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.

OpenClaw / Claude Code Skills

OpenClaw / Claude Code AEO Skills

AEO workflows become more useful when the steps are packaged.

The public @ainyc/aeo-audit package documents five skills that wrap the audit engine into repeatable technical flows. On this page, we refer to them as OpenClaw / Claude Code skills while keeping the documented package commands unchanged.

Five Public Workflows

AEO Audit

/aeo-audit <url>

Runs the full 13-factor audit and returns a formatted report.

AEO Fix

/aeo-fix <url>

Audits a deployed URL, then fixes AEO issues directly in the working codebase.

Schema Validate

/aeo-schema-validate <url>

Focuses on JSON-LD validation, schema completeness, and entity consistency.

llms.txt Generate

/aeo-llms-generate [url]

Generates optimized llms.txt assets from existing site content.

AEO Monitor

/aeo-monitor <url>

Tracks AEO scores over time or compares multiple URLs.

Install Example

The package documents the skill suite directly.

The verified install instructions live in the public README for @ainyc/aeo-audit. This page keeps the wording simple while preserving the exact public commands.

The packaged workflow layer is also published on ClawHub, which gives external readers a direct public package URL instead of only an internal explainer page.

Clone the public repository to a temporary directory.
Copy the /skills directory into a personal or project-level skills folder.
Run the exact command documented for the workflow you want to use.

git clone https://github.com/AINYC/aeo-audit.git /tmp/aeo-audit
cp -r /tmp/aeo-audit/skills/* ~/.claude/skills/

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

Use the workflows directly, or start with the free audit.

If you want to see how the workflow maps to your own site, start with the free audit. If you want the technical details, explore the toolkit and package documentation.

Run Free AEO Check Open ClawHub package See the toolkit page