AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing content to be cited by AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
AEO overlaps with traditional SEO (clean URLs, structured data, fast performance) but adds AI-specific surfaces: llms.txt, llms-full.txt, Markdown twins of public pages, explicit AI crawler allow rules, and content patterns favored by retrieval systems — TL;DR leads under 60 words, H2-structured questions, Markdown tables for comparable data, numbered statistics with year, and FAQ blocks.
In 2026, AEO and SEO are converging — many practitioners use the umbrella term "search optimization" or "discovery optimization." For ecommerce, AEO is particularly valuable because high-intent commercial queries ("best X for Y") are increasingly answered by AI summaries rather than blue-link lists.