ChatGPT optimization: be the answer when buyers ask
What the market calls ChatGPT optimization or AEO is, for us, engineering on the retrieval layer: we work to make the engine find you, understand you and be able to cite you. We do not optimize the model — nobody can — we optimize what the model pulls in at run time.
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AEO = Answer Engine Optimization, i.e. getting into the generated ANSWER. Not voice-assistant hardware, and not classic rank optimization: with ChatGPT the question is not where you place in a list, but whether the answer names you at all.
How does ChatGPT choose its sources?
It works from two layers, and separating them matters. Parametric knowledge is what training baked into the model — that cannot be edited after the fact. Retrieval is what it pulls from the web at run time; that can be influenced, because it works from your public surfaces.
The pull is not a single search. The model fans the question out into several sub-questions (query fan-out) and searches for each separately — which is how you can appear for your brand name and be absent from the real buying question behind it. Web search inside ChatGPT is Bing-based, not Google-based: Bing indexing is therefore not a detail but a precondition.
- 01
Question
what the buyer types
- 02
Fan-out
several sub-questions
- 03
Bing search
not Google
- 04
Your page
indexed, quotable
What do we optimize?
Four things, and all four come down to whether the retrieval layer can find you and quote you. We do not promise inclusion: a generated answer is probabilistic, and anyone guaranteeing it is selling something they do not own.
Bing indexing
What Bing does not hold, ChatGPT's web search cannot find. We review indexing, the sitemap and the access rules, and signal fresh content via IndexNow — the fastest-acting step, and the one most often skipped.
Quotable phrasing
The engine lifts sentences, not paragraphs. We write claims so the first sentence stands without its surroundings — that is what a generated answer can carry over without distorting it.
Entity anchoring
We tie the brand name to an unambiguous, machine-resolvable identifier so the engine does not confuse you with a similarly named company. This is the step least often in place — and name collision is the most common cause of silent omission.
Question coverage
We measure which real buying questions you are absent from, and build content for the gaps. The target is not a keyword but the question in the form the buyer actually asks it.
Frequently asked questions
- What is AEO, and how is it different from GEO?
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) focuses on getting into the generated answer; GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is broader, covering the whole generative surface from answer engines to AI overviews. In practice the two words cover the same work from different angles — we use GEO as the umbrella term.
- Does ChatGPT use Google for search?
- No. ChatGPT's web search is Bing-based. In practice that means a page can be strong in Google and invisible to ChatGPT if Bing has not indexed it. The two indexes must be checked separately — for us that is one of the first steps.
- Does this work in languages other than English?
- Yes, but not identically. Engines draw on different sources per language, and for smaller languages they often find fewer and weaker sources — which is both a risk and an opening. So we measure per language, and we do not derive a non-English question set by translating the English one.
Further reading
Let's talk
If you want to know whether ChatGPT names you today for your questions, we can measure it. The measurement shows which layer is worth starting with — including when the answer is that none of them is, yet.