What AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is, and how it differs from SEO

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is fitting your content to the way answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity build an answer. The difference from SEO is not in the technique but in the outcome: SEO fights for a place in a list of links the user chooses from, while AEO fights for a mention inside the single answer the user already receives. In ordinary search, fifth place still brings traffic; in a model's answer, whoever was not mentioned simply does not exist. That is why AEO is measured in mentions and share of voice, not in rankings and clicks.

How AEO actually differs from SEO

Both disciplines deal with the same question — how do you get a machine to put you in front of a customer — but they part company at four practical points.

	SEO	AEO
The unit of success	A link in a list of results	A mention inside an answer
What gets measured	Ranking, traffic, clicks	Mention rate, position in the list of names, share of voice
What happens to fifth place	Still gets traffic	Usually does not appear at all
How the source is chosen	Ranking across an index	A combination of what the model learned and what is retrieved at the moment the question is asked

The third row is the difference that really matters. A results page is a list: it shows ten links, and the user chooses. A model's answer is a choice that has already been made on their behalf. When someone asks ChatGPT "מי עורך הדין הכי מומלץ לדיני עבודה בחיפה" ("who is the most recommended employment lawyer in Haifa"), they get three or four names — and will never know who the fifth and sixth were. There is no tenth place picking up a little traffic. There is who was mentioned, and who was not.

That is also where the difference in measurement comes from. You cannot talk about a "ranking" when there is no ranked list. Instead you measure three things: in what share of the answers you were mentioned at all, in what position in the list of names you appeared when you were mentioned, and what part of all the mentions in your industry belongs to you rather than to your competitors. The third metric is the only one that says anything about the market, because an absolute number with no competitors beside it is close to meaningless: a score of 30 can be excellent in an industry where everyone sits around 20, and dismal in an industry where your direct competitor stands at 70.

There is also a difference here that is hard to digest at first: part of the value of a mention does not arrive as traffic to your site at all. Someone who asked Gemini who to turn to and got your name may go on to search for you directly in Google, or simply pick up the phone. The mention worked, and it will not appear as a source in your traffic report.

Why is this happening now, of all times?

Not because search engines have disappeared, but because a stage has been added to them. A significant share of the questions that were once phrased as three words in a search box are phrased today as a full sentence in a chat box — and get a full sentence back. At the same time, inside Google itself there are now summaries written by a model (AI Overviews) that appear above the results, so even a user who has never opened ChatGPT is exposed to the same dynamic.

In Hebrew this carries an extra meaning. The volume of Israeli text the models have seen is far smaller than the volume of English text, which gives a small number of central Israeli sources — rankings, business news sites, guides and portals — greater weight. That has two sides to it. The bad side: if those sources do not know you, getting into an answer is very hard. The good side: the number of participants in this competition in Hebrew is still far smaller than in the English equivalent, and anyone who starts measuring today does so ahead of most of the market.

What are answer engines actually looking for?

Broadly, the model needs to find a connection between your name and the need the user described. That connection is built out of text, and mainly out of three things:

• Co-occurrence. Your name appears in the same text as the words that describe the industry — "דיני עבודה" ("employment law"), "חיפה" ("Haifa"), "פיטורים" ("dismissal") — and not only on your own home page.
• Entity clarity. It is clear that this is the same business everywhere. One name, not five; and if there is an English transliteration as well, keep it consistent.
• Confirmation from different sources. The same information appears in more than one place, and not only on a site you control.

Alongside these there is a technical layer that helps the machine understand what is on the page — schema in JSON-LD format following the schema.org standard, headings that describe the content, and text that can be read without running a script.

We have covered that mechanism separately. And it is important to say what is not known: the providers — OpenAI, Google, Anthropic — do not publish the exact rules, and the rules change. Anyone who declares that they know exactly how ChatGPT chooses sources is selling you a certainty they do not have. What you can do is measure: ask the same questions again and again, over time, and see what moves the needle.

Is SEO dead?

No — and be wary of anyone who says it is.

A site that cannot be crawled will not enter an index, and what is not in an index is not retrieved when a model looks for a source either — whether the retrieval goes through Google, through Bing or through another index. A clear structure, speed, valid schema and headings that describe the content serve both channels without changing a line. Authority is the same authority too: a site that other sources link to and quote carries weight in both.

What has changed is what gets counted at the end of the month. A report showing a rise in ranking for a keyword says nothing about whether you were mentioned in the answer your customer received yesterday. This is an additional measurement, not a replacement one — and anyone who gives up one of them in the name of the other simply sees less.

Where do you start?

Three steps, in order of usefulness:

1. Measure before you change anything. Write five to ten questions a real customer would ask — in Hebrew, without your business name — and ask them in a fresh window with no history. Note who is mentioned, and in what position. Without that number you have no way of knowing whether anything worked.
2. Check who does get mentioned, and where. If the engines are quoting a ranking, a guide or an article you do not appear in, that is usually the most worthwhile action available: get into a source that is already being quoted, rather than trying to replace it.
3. Write the answer that is missing. A page that answers directly the question the customer is asking, in Hebrew, phrased as an answer and not as a brochure. The difference is simple: "המשרד שלנו מתמחה בליטיגציה אזרחית ומסחרית" ("our firm specialises in civil and commercial litigation") answers no question at all. "מתי כדאי לפנות לעורך דין דיני עבודה אחרי פיטורים" ("when is it worth going to an employment lawyer after being dismissed") — answers one.

What is not worth doing is starting from the end: rewriting the whole site before you knew what was missing in the first place.

Want to know whether you come up? The check is free and takes about a minute.