Buyers now put their questions to assistants
A rising share of buying questions is answered by an AI assistant, or by the AI summary shown above search results, instead of a list of links. A business missing from those answers loses customers who never learn it exists.
How AEO differs from SEO
The two disciplines share their foundations. What differs is who decides the outcome and how it is measured.
| Point | SEO | AEO |
|---|---|---|
| Aim | A high place on a ranked page of results | To be retrieved and cited inside one generated answer |
| Shared work | Structure, entities, authority | Structure, entities, authority |
| Measured by | Where the page ranks | Whether the answer names and cites you |
What the audit includes
The audit comes at a fixed price in the written proposal and contains:
- the questions your customers ask, put to the major AI assistants, with a screenshot of each answer
- where you appear, next to two of your competitors
- the diagnosed causes of each gap
- a fix list in priority order that you can work through with us or on your own
The sprint, then monthly monitoring
The sprint ships schema and entity markup, fact pages written to be quoted, an llms.txt file and fixes to the site’s structure, then measures again. Monitoring puts the same questions to the assistants every month and sends a written report.
What nobody controls
How soon changes show
AI answer indexes refresh on schedules of their own, usually over weeks rather than days. That delay is the reason monitoring is part of the service. The full offer is on the AEO page.