Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is about making your website easy for AI tools: ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, to find and use as a direct answer, not just a link for a human to click through to.
Here's why that matters more than it sounds: more than half of all searches now end without anyone clicking a link at all. People ask a question, get an answer straight from the AI, and move on. If your site isn't built to answer questions directly, you're invisible for that whole slice of searches, no matter how good the work behind the website actually is.
None of this is about tricking an algorithm. It's the same thing I tell clients about their whole website: structure before style. AI tools reward clarity because clarity is what they can actually use. Practically, that means:
I kept going and searched "web company in Christchurch who focus on AEO." Four names came up. I checked all four.
Two are genuinely local ... real Christchurch agencies doing exactly the structural work above, on their own sites. Fair enough. That's the game working as intended.
The other two aren't Christchurch businesses at all. One's an agency based in Hyderabad, India, running the same "SEO, AEO & GEO Services for page for dozens of cities worldwide -Seville, Galway, Switzerland, wherever - identical case studies, just the place name swapped out. The other only showed up because it's named on a generic "Top 10" listicle that runs the exact same template for every country going.
Neither has ever set foot in Christchurch. Both structured their pages well enough that an AI tool couldn't tell the difference between "genuinely local" and "says the city name enough times."
That's not a reason to give up on any of this. If anything it's the opposite. It means the structural work isn't some impossible bar reserved for big players with the budget for it. It just means being real, local, and clear on your own site isn't optional anymore either. Right now, that combination is rarer than it should be.
If you want to know where you stand before doing anything else: open ChatGPT or Google and search for what you do, in your town, the way an actual customer would type it. Not your business name - the problem you solve. See who comes up. If it's not you, that's not a lost cause, it's usually a handful of fixable gaps.
That's the exact check I run for Christchurch and Canterbury businesses. The scan itself is automated, the read on what it actually means for your business isn't. You'll get three concrete findings on where you stand and what's likely blocking you, and if it's useful, we can talk through the rest from there.
Hi, I’m Felicia, and I write these posts to share what I’m learning and noticing in the digital space. I focus on building thoughtful, functional websites that perform across search and AI environments, so my clients can shine online. Thanks for being here.
Let’s connect on LinkedIn or on Facebook and share ideas.
.avif)