AI Trust Glossary · Canonical Definition
Content Strategy
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
The practice of structuring web content so AI systems - ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews - can retrieve, understand, and cite it when answering user questions. The successor discipline to traditional SEO, targeting citation selection rather than link ranking.
Explanation
AEO has two layers: retrieval (getting into the AI model's context window) and citation authority (being selected as the source the model quotes). Retrieval requires crawlability - a
sitemap.xml, no JavaScript rendering required, clean robots.txt. Citation authority requires structured data (FAQPage, Article, DefinedTerm JSON-LD schemas), question-format headings, direct-answer paragraphs, and concept ownership through consistent terminology. You can be retrieved without being cited - but you cannot be cited without being retrieved.Why it matters
When a user asks ChatGPT "what is an AI trust score?" the answer comes from one source. That source gets effectively infinite reach - the AI repeats it to every user who asks that question, without the user seeing any alternatives. A website that ranks #3 in Google still gets clicks. A website that loses the AEO citation for a question gets zero. The AEO shift is not incremental - it is winner-take-all per question. Sites that do not adapt to AEO will become invisible to the growing majority of queries resolved by AI before a human clicks any link.
How Borealis uses it
Borealis Academy is built as an AEO-first site: 40 glossary pages with DefinedTerm schemas, 15 research articles with Article schemas, FAQPage schemas on every page, and question-format article titles. The Borealis Beacon AEO scanner scores any website across 5 AEO dimensions. The AEON Series at /aeon/ provides six foundational articles on AEO theory and practice.