AI Mention Finder

Answer engine optimization (AEO)

Answer engines quote passages, not pages. Paste one of yours and a question it should answer: the checker scores how easy it is to lift, and AI can rewrite it answer-first.

Scoring runs in your browser as you type.

Paste at least a couple of sentences to see the score. The checklist explains every point.

What AEO means now

Answer engine optimization started with featured snippets and voice assistants: systems that read out one answer instead of showing a list. AI assistants took that further. When Perplexity or ChatGPT with search answers a question, it retrieves a few pages, pulls out passages that answer directly, and writes them into its reply, often with a citation.

So AEO comes down to one question: if a machine lifted this paragraph on its own, would it still answer the question?

How the checker scores a passage

  • Direct answer up front (25 points). The first one or two sentences should answer on their own, without a warm-up like "In today's fast-moving world…".
  • The question's words in the opening (20). Retrieval matches passages to queries. If the question says "invoicing app" and your opening says "financial workflow platform", you make it harder.
  • A named subject (15). "We make it easy" means nothing once quoted. "Tallybird makes it easy" does.
  • Concrete facts (15). Prices, limits, dates and counts give a model something precise to cite.
  • Readable sentences (15) and little hype (10). Short, plain claims extract cleanly.

These are heuristics based on how retrieval and extraction work, not a published ranking formula; no answer engine publishes one. A high score means the passage is easy to use, not that it will be used.

An AEO routine for key pages

  1. List the questions buyers actually ask (sales calls, support tickets and "People also ask" boxes are good sources).
  2. Give each important question its own heading and an answer-first paragraph under it.
  3. Put the facts in text and keep them current. Stale prices get quoted too.
  4. Check whether it worked with the AI mention check, using those same questions.

AEO is one part of the broader GEO picture. The other part is being mentioned off your own site.

Questions

What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?
AEO is the practice of structuring content so that systems which give direct answers (featured snippets, voice assistants, and now AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity) can extract and quote it. The core habit is answer-first writing: state the answer plainly, then support it.
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
AEO is the older term, from the era of featured snippets and voice search, and is mostly about formatting content for extraction. GEO (generative engine optimization) is broader and includes getting mentioned by AI models from their training data, not only being quoted from your page.
How long should an answer paragraph be?
There is no official length. A common working range is 40 to 60 words for the opening answer: long enough to stand alone, short enough to quote whole. Supporting detail can follow in bullets or short paragraphs.
Does FAQ schema help with AEO?
Structured data helps search engines understand a page, and Google documents FAQPage markup. Google limited FAQ rich results in 2023 to well-known government and health sites, so do not expect snippets from it; the value is in the clear question-and-answer structure itself.