# Agent Engine Optimisation The practice of making content, products and actions easy for AI agents to discover, parse, trust and use. ## The terms | Term | Target | Goal | |---|---|---| | SEO | Search engine ranking | Rank a page, earn a click | | GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) | LLM answers | Get mentioned or cited in the answer | | AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) | Same as GEO | Older synonym, used by Profound and Conductor | | AEO (Agentic Engine Optimisation) | Agents that fetch and act | Let an agent read, decide and transact | - The labels overlap. Vendors use them as marketing. - The cleanest technical definition comes from Addy Osmani (Google Cloud AI, April 2026). His five parts: discoverability, parsability, token efficiency, capability signalling, access control.^[https://addyosmani.com/blog/agentic-engine-optimization/] - Adobe (after it bought Semrush) brands a similar idea "agentic search optimisation". ## Three jobs 1. **Be found.** The agent's crawler or search API can reach the content. See [[Agent-Ready Web Stack]]. 2. **Be cited.** The model picks the brand or URL when it writes the answer. See [[What Drives AI Citations]]. 3. **Be usable.** The agent can check price, stock and policy, then complete the task. See [[Agentic Commerce Protocols]]. - Most 2024–25 tools only do job 2. - Jobs 1 and 3 are where the 2026 frontier sits. ## How it differs from SEO - **Unit of output:** one answer, not a ranked list. Second place often gets nothing. - **Sources:** third-party mentions (Reddit, G2, YouTube, editorial) shape the answer as much as the brand's own site. - **Reader:** a model with a token budget, not a human who scans. Clean Markdown beats a heavy page. - **Measurement:** no query log exists. Tools sample prompts and infer share of voice. - **Volatility:** the same prompt gives different answers by model, day and user. ## What carries over from SEO - Search rank still feeds citations. LLMs with web search retrieve from search indexes first. - Clear structure, facts near the top and fresh content still help. ---- tags: #boat #ai #AIstrategy links: [[Agent Engine Optimisation MOC]] [[Agent Harnesses and Agentic Search]] [[Marketing]]