What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)?

What is the difference between AEO, SEO and GEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) aims to rank a page in a search engine’s results. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) aims to make that page the source cited in an answer generated by an AI assistant. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) works on the brand’s image within generative models themselves: how they describe it, compare it and recommend it.

The three complement each other. Without SEO, assistants that search the web rarely find your pages. Without AEO, they find them but cite others. Without GEO, they talk about you with inaccurate information.

Why does AEO matter for businesses in Morocco?

Your customers now ask some of their questions directly to an AI assistant: which riad to choose in Marrakech, which private school in Rabat, which accounting firm in Casablanca. The assistant answers by naming only a few businesses. A business absent from these answers becomes invisible for that question, even if it ranks well on Google.

The Moroccan market has two specific features. Questions come in French, Arabic, Darija and English, and each language produces different answers. And quality content in Arabic about Moroccan businesses remains scarce: the first businesses to publish clear answers in that language are more likely to be picked up.

How do AI assistants choose their sources?

An AI assistant answers in one of two ways. Either from its training knowledge, frozen at a given date and slow to change. Or by searching the web at the moment of the question (ChatGPT Search, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google’s AI answers), then selecting the passages that answer best.

In the second case, several factors work in your favour:

• accessibility: your robots.txt lets AI engine crawlers in;
• clarity: a direct answer at the top of the page, subheadings phrased as questions;
• structure: structured data describing your business and your services;
• entity: a name, activity and location without ambiguity, identical everywhere;
• corroboration: other reliable sources (reviews, directories, press) say the same as you;
• freshness: visible update dates and up-to-date information.

Where should you start?

1. List twenty questions your customers ask before choosing you, in the languages they use.
2. Test them on ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini, and note who is cited.
3. Clarify your entity with a factual “who we are” page: name, activity, area, founder, contact details.
4. Rewrite your key pages: direct answer at the top, question subheadings, FAQ.
5. Open your website to AI crawlers and add structured data.
6. Measure again a few weeks later, with the same questions.