AI Search Surfaces
Also: answer engines
An answer engine is a search tool that returns a single synthesized answer to a question rather than a list of links to evaluate. Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, and ChatGPT search are answer engines. Optimizing to be cited in them is the focus of answer engine optimization (AEO).
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The defining trait of an answer engine is that it does the reading and synthesis for the user, then cites a few sources. The visibility you compete for is being one of those cited sources.
Answer engines reward content that states a clear, self-contained answer up front, the same structure that wins featured snippets.