AI Search (GEO)
Answer engine optimization for local businesses
Answer engine optimization is the practice of structuring content so an AI assistant can lift a complete, correct answer from it. In practice that means question-form headings, self-contained passages of roughly 130 to 270 words, sourced statistics, and comparison tables.
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What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
AEO and GEO have largely converged and are now used almost interchangeably. Where a distinction is drawn, answer engine optimization means structuring content for extraction, while generative engine optimization covers the wider program including listings, entity work, and earned mentions. Hitman Marketing treats AEO as one component of GEO.
How should a page be structured for extraction?
A page structured for AI extraction puts the answer first and the evidence second. Retrieval systems show a U-shaped attention pattern — material at the top and bottom of a passage carries disproportionate weight. Analysis of 1.2 million citations found the top 30% of a page generating 55% of them.
- Each H2 is a question a buyer would type, not a marketing phrase.
- The first 40 to 60 words answer it completely and independently.
- Evidence follows: a statistic with attribution, a comparison, or a caveat.
- One page per topic, internally segmented. Google's own guidance warns against artificially shredding content into thin pages — the systems understand multiple topics on one page.
Does longer content get cited more by AI?
Longer content does not get cited more by AI. Across 174,048 cited pages, Ahrefs measured the correlation between word count and citation position at 0.04 — indistinguishable from zero. Padding a page to hit a word target makes it worse, not better, because it dilutes the passages that would otherwise be extracted cleanly.
There is a real risk in the other direction too. A 2026 critical survey of 45 GEO studies found that rewriting purely for citation-friendliness can impair retrieval — you can make a page more quotable and less findable at the same time. Structure serves the reader first; the extraction benefit follows.
Related: What ChatGPT actually quotes
Common questions
- Is AEO just writing FAQs?
- No, though question-form headings are part of it. FAQs bolted onto the end of an unchanged page do very little. The work is restructuring the substance of the page so each section resolves one question completely, then supporting it with evidence a model can cite.
- Should I add FAQ schema markup?
- Not for search results — Google deprecated the FAQ rich result on 7 May 2026 and it now produces no listing benefit. Keep the visible questions and answers on the page, because that format is what gets extracted. The markup is the part that stopped mattering.
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