in assistant in US metros. Other surfaces and other countries will differ.
- Classifying a domain as 'the business's own site' is a judgement made by matching domains to named businesses; borderline cases exist and we counted them conservatively.
- We measure what is cited, not what caused the citation. Nothing here establishes that changing a page changes whether it is quoted.
Questions we get asked
What does AEO stand for?
Answer engine optimization. The 'answer engine' is any system that replies with a written answer and a citation list rather than a page of links - ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI answers all behave this way.
Is AEO different from GEO?
The two names describe the same work in practice. We keep separate pages because the domains cited on questions asked under each abbreviation differ, which is a measurable difference even when the discipline is not.
If half the citations are on sites I do not own, what can I actually do?
Two things, and they are different jobs. Your own pages you can make readable and quotable, and that addresses the larger half. The third-party half is a question of what directories and forums say about you, which is slower work and outside what we sell.
Does adding FAQ schema make my page more likely to be quoted?
We compared 112 cited pages against 128 uncited ones drawn from the same searches. Schema and FAQ markup were slightly more common on the uncited side. Markup is worth having for other reasons; on this evidence it is not what decides a citation.
Start with one free reading
One business, real questions, the raw answers back - before you decide on anything paid. If you are running this for a book of clients, say so and we will talk terms rather than quote a page price.
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Related
Pricing is per category, because the work differs by how competitive the answers are. See every category we measure and what a reading costs →
Published 31 August 2026. Every figure on this page is recomputed from raw observation files by a single script, so any of them can be traced back to the readings behind it. We make your site citable. We do not promise placement in any assistant’s answer - we measure whether you are in it, and show you the raw answers either way.