What is AEO, and why should a practice care?
Answer Engine Optimisation is the work of making a business and its expertise easy for AI assistants to find, read and describe accurately. Not a position in a list of links — how you are represented when the answer is written as prose instead.
Clients stopped scrolling. They started asking.
For twenty years, finding a consultant meant typing something into Google and working down a page of ten blue links. Every agency in the country learned to compete for those ten places.
A growing share of research doesn't start there any more. Someone opens ChatGPT and types “we're converting a mill building into apartments in Greater Manchester — what consultants do we need and who handles this kind of scheme?” — and gets back a short written answer naming a few practices, with a reason for each.
There is no page two, and there are no ten links. There is a paragraph, and either your practice is described in it or it isn't.
The behaviour skews towards the more considered work. Someone who already knows exactly which consultant they want still goes straight to Google. Someone scoping a refurbishment, working out which disciplines a project needs, or drawing up a list of practices to approach asks an assistant to explain the options first — because it is a bigger decision and they want it set out.
The five answer engines we optimise for
Each one builds its answers differently, so being named by one doesn't mean being named by the rest.
- ChatGPTThe default for most people now
- PerplexityAnswers with cited sources
- Google AI OverviewsAbove the blue links
- GeminiBuilt into Android and Search
- ClaudeWidely used for research
Not mentioned at all. Then named and described.
The same question put to the same assistant, before the groundwork and after it. An illustration of what changes — not a result we can promise.
“Which practices handle mill-to-residential conversions in Greater Manchester?”
You aren't mentioned at all
“Which practices handle mill-to-residential conversions in Greater Manchester?”
Your practice is named, and described accurately▌
Illustrative example, not a client result. Your free audit shows the real version — the actual answers each assistant gives for the kind of work you do, right now.
Five levers, pulled together
None of these is a secret and none is a guarantee. They are the groundwork that makes it possible for an assistant to describe you accurately — worth doing partly because few UK consultancies have done any of it yet.
Schema / JSON-LD
Machine-readable markup describing your services, sectors, project types, credentials and locations. It's how a model can tell you're a chartered structural engineer working on conservation projects across the North West, rather than just a page of words.
AI-ready FAQ content
Content written the way clients actually ask — "do I need a structural engineer to remove a load-bearing wall?", not "our structural services". Answer-first, specific, and structured so a model can lift a clean paragraph straight out of it.
Trusted citations
Consistent details across the directories, professional bodies and industry sources these models were trained on and still draw from. Consistency matters more than volume: one wrong phone number across four listings does real damage.
llms.txt
A plain-text file at the root of your site giving language models a clean summary of who you are, what you do and where you work. It costs almost nothing and few UK consultancy websites have one — though on its own it is a small piece, not a route into AI answers.
Monthly visibility tracking
We ask each assistant the questions your clients ask, every month, and record whether you're named, how you're described and who else appears. Without this you're guessing, and so is anyone selling you AEO.
See where you stand today
We'll run all five checks against your practice and send you a 5-page report showing what each assistant actually says when someone asks for the kind of work you do.
Get the free auditAEO, answered properly
AEO is the work of making a business and its expertise easy for AI assistants to find, read and represent accurately — the assistants people now use to research and shortlist consultants. Traditional SEO competes for a position in a list of links. AEO is concerned with how you are described when the answer is written as prose instead.
See how your practice looks when someone searches
Get a free AI-search audit: we'll record how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews answer when someone asks for what you do, and send you the report.