Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of making your pages and your business easy for search features and AI assistants to turn into a clear, correct answer. Google states that appearing in its AI Overviews and AI Mode needs no special technical requirements beyond a page being indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, and that no new markup, AI text file or machine-readable file is required. In Canada, “answer engine optimization” draws about 320 searches a month (DataForSEO estimate, national figure), so the topic is real but small, and most of the practical work overlaps with ordinary good SEO. For a local business the typical case is simple: answer the questions your customers actually ask, put the answer first, keep the facts on your site and your profiles consistent, and let the pages be crawled. What changes the effort is your site’s condition, your competition and how many questions you need to cover. If you would like a team to handle this, 2Marketing’s AI SEO services in Toronto cover the areas described below, and a free local AI SEO report is a low-pressure way to see how your business currently appears.
Answer engine optimization at a glance
- Search interest in Canada: about 320 searches a month for “answer engine optimization”, keyword difficulty 40, classed as informational (DataForSEO, Google Ads based estimate; the 12 month range was 210 to 390)
- Google’s requirement for AI Overviews and AI Mode: indexed and snippet eligible, with no additional technical requirements, according to Google Search Central
- Special files or markup: none required by Google for these features, and eligibility does not guarantee a page will be shown
- OpenAI crawler to allow for ChatGPT search visibility: OAI-SearchBot, which is separate from GPTBot (model training) and ChatGPT-User (user-triggered fetches), per OpenAI’s documentation
- Reporting: Google counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic inside the Web search type in Search Console, with no separate breakdown on its AI features page
Key terms in one line each
- Answer engine: a search feature or assistant that responds with a composed answer instead of only a list of links
- AI Overview: the generated summary Google sometimes shows above or within results, with links to supporting pages
- Citation: a link or named source attached to an AI answer
- Query fan-out: Google’s description of how its AI features may run several related searches across subtopics to build an answer
- Snippet eligibility: whether Google is allowed to show a text preview of your page, which can be restricted with controls such as nosnippet
The numbers above are estimates and documented requirements, not a forecast. Search volume for a term does not tell you how many customers will find you through AI answers, and doing everything on this page does not guarantee a mention in any assistant. Treat the work as making your business easier to understand for people and machines alike, and judge it by the intermediate signals and business results described later.
Key takeaways
- AEO is mostly SEO done carefully. Google’s own documentation says the same technical basics apply: be indexable, be eligible for a snippet, and match structured data to what visitors can read.
- Lead each section with the answer. A direct first sentence under a question heading gives people and machines something to quote.
- Your questions come from your customers. Calls, emails, reviews, sales conversations and Search Console queries are better sources than a keyword tool alone.
- Facts must agree everywhere. Hours, services, prices and service areas on your website, Google Business Profile and directories should say the same thing.
- Check your robots.txt. Blocking the wrong crawler can keep you out of a given assistant’s search results, while blocking another only affects training.
- FAQ markup is optional. Google retired the FAQ rich result in 2026, so write FAQs for readers first and treat the markup as a minor extra.
- Measure with care. Impressions, clicks, brand mentions and enquiries are different things, and a single AI response is a sample, not a trend.
What is answer engine optimization, and how does it differ from SEO and GEO?
Answer engine optimization is the practice of shaping content, site structure and brand information so that a search feature or AI assistant can extract a clear answer and, where the product allows it, attribute that answer to you. The term grew out of work on featured snippets, voice answers and “People Also Ask” boxes, and it now usually includes AI Overviews, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot.
The line between AEO, generative engine optimization (GEO) and SEO is blurry, and agencies use the words differently. A workable shorthand is that SEO aims to rank pages, AEO aims to supply the answer a page contains, and GEO focuses on how generative models describe and cite brands. Our comparison of SEO and GEO goes deeper on the overlap, and the longer guide to generative engine optimization covers the model side. If you want to hand the whole area to a specialist, 2Marketing lists generative engine optimization in Toronto as a service.
| Term | Main aim | Typical first task | Common measure |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | Rank pages for searches that lead to your site | Fix crawl, content and local basics | Rankings, clicks, enquiries |
| AEO | Supply a clear answer a feature or assistant can extract | Rewrite key pages so each question is answered first | Snippet and AI Overview presence, brand mentions |
| GEO | Influence how generative models describe and cite your brand | Strengthen entity facts and off-site mentions | Citation and mention rate across prompts |
One honest limit applies to the whole table. Nobody outside the companies that run these systems can see exactly how answers are chosen, so every tactic here is either documented guidance, which this article labels, or practitioner experience, which is a hypothesis worth testing on your own pages.
Do you need special markup or files to appear in AI answers?
No, according to Google. Its documentation on AI features says a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet, that there are no additional technical requirements, and that you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup to appear in these features. Google also says indexing and serving are never guaranteed, even when every requirement is met. You can read the wording in Google’s AI features and your website page.
That has two practical consequences. First, an llms.txt file, a special schema type or an “AI optimization” plugin is not a documented requirement for Google’s AI features, so none of them should come before fixing basics such as indexing, clear content and consistent facts. Second, the controls that already exist matter. Snippet settings such as nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex affect what Google can show, so a page that blocks snippets is limiting itself. Google’s page also points to Google-Extended as a control to review if you want to limit use of your content for AI training and grounding in other Google systems.
2Marketing publishes an llms.txt file and links to it from its AI SEO page. That is a choice some sites make for other assistants or for convenience. It should not be read as evidence that the file influences Google, and this article does not claim it does.
How do answer engines decide what to show?
The full recipe is not public, but a few parts are documented well enough to plan around. Google says its AI features may run multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources while composing a response, which it calls query fan-out. In practice that means a page can be shown for a question you never typed into a keyword tool, because it answers one piece of a larger question well. Pages that cover a topic in clear, separate sections give those systems more places to match.
For OpenAI’s ChatGPT search, the company documents a crawler named OAI-SearchBot that surfaces websites in its search features, and says blocking it keeps a site out of ChatGPT search answers, although the site can still appear as a plain navigational link. Other assistants draw on their own indexes, partners and sources. The consistent thread is that content has to be reachable, readable without special effort and specific enough to answer a question on its own.
Practitioners add a layer of opinion on top of the documentation. Common claims include that short, self-contained answer blocks are easier to extract, that third-party mentions influence what assistants say about a brand, and that fresh, factual pages are preferred. These claims may well be true in many cases, but they come from experience and small studies rather than platform documentation, so this article treats them as hypotheses.
What should an AEO checklist include for a local business?
A useful checklist covers five areas: crawl access, answer-first content, structured facts, off-site consistency and measurement. The table below lists the tasks in a sensible order, with the reason for each and a rough idea of effort. Effort ratings are general guidance and depend on your site, your content platform and how many pages you need to change.
| Step | Task | Why it helps | Typical effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Confirm key pages are indexed and not set to noindex | Google requires indexing for AI features | Low |
| 2 | Review robots.txt and snippet controls | Prevents accidental blocking of search crawlers or previews | Low |
| 3 | List the 20 to 50 questions customers ask before buying | Gives you real queries to answer | Medium |
| 4 | Rewrite service and location pages so each answer starts the section | Makes answers easy to quote | Medium to high |
| 5 | Add a visible FAQ to pages that earn one | Covers follow-up questions in one place | Medium |
| 6 | Align name, address, hours, services and prices across your site and profiles | Reduces conflicting facts | Medium |
| 7 | Check Core Web Vitals and mobile rendering | Slow or broken pages are harder to read and use | Medium to high |
| 8 | Add structured data that matches the page | Clarifies entities and facts, with no promise of a feature | Medium |
| 9 | Build reviews and relevant third-party mentions | Gives assistants more than one source to draw on | Ongoing |
| 10 | Test prompts monthly and record results | Shows trends instead of anecdotes | Low, ongoing |
Steps 1 and 2 are a few hours of work for most small sites, and they are the ones people skip. If a page is invisible to AI features, an old noindex tag on a template or a forgotten robots rule is worth ruling out before anything else.
How do you find the questions worth answering?
Start with the questions your own team hears. Pre-sales calls, contact form messages, review text and the questions people ask at the counter are the most reliable list you will ever have, because they come from buyers rather than from a tool. Write them down in the customer’s wording, since assistants receive conversational questions and your page should resemble the way people actually ask.
Then add outside signals. Google’s “People Also Ask” box for a core search shows related questions, and for “answer engine optimization” it surfaced questions such as how to optimize for AEO, what an answer engine is and what generative engine optimization is. The Performance report in Google Search Console shows the queries that already bring impressions to your pages, and any question that appears there with few clicks is a candidate for a clearer answer. Our guide to a useful monthly SEO report explains how to read those figures without over-interpreting them, and the competitor analysis guide shows how to see which questions other businesses in your market already answer.
| Question type | Hypothetical example (plumbing company) | Best place to answer it |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | How much does it cost to replace a water heater? | Service page section, with ranges and what changes them |
| Timing | How long does a drain repair take? | Service page FAQ |
| Comparison | Tankless or tank water heater for a small house? | A dedicated guide post |
| Local | Do you serve my neighbourhood? | Location page with a clear service area list |
| Trust | Are you licensed and insured? | About page and service pages, only if true and verifiable |
| Process | What happens after I book? | Contact or booking page |
The plumbing examples are hypothetical and shown only to illustrate the categories. Replace them with your own services, and publish a price or timeframe only if you can stand behind it.
How do you write an answer that can be lifted from the page?
Put the answer in the first sentence under a heading that asks the question, then add the detail. That structure is good writing for people who skim on a phone, and it also gives any extraction system a clean passage. A frequently repeated practitioner guideline suggests keeping that first answer to roughly 40 to 60 words. Treat the number as a rule of thumb from industry articles, not a Google requirement. Clarity matters more than hitting a count.
Here is a hypothetical before and after for a bakery page, so you can see the pattern without any invented results.
| Version | Example opening | What is wrong or right |
|---|---|---|
| Before | We have been crafting artisan goods with passion for years, and our customers love the experience. | No answer, no facts, and nothing a person or a machine can quote |
| After | Yes, we take custom cake orders. Order at least 72 hours ahead, choose a size and flavour online or by phone, and pick up in store. | Answers the question, states the rule and the steps, and every detail can be checked by the business |
The “after” example uses a made-up 72 hour rule purely as a pattern. Your own wording must reflect what you really do, because an assistant that repeats a wrong lead time will send you an unhappy customer.
A few habits make answer-first writing easier to maintain. Keep one question per heading and one idea per paragraph. Define a term the first time it appears. Use a short table when a reader has to compare options, and a list when steps happen in order. Avoid burying a price or an eligibility rule behind a contact form if you are willing to state it, since a missing fact leaves an assistant with nothing specific to say. Our content marketing services follow this same logic when planning pages around buyer questions.
What does your page structure need to look like?
A page that answers questions well usually has a clear hierarchy: one H1 that states the topic, H2 headings phrased as the questions people ask, and short passages below each. Semantic HTML, which means using real heading, list and table elements instead of styled text, makes that hierarchy visible to crawlers and to assistive technology. Content that appears only after a script runs, or inside an image, is harder for any system to read, so keep the important answer in the HTML itself.
| Page element | Good practice for AEO | Common problem |
|---|---|---|
| Title and H1 | Name the topic plainly and match the main question | Slogans with no topic |
| Opening paragraph | State the direct answer, the typical case and the main variables | Three paragraphs of context before any answer |
| H2 and H3 headings | Phrase as questions where it suits the reader | Generic labels such as “Overview” |
| Tables | Use for comparisons and options with real data | Tables that repeat the surrounding text |
| Lists | Use for steps and requirements | Long lists with no explanation |
| FAQ section | Cover real follow-up questions with short, complete answers | Padding with questions nobody asks |
| Author and date | Show who wrote or reviewed the page and when it was updated | Undated pages with stale prices |
Longer is not better by itself, and no documented word count earns citations. Covering a topic in depth lets you answer the variations of a question in one place, so a visitor, or a system running several related searches, can find the piece it needs.
Does schema markup help, and what happened to FAQ rich results?
Structured data helps search engines understand the entities and facts on a page, but it does not guarantee any feature. Google’s guidance for its AI features reiterates that structured data should match the visible text. It has also retired one feature that many AEO guides still recommend. Google’s FAQ rich result documentation carries a notice that the feature stopped appearing in Google Search from May 7, 2026, and the page now states that the FAQ rich result is no longer shown. You can check the current status in Google’s FAQPage documentation.
That does not make FAQs pointless. A visible FAQ is still a good way to cover follow-up questions in the reader’s own words. It does mean you should not add FAQ markup in the hope of a rich result, and you should not rely on it as an AEO tactic. If you add it, keep it identical to the visible questions and answers, as this article does, and treat it as a small, low-cost extra.
| Schema type | What it describes | Useful when | Caution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Organization or LocalBusiness | Who you are, where you operate, how to contact you | Always, for a real business with verified details | Details must match visible content and your profiles |
| Service | A service you offer | Service pages with clear descriptions | Do not mark up prices you do not publish |
| Article or BlogPosting | A guide or post, its author and date | Editorial content | Use the real author and publish date |
| BreadcrumbList | Where a page sits in your site | Sites with clear hierarchy | Match the visible breadcrumb |
| FAQPage | Questions and answers shown on the page | Pages with a genuine visible FAQ | No Google rich result is currently shown |
Schema work sits within technical SEO, and 2Marketing’s technical SEO and schema services cover markup alongside speed and crawl fixes. For brand and entity facts specifically, the entity SEO service focuses on how your business is described across the web.
Which technical checks matter most?
Four checks come first: crawl access, indexing, rendering and speed. Crawl access means robots.txt does not block the crawlers you want. Indexing means the page is not set to noindex and has a canonical URL pointing to itself. Rendering means the important text is in the HTML Google receives. Speed means the page loads and responds quickly enough for visitors on a phone.
The crawler names are easy to confuse. OpenAI documents three separate user agents. OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in ChatGPT’s search features, and OpenAI says blocking it keeps a site out of ChatGPT search answers. GPTBot crawls content that may be used to train its models, and blocking it signals that your content should not be used for that training. ChatGPT-User fetches a page when a person’s action in ChatGPT requires it, and OpenAI notes that robots.txt rules may not apply to those user-initiated visits. Each setting is independent, so a site can allow search visibility and decline training. OpenAI also says search-related robots.txt changes can take about 24 hours to take effect. The details are on OpenAI’s crawler documentation page.
| Crawler or control | Documented purpose | What blocking it means |
|---|---|---|
| Googlebot | Google Search crawling | Pages may not be crawled or shown, including in AI features |
| nosnippet, max-snippet, data-nosnippet | Limit text previews of a page | Reduces what Google can show, which affects eligibility for AI features |
| Google-Extended | Control for use of content in some Google AI systems, per Google’s AI features page | Review it if you want to limit training and grounding use |
| OAI-SearchBot | Surfacing sites in ChatGPT search | Keeps the site out of ChatGPT search answers, with possible plain links |
| GPTBot | Content that may train OpenAI models | Signals content should not be used for training |
| ChatGPT-User | User-triggered page fetches | Robots.txt may not apply; does not control search inclusion |
Whether to allow training crawlers is a business decision with legal and commercial angles, and it is separate from AEO. Make it deliberately, ideally with your lawyer, rather than by copying a robots.txt from another site.
On speed, web.dev rates Interaction to Next Paint (INP) at 200 milliseconds or less as good and above 500 milliseconds as poor, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads. Speed is a user experience issue first and an AEO issue only indirectly, so fix the pages visitors use most. Heavy images can slow a page down, and our image SEO checklist walks through the fixes.
How do reviews, profiles and mentions on other sites fit in?
Assistants describe a business using more than its own website, so the information about you elsewhere matters. That includes your Google Business Profile, directory listings, review sites, news mentions and social pages. If your hours or services differ between them, a system has conflicting facts to choose from, and the wrong one can show up. The fix is to keep one verified set of facts and copy it everywhere.
Reviews matter here too. Google Business Profile Help names relevance, distance and prominence as the factors behind local results, and says review count and score can influence prominence (see its local ranking guidance). Review text also carries the phrases customers use. Our Google Business Profile checklist and the guide to getting, answering and handling Google reviews cover the practical side, and 2Marketing’s reputation and review management page describes review requests and response management as part of its service. Never buy, trade or fake reviews. It violates platform policies and risks your profile.
Third-party mentions work a similar way. Press coverage, industry associations and respected local directories give a model or a search engine more than one source to cross-check. Earning those mentions is slow, and it is closer to public relations than to on-page work. The digital PR and brand mentions service is where 2Marketing places it. Be wary of any provider promising a guaranteed number of mentions, because credible mentions have to be earned.
What about voice assistants and smart speakers?
Voice answers are part of the AEO story because they depend on a single spoken response rather than a page of links. How a given assistant selects its answer is documented differently by each company and sometimes not at all, so be cautious about any article that gives a precise recipe for winning voice results. What holds across them is that short, accurate, self-contained answers and correct business facts are the ingredients a spoken response needs.
For a local business, the useful voice-style questions are practical ones: are you open now, where do you park, do you take walk-ins, how much is a basic service. Those answers live on your website and your Google Business Profile, so keep both current, and add holiday hours before the holiday rather than after.
How do you measure AEO without fooling yourself?
Measure in layers and keep them separate. Intermediate signals, such as impressions and citations, tell you whether you are visible. Business outcomes, such as calls, bookings and revenue, tell you whether visibility mattered. If one rises while the other stays flat, find out why before reporting a win.
| Signal | Where to see it | What it tells you | Limit to remember |
|---|---|---|---|
| Impressions and clicks for questions | Search Console Performance report | Which question queries show your pages | AI features traffic is included in the Web search type, so it cannot be isolated there |
| Referral visits from assistants | Your analytics platform | Visits that arrive from assistant domains | Many visits carry no referrer, so this undercounts |
| Brand mentions in sample prompts | Manual checks or a tracking service | Whether your business appears for a set of customer questions | Answers vary between runs and locations, so one result proves little |
| Accuracy of descriptions | Manual review of answers | Whether hours, services and prices are stated correctly | You cannot edit an answer directly, only fix sources |
| Calls, forms and bookings | Call tracking and conversion tracking | Whether visibility turns into business | Attribution is imperfect, so ask new customers how they found you |
If you test prompts yourself, write down the exact wording, the date and the platform, run each prompt more than once, and look for trends over several months. An isolated screenshot of a good answer is a single data point. 2Marketing’s AI visibility tracking page describes a service that runs prompts repeatedly across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google AI Overviews and reports monthly trends, with no price listed. To connect any visibility gain to calls and form fills, you also need marketing analytics in place.
What does AEO cost?
The cost depends on who does the work and how much content you need to change, so there is no single honest number. Doing it yourself costs time, and perhaps a tracking tool. An agency prices the work by scope. Distinguish agency fees from software, content production and development costs when you compare quotes, because some proposals bundle them and others list them separately.
2Marketing’s AI SEO page describes three packages, Essential, Growth and Enterprise, and each is quoted on request, with no prices published. The Essential package is described as covering an audit, technical fixes, schema, five to eight core pages and light PR, the Growth package adds topic clusters, location playbooks, monthly content, PR, a review system and conversion optimization support, and Enterprise covers custom workflows and larger scale. Ask for a written quote that states the currency, whether fees are one-time or monthly, and exactly what is included.
| Cost type | Example items | One-time or recurring |
|---|---|---|
| Agency fees | Audit, content rewrites, schema, reporting | Either, depending on the scope |
| Content production | New guides, FAQ pages, photography | Usually per project |
| Software | Tracking tool, SEO suite, schema plugin | Usually recurring |
| Development | Speed fixes, template changes, rendering issues | Usually per project |
Which mistakes should you avoid?
The most expensive mistakes come from chasing the label instead of the basics. The list below covers the ones worth checking for first.
- Buying an “AEO package” before checking indexing and robots.txt. A blocked page cannot be cited, however well it is written.
- Adding FAQ markup to chase a rich result Google has retired.
- Publishing thin question pages that repeat each other, which makes the site worse for readers and gives systems nothing new.
- Stating prices, timelines or credentials you cannot back up. Assistants can repeat them, and customers will hold you to them.
- Letting hours and services drift between your website and your profiles.
- Treating a single AI answer as proof that the strategy works, or that it has failed.
- Accepting guarantees. Nobody can promise a citation in ChatGPT, a place in an AI Overview or a fixed number of leads.
When should you hire help, and what should you ask?
Hire help when the work is bigger than your team’s time, when your site has technical problems you cannot see, or when you need measurement you cannot build yourself. A good provider explains what they will change, how they will measure it and what they cannot control. Our guide to SEO audits lists what a solid review includes, and it also works as a template for judging any AEO proposal.
| Question to ask | A good answer sounds like | A warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| What will you change on my site? | A specific list of pages, templates and fixes | “Our AI will optimize everything” |
| How do you measure results? | Named tools, a baseline and monthly reporting | A single score with no method |
| Can you guarantee mentions or rankings? | No, with an explanation of why | Guaranteed citations or first place |
| What does the price include? | Currency, scope, fees versus software and content | A vague monthly figure |
| How do you handle platform policies? | Earned reviews and mentions only | Paid mentions or review trading |
If you are weighing 2Marketing, you can book a free consultation, send a note through the contact page for a proposal, or start with the free local AI SEO report. The AI SEO page lists a free AI SEO audit, a free report and a free 30 minute consultation, and does not state turnaround guarantees, so ask what to expect when you reach out.
A simple order of work for the next 30 days
You can make real progress in a month without a large budget. The plan below suits a small business with a website it can edit and a Google Business Profile it controls.
| Week | Focus | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Access and facts | Indexing check, robots.txt review, one verified list of business facts |
| 2 | Questions | A list of 20 to 50 customer questions, grouped by page |
| 3 | Rewrites | Top three to five pages rewritten answer-first, with a visible FAQ where it helps |
| 4 | Consistency and baseline | Profiles and directories aligned, plus a first set of recorded prompt checks |
After the first month, repeat the prompt checks and compare them with your baseline, then keep adding pages for the next group of questions. Change tends to be gradual, and some questions will stay out of reach because of competition. After one month you have a baseline to compare against.
Frequently asked questions
What is answer engine optimization?
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of shaping your content, site and business information so that search features and AI assistants can extract a clear answer and, where the product allows, credit you. It overlaps heavily with SEO and with generative engine optimization.
Is AEO different from SEO?
They overlap a great deal. SEO aims to rank pages, while AEO aims to supply the answer a page contains. Google says its AI features need only an indexed, snippet-eligible page, so the foundations are the same ones used for regular search.
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
Agencies define them differently. A practical split is that AEO focuses on being the extracted answer, while GEO focuses on how generative models describe and cite a brand. Both depend on clear content, consistent facts and crawl access.
Do I need schema markup to appear in AI Overviews?
No. Google says there are no additional technical requirements and that you do not need new markup or machine-readable files for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Structured data can still clarify your content, but it must match what visitors can read.
Does an llms.txt file help?
Google’s AI features page says no AI text file is needed for those features. Some sites publish llms.txt for other assistants, but this article found no platform documentation showing that it improves visibility, so treat it as optional.
Is FAQ schema still worth adding?
Google retired the FAQ rich result in 2026, so the markup no longer earns that display. A visible FAQ still helps readers. If you add the markup, keep it identical to the visible text and treat it as a minor extra.
Which OpenAI crawler should I allow to appear in ChatGPT search?
OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot for surfacing sites in ChatGPT search, and says blocking it keeps a site out of those answers. GPTBot relates to model training and ChatGPT-User to user-triggered fetches, and each setting is independent.
How long do robots.txt changes take to affect ChatGPT search?
OpenAI says search-related changes can take about 24 hours to take effect after a robots.txt update. That is a documented figure for its own crawler, not a rule for other platforms.
How long should an answer be?
A common practitioner guideline suggests about 40 to 60 words for the opening answer under a question heading. It is a rule of thumb from industry articles, not a Google requirement, so aim for a complete and accurate answer instead of a word count.
How do I find the questions to answer?
Start with the questions your customers ask by phone, email and in reviews. Then check Search Console queries and the People Also Ask box for your main topics. Customer wording is the best guide to the phrasing assistants receive.
Can I track AI Overviews traffic in Search Console?
Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic is included in the Web search type of the Performance report. Its AI features page describes no separate breakdown, so you cannot isolate that traffic there.
How can I tell whether ChatGPT or Gemini mentions my business?
Run the same set of customer-style prompts monthly, record the wording, date and platform, and repeat each prompt more than once because answers vary. A tracking service can automate this, but one result proves little and a trend over several months is more useful.
Do reviews and directory listings affect AI answers?
Assistants describe businesses using several sources, so conflicting or outdated listings can lead to wrong details. Google says review count and score can influence local prominence. Keep your facts consistent and earn reviews honestly.
Can I guarantee a mention in ChatGPT or an AI Overview?
No. Google says indexing and serving are never guaranteed, and no provider controls the answers of other assistants. Be cautious about any agency that promises citations, a fixed position or a set number of leads.
How much does AEO cost?
It depends on who does the work and how much content changes. Do-it-yourself costs your time and possibly a tracking tool. Agencies price by scope, so ask for a written quote that states currency, whether fees are one-time or monthly, and what is included.
Does 2Marketing offer AEO or AI SEO services?
Its AI SEO page lists generative engine optimization, entity SEO and AI visibility tracking, with three packages (Essential, Growth and Enterprise) quoted on request and no prices published. The page offers a free AI SEO audit, a free report and a free 30 minute consultation.
What platforms does 2Marketing’s AI visibility tracking cover?
The tracking page lists ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Overviews, with monthly reporting, and says new engines are added as they gain adoption. Prices are not listed on the page.
Where should a small business start with AEO?
Start with access and facts. Confirm your key pages are indexed and not blocked, write down one verified set of business details, then rewrite your most important pages so each question is answered first. Add measurement once those basics are in place.
