FMG Fernwell
Media Group
AEO Research and Education

Every yes begins with an answer. Make sure it's yours.

Your customers are asking AI who to trust, what to buy, and where to go. Fernwell Media Group studies who gets named, who gets cited, and who gets left out, and publishes what it learns: the method, the measurements, and a free tool to check your own site.

Run the free scan Read the Answers
1B
people now use ChatGPT every month, the fastest app ever to get there
Sensor Tower via Reuters, 2026
68%
of US Google searches now end without a click
SparkToro/Similarweb, 2026
8%
of ChatGPT citations overlap with Google's top results
Ahrefs Brand Radar, 2026
+35%
more organic clicks for brands cited in AI Overviews
Seer Interactive, 2025

See how an AI engine sees you

Start with the first question every AI visibility strategy has to answer: can an engine actually read you? Run a free, single-page scan for legibility and citability. No account. No email.

One page, read the way an AI crawler reads it. You get an eligibility check for each engine, from that engine’s own published rules, and two scores: Legibility, how well a machine can read you, and Citability, whether the page carries what a citation needs. Namability, who gets named in the answer, takes a benchmark across engines and questions, so a single-page scan does not score it.

What is Answer Engine Optimization?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of making you understandable, citable, and nameable by the AI engines answering your customers’ questions. Where SEO competes for rankings, AEO competes for inclusion in the answer.

AI engines need to understand who you are before they can cite you. A readable website alone doesn’t put you in the answer. AEO connects the pieces through information architecture: clear entity information, structured data that machines can parse, and content built around real questions. This site puts those principles into practice, from the information you see to the markup underneath it. View the source code, and you see the method at work.

How does AEO work in practice?

Measure where you stand. Fix what holds you back. Monitor what happens next. You can do each step yourself, and Fernwell Answers covers each one in depth.

1

Measure

Ask the questions your customers actually ask across leading AI engines, and record who gets named, who gets cited, and who gets left out. Then benchmark your namability against the competitors who take your place in the answer.

2

Fix

Fix what prevents engines from understanding and using you: schema markup, entity inconsistencies, weak information architecture, and content that obscures the answers engines need.

3

Monitor

Keep asking the same questions after every change. Track whether your share of AI answers grows, where competitors gain ground, and what to change next.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between AEO and SEO?
SEO optimizes for visibility in ranked search results. AEO optimizes for inclusion in AI-generated answers. Strong SEO helps engines find you, but it does not guarantee they will understand, cite, or name you. AEO builds on this foundation with entity definition, structured data, information architecture, answer-first content, and direct measurement of AI answers.
How do I know if AI engines are naming me?
Ask the questions your customers actually ask and measure who gets named, who gets cited, and who gets left out. A single prompt tells you very little. A repeatable benchmark across engines, questions, and competitors measures your namability and shows who is taking your place in the answer. The free scan above checks the groundwork: whether an engine can read and cite the page.
How long does AEO take to work?
There isn’t a universal timeline. Technical changes can appear as engines recrawl, while changes in namability and citation share can take longer and vary by engine. This is why you keep testing the same questions after every change. Repeat measurement shows what moved, what didn’t, and what to do next.
Do I need AEO if I already invest in SEO?
Probably. Strong SEO gives AEO a better foundation, but it does not answer the same question. SEO tells you whether people can find you in search results. AEO tells you whether an engine understands, cites, and names you when it answers that question. Measure first: a benchmark shows whether there is actually a gap before you invest in fixing one.

About Fernwell Media Group

Fernwell Media Group is an answer engine optimization research and education project by Kenneth Raymond. It studies how AI engines read, cite, and name their sources, and publishes what it finds: Fernwell Answers, the free scanner, and the method behind both.

We don’t ask you to take our word for it. We show what we measure, how we measure it, and what the results mean, so you can check your own site the same way.

Fernwell Answers:

Direct answers to the questions you're asking about AI search and being visible where buying decisions now start.

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All answers