What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring your digital presence so AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity can accurately understand, verify, and cite your business when users ask questions. Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking in search results, AEO ensures AI engines have the structured data, entity clarity, and extractable content they need to recommend you by name in conversational answers. AEO builds on SEO fundamentals but adds three critical layers: machine-readable structured data (JSON-LD schema), entity consistency across platforms, and content formatted for AI retrieval and citation.

AI SEO, or Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), is the practice of optimizing your digital presence so AI search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity can understand, verify, and cite your business when users ask questions. Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking in Google search results, AI SEO ensures AI engines have the structured data, entity clarity, and extractable content they need to recommend you by name in conversational answers.

What does an AEO agency do?

An AEO agency helps businesses optimize their digital presence for AI citation. This includes implementing structured data markup (JSON-LD schema), building AI-readable content files (llms.txt and llms-full.txt), ensuring entity consistency across directories and citations, and monitoring how AI platforms cite or ignore your business over time.

How is AEO different from SEO?

SEO helps you rank in search. AEO helps AI systems cite or recommend you in answers. In practice, AEO starts with solid SEO, then adds structured data, entity clarity, and content formatted for retrieval.

How long does it take to see results?

It depends on your baseline, market, competition, and prompt volatility. We do not promise a fixed timeline because AI visibility can change without notice.

Which AI platforms do you optimize for?

We focus on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity. Each platform behaves differently, so the work needs to hold up across multiple systems.

Do you only serve NYC businesses?

No. We are based in New York City and do deep NYC local work, but engagements are delivered remotely and we work with teams nationwide.

The instant AEO check is free. If you want the full AI Visibility Report and execution plan, submit your details and we will send a scoped quote by email.

Free Public Tools

Open-Source AEO Tooling

AI NYC publishes the base technical layer behind its AEO work.

Free, public tools you can use today. No sign-up required.

Open-Source AEO Monitor

@ainyc/canonry

Track how AI answer engines cite your business over time.

Canonry is a self-hosted AEO monitoring tool. Configure your domain, key phrases, and LLM providers, then track citation changes across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and more.

Public GitHub repo: AINYC/canonry
npm package: @ainyc/canonry
Agent-first: full CLI and API alongside the web UI
FSL-1.1-ALv2 license (converts to Apache 2.0), use your own API keys

Open GitHub repo Read the blog post

Open-Source Audit Engine

@ainyc/aeo-audit

A public CLI and JavaScript library for technical AEO audits.

The toolkit ships as a GitHub repo and npm package with transparent scoring, CI-friendly output, and documentation teams can review directly.

Public GitHub repo: AINYC/aeo-audit
npm package: @ainyc/aeo-audit
MIT license with changelog, roadmap, and contribution docs

Open npm package Read explainer

Workflow Layer

OpenClaw / Claude Code Skills

Five packaged AEO workflows for auditing, fixing, monitoring, and content generation.

The public package documentation includes five skills built on the same audit engine, giving teams documented workflows for auditing, fixing, validating, and monitoring.

Public ClawHub package: clawhub.ai/arberx/aeo
Full audit and fix workflows
Schema validation and llms.txt generation
Monitoring workflow for repeated checks

Open ClawHub package Read explainer

From Our Blog

Canonry - The ultimate AEO monitoring tool, open source.

Why open source AEO monitoring is important and how Canonry makes it easy.

Read the article

We Open-Sourced Our AEO Audit Engine

Why AI NYC published @ainyc/aeo-audit, what the 13-factor model measures, and what teams can learn from it.

Read the article

Ready to optimize your AI visibility?

Run a free AEO audit to see where you stand, or learn how our NYC-based team can build a full optimization strategy for your business.

Visit NYC AEO Agency Page Run the free audit