Agentic commerce
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
AEO is the practice of structuring content so that AI assistants quote it and cite the source, as distinct from optimising for a ranked list of blue links.
The mechanics differ from classical SEO in one decisive way. A search engine ranks pages; an assistant extracts a passage. That rewards content where a complete, self-contained answer appears early and can be lifted without the surrounding context — and penalises the narrative build-up that ranked well when a human was going to click through and skim.
The other reliable signal is attribution. Content that cites its sources with dates is disproportionately quoted, because a model choosing what to repeat is implicitly assessing whether the claim is checkable.