Answer Engine Optimisation.
AEO is how you become the business AI names when a buyer, seller or investor asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity for the best real estate agent in a suburb. This is the Foundable view, in one page.
What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimisation is the practice of structuring your content, citations and entity data so AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews — name your business when users ask relevant questions.
SEO optimises for a ranking. AEO optimises to be the answer. There is no page two in a chat window.
Three disciplines. One goal — get named.
Authority + Discoverability.
AI doesn't rank businesses — it evaluates evidence. Every recommendation ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity or Google AI Mode makes rests on two question sets: can you prove you're the best? and can AI find enough evidence to say so?
Sales performance, market share, client reviews, local expertise, awards, agent reputation and community standing. The evidence that says you're genuinely the best choice in your patch — not just a name that shows up.
Website, schema, Google Business Profile, portal presence, RateMyAgent, citations, PR mentions, LinkedIn, video and the knowledge-graph facts models learn from. If the machines can't see it consistently, the authority doesn't count.
The stronger your evidence across both sides, the more confidently AI names you. The full Foundable Recommendation Framework™ — the 50+ signals we measure, prioritise and move each month — is how our clients work with us.
AEO, answered.
AEO and SEO are two different disciplines solving two different problems. SEO can still drive traffic to your website through the blue links on a Google results page. But more buyers and vendors are skipping the blue links entirely and going straight to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity for a recommendation. Agents who ignore AEO are invisible in that conversation — no matter how well they rank on Google.
No. Most established agencies will appear somewhere, in some answer, at some point. That's not the game. The game is share of voice — being the agent AI names first, most often, and with the most confidence when someone asks for the best in a specific suburb. Appearing is table stakes. Ranking at the top of the answer is the outcome that wins listings.
Most Foundable clients start appearing or improve their share of voice in ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity answers within 60–90 days. Meaningful share of voice in a suburb usually takes 4–6 months of consistent work across authority and discoverability signals.
You can start — audit your NAP, add FAQPage schema, publish real answers to real questions. But most agents don't have the tooling to monitor 25–100+ prompts every month across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, or the citation network to move share of voice quickly. That's the wedge for a specialist agency.
Real estate is the most googled, portal-fragmented, review-driven category in Australia. Every one of those factors compounds inside AI models. The category rewards specialists — and punishes generalists — more than almost any other.
See what AI says about your agency today.
Start with a free AI visibility audit. We'll run your agency through ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews and show you exactly where you stand.