Learn how AI engines decide who they cite.

• AI search visibility - the outcome: what decides whether the engines name your brand, how to measure your own, and how to improve it.
• AI crawler readiness - the floor: whether GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot can fetch your pages, and the CDN and WAF defaults that block them by accident.
• Answer engine optimization (AEO) - the content shape: how to write pages an engine can lift a clean answer from and attribute to you.
• Measuring AI citations - the feedback loop: coverage, density, share of citations, and accuracy, so you know whether the work is moving anything.

They stack in order. Crawler readiness is the floor: if the bot cannot fetch your page, nothing else counts. AEO shapes a readable page into a quotable one. AI search visibility is the result those two produce, together with the third-party sources the engines already trust. And measurement closes the loop, because without it you are guessing whether any change helped.

If you read one first, make it crawler readiness. It is the cheapest fix and a common reason a well-funded brand is invisible.

What is the difference between GEO, AEO, and SEO?

SEO earns a ranked link on a search results page. GEO (generative engine optimization) earns a mention inside an AI engine's generated answer. AEO (answer engine optimization) is the narrower craft of shaping a page so the engine extracts a clean, correct answer from it. SEO and GEO share a technical foundation and diverge after that.

Where should I start?

Start with whether the AI crawlers can read your site, because nothing downstream matters if they cannot. Then check whether the engines cite you today. The crawler readiness guide and the measuring guide are the two fastest reads.

Does this replace SEO?

No. It sits alongside SEO. A crawlable, well-structured site helps both, but ranking first on Google does not guarantee an AI engine will name you, which is why the two need separate measurement.

The guides tell you what matters. A check tells you where you are.

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By the Web Cited Editorial Research Team. Last updated 31 May 2026.