Answer the Business
Learn

Answer Engine Optimization, without the hand-waving.

What we find asking each engine’s own search API the questions buyers actually type — same prompts, same city, and never the business’s name, because naming it manufactures the answer.

AEO basics
How do I get my business to show up in ChatGPT?

The honest answer has four steps, none of them exotic, and one uncomfortable caveat: nobody can promise you a place in an answer, including us.

·8 min
AEO basics
Is AEO just SEO with a new name?

A fair question, usually asked by somebody who has been sold a rebrand before. The overlap is real. So are five differences that change what you do on Monday.

·8 min
AEO basics
What an answer engine reads before it names you

Between somebody asking and your name appearing there are a few seconds of reading. Knowing what gets read explains almost every odd answer you have seen.

·8 min
AEO basics
Why your website is not the deciding vote

The most frustrating sentence in this whole subject. You control your website completely, and it is the source with the least say in how you are described.

·8 min
AEO basics
What is Answer Engine Optimization?

Search gave you ten chances to be chosen. An answer gives you one paragraph naming two or three businesses. There is no page two to grind up from.

·8 min
AEO basics
llms.txt, explained for local business

One file at your domain root, stating what you do, where you do it, and who you serve. It takes about an hour.

·8 min