AEO glossary: answer engine optimization terms, defined
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of making a website structured and specific enough that an AI assistant can read it, trust it, and cite it in an answer — the AI-search equivalent of what SEO did for a page of blue links. This glossary defines the six terms OpenAEO uses most when it audits a site: AEO and its synonym GEO, the retrieval gate, the answer layer, the citation itself, and the ship floor. Each definition below is written to stand on its own so an assistant can lift it directly, and each maps to something the OpenAEO audit actually scores across its 5 gates and 49 checks. If you only read one entry, read the first — it is the whole idea in three sentences, and the rest are the vocabulary you need to act on your score.
- AEO — answer engine optimization
- Structuring a site so an AI assistant can read it, trust it, and cite it.
- GEO — generative engine optimization
- A synonym for AEO; identical techniques and checks.
- Retrieval gate
- A pass/fail condition that caps the whole score when it fails.
- Answer layer
- The quotable part of a page: a direct first-100-words answer and self-contained passages.
- Citation
- When an assistant names your business, page, or link in its answer.
- Ship floor
- The minimum score OpenAEO ships a build at: 72 of 100.
Answer engine optimization (AEO)
Making a website structured and specific enough that an AI assistant can read it, trust it, and name it in an answer — the AI-search equivalent of SEO. Where SEO competed for a ranked list of links, AEO competes to be the single source an assistant synthesizes its answer from.
Generative engine optimization (GEO)
A synonym for AEO. GEO describes optimizing content so generative AI engines cite it; the techniques, gates, and checks are identical. OpenAEO uses "AEO," but the two terms are interchangeable in practice.
Retrieval gate
A pass/fail condition that caps a site's AEO score when it fails. The five gates are JavaScript-only rendering, AI bots blocked at the CDN or WAF, a robots.txt disallow, missing from the index assistants read, and unresolved placeholder text. Any one of them prevents the page from being fetched or parsed, so it limits everything else.
Answer layer
The part of a page an assistant can lift and quote without hedging: a direct answer in the first 100 words, self-contained 134–167 word passages that open with a named entity, and specific verifiable facts — prices, counts, dates — instead of adjectives.
Citation
When an AI assistant names a source — a business, page, or link — in the answer it gives a user. Citations are the outcome AEO optimizes for; the AEO score is only the input that makes them likely.
Ship floor
The minimum AEO score OpenAEO will ship a build at: 72 of 100. Below the ship floor, a site may be technically retrievable but is not yet reliably cited, so it isn't ready to launch.
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