Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) for NZ Businesses. Get Cited by AI, Not Just Ranked.
More of your customers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews before they ever click a link. AEO is the work that makes your business one of the names those answers quote. We do it alongside SEO, because the two share most of the same foundations.
AEO in plain English: being the answer, not a blue link.
Answer engine optimisation, usually shortened to AEO, is the practice of making your website and your wider presence online easy for AI tools to find, understand and quote. You will also see it called GEO (generative engine optimisation) or AI search optimisation. They describe the same job.
An answer engine does not show ten results and let the searcher choose. It reads a handful of sources, writes one answer and names the businesses it trusts. If your site is slow to crawl, vague about what you do, or inconsistent with your listings elsewhere, you are simply left out of the answer.
Google AI Overviews
The summary that now sits above many Google results. It draws on pages Google has already indexed and trusts, so it rewards the same things that make you rank.
ChatGPT and Perplexity
When they search the web they lean on search indexes, including Bing's, and on the directories, reviews and articles that mention you. Being indexed and mentioned in the right places matters as much as your own site.
Voice and assistants
Assistants answer out loud with one recommendation, not a list. Clear, structured facts about your business are what they read from.
Six things that decide whether AI tools cite your business.
None of this is a trick. It is the work of making your business unambiguous to a machine, done on your site and across the sources that machine reads.
Answer-first content
Service pages and articles that state the answer in the first two sentences, then explain. Question-style headings that match how people phrase a prompt: "how much does a website cost in NZ", not "Our Pricing Philosophy".
Structured data
Organisation, service, FAQ and breadcrumb schema, linked together so every page tells a machine who you are, what you sell, where you work and what it costs.
Consistent business details
The same name, address, phone number and services on your website, Google Business Profile and directory listings. Conflicting details are one of the quickest ways to be left out of an answer.
Mentions and authority links
AI tools quote businesses that other sites talk about. Our link building places your business in the NZ directories, industry publications and listings these tools draw on.
Crawlable and indexed everywhere
Pages that render without waiting on JavaScript, a clean sitemap, and the site checked in both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, since several AI tools lean on Bing's index.
AI crawler access
A robots.txt that lets the search crawlers used by AI tools read your public pages, and a plain-language llms.txt summary of who you are and what you offer.
AEO on top of SEO. Not instead of it.
An AI answer is only as good as the pages it can find. So we start with the foundations that help you rank, then add the steps that help you get quoted.
The audit is free
We check how your site, schema and listings read to a machine, and ask the AI tools the questions your customers ask, to see who they recommend today.
The foundations are fixed
Structured data, consistent business details, crawler access and indexing in Google and Bing, sorted before anything else.
The content answers questions
Pages and articles rewritten answer-first around the questions buyers ask, published through our blogging service.
The mentions build every month
Links and citations from sources AI tools trust, reported in your dashboard alongside your rankings.
What changes when the searcher is a machine.
SEO and AEO share about the same groundwork: a fast site, clear pages, authority links and accurate business details. A business that ranks well is already most of the way to being cited.
The differences are in emphasis. Answer engines care less about a single keyword and more about whether your page states a clear, quotable answer, whether your facts match everywhere they appear, and whether other trusted sources mention you by name.
SEO wins the click
A ranked page earns a visit when someone chooses it from the results. Success is measured in positions, clicks and enquiries.
AEO wins the mention
A cited business is named inside the answer, often before any click happens. Success is measured in mentions, referral visits from AI tools and branded searches.
Both need proof
Reviews on your Google Business Profile, real case studies and named people behind the business give both Google and AI tools a reason to trust what your site says.
How AEO is measured, and what nobody can promise.
AI answers change from one day to the next and from one person to the next, so any agency that guarantees a ChatGPT recommendation is guessing. What can be measured is the trend: impressions in Google Search Console, visits referred by AI tools in your analytics, growth in people searching for your business by name, and how often you appear when the same set of buyer questions is asked over time. Those are the numbers we look at, and they sit next to your rankings in the reporting dashboard.
AEO runs inside our SEO programme rather than as a separate retainer: 25+ quality links a month, SEO-optimised articles published to your site, and the structured data and listings work above. Open term, no lock-in. Also included in the $850/mo Website + SEO and Blogging plan.
Guides on search visibility.
Understanding SEO: Where To Start
Read the guide → GuideThe Undeniable Importance of Meta Data and On-Page SEO for Higher Google Rankings
Read the guide → GuideHow quality content relates to SEO success
Read the guide → GuideFoundational SEO: What it means to start from the website build
Read the guide →Common questions
With Media Giant, AEO is part of our SEO programme at $600 a month ex GST on an open term, which also covers 25+ quality links and SEO-optimised articles every month. It is included in the $850/mo Website + SEO and Blogging plan too. Every package is on our pricing page.
SEO earns your pages a place in Google's ranked results. AEO earns your business a mention inside an AI-written answer. Most of the groundwork is shared, which is why we run them together rather than as two separate projects.
Yes, for practical purposes. AEO (answer engine optimisation), GEO (generative engine optimisation) and AI SEO are three names for making a business visible in AI-generated answers. The labels are new; the work underneath them is not.
No, and nobody honestly can. AI answers vary by person, by wording and by day. What we can do is remove the reasons you are being left out and build the signals these tools rely on, then report the trend so you can see whether it is working.
The technical fixes, schema and listing clean-up can be done in the first month. Mentions and authority build on the same timeline as SEO, where most clients see measurable movement within 3 to 4 months, compounding from there.
Usually not. If your current site is fast and crawlable, we work with it. If it is slow, built so that content only appears after JavaScript runs, or impossible to edit, a rebuild through our website design service is often the cheaper route, and we will tell you which after the free audit.
