Is AEO replacing SEO?

AEO is not replacing SEO, it sits on top of it. Answer engine optimization targets the systems that answer questions directly: Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and voice assistants. The term rose fast after AI Overviews launched.

Those engines do not have a private web. They retrieve pages from the same indexes classic SEO fills, then quote the clearest passage. No rankings means no retrieval, and no retrieval means no citation. The two disciplines share most of their work.

What AEO adds is passage-level thinking. Lead with the answer, keep facts specific, and structure pages so a model can lift a paragraph cleanly. That is refinement, not replacement.

BlazeHive builds for both layers with its AEO content generator, writing pages that rank and get quoted.