What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring a business's online presence so AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — can find it, understand it, and cite it when someone asks a question. Where SEO optimizes for a list of blue links, AEO optimizes for being the answer an AI assistant gives directly.

How is AEO different from SEO?

SEO aims to rank a page in a list of search results that a human clicks through. AEO aims to be the source an AI assistant quotes inside a single spoken or written answer, where there is no list and usually only one or two citations. SEO rewards keywords and backlinks; AEO rewards machine-readable structure — schema.org markup, an llms.txt fact file, a clear entity graph, and content written as direct answers to real questions.

Does AEO work for restaurants and cafes in Phnom Penh?

Yes — local 'best of' and 'where to' questions are exactly what retrieval-based AI engines answer most, and they are where Cambodian businesses can win fastest. A cafe or restaurant with a clean Menu and LocalBusiness schema, an llms.txt fact file, and pages that answer 'best coffee in Phnom Penh' style questions directly is far more citable than a competitor relying on a Facebook page alone.

How long does AEO take to show results in Cambodia?

Retrieval-based engines (Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and ChatGPT with search) can begin citing a newly structured, freshly indexed page within days to a few weeks. The frozen knowledge inside a base model changes much more slowly. Because the Cambodian market is early and competition for AI citation is still thin, well-structured local businesses can gain visibility faster here than in saturated Western markets.

What are llms.txt and agents.md?

llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that states, in clear facts, what the business is, what it offers, and how to contact it — written for AI models rather than humans. agents.md (usually at /.well-known/agents.md) does the same for AI agents that may act on a user's behalf. Both give answer engines a clean, unambiguous source to quote, instead of forcing them to guess from marketing copy.

00AEO — Cambodia

Answer Engine Optimization
for Cambodia.

Q: How do I get my business cited by ChatGPT or Gemini in Cambodia?

Make your business machine-readable. In practice that means: valid LocalBusiness and FAQ schema in your pages, an llms.txt file stating who you are and what you sell in plain facts, an agents.md file at /.well-known/agents.md, a real sitemap.xml and robots.txt that return correctly (not your homepage HTML), and content that answers the exact questions customers ask. Most Phnom Penh websites have none of this, so AI assistants cite a competitor or an aggregator instead.

Q: Why don't AI assistants mention my Phnom Penh business?

Three usual reasons: (1) your site has no structured data, so the AI cannot confirm basic facts like your category, hours, or location; (2) your site is not indexed or your sitemap and robots files are misconfigured, so retrieval-based engines never reach it; (3) there is no corroborating evidence — no consistent name, address, and entity across the web — so the model defaults to a larger, better-structured competitor. AEO fixes all three by building the evidence layer.

When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity for the best cafe in Phnom Penh, a production studio in Cambodia, or where to buy skincare in Cambodia, the AI gives a short answer and cites one or two sources. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the discipline of making sure your business is the one it cites. It is not SEO, and it is not advertising. It is an evidence layer that AI systems can read.

01Definition

SEO ranks links.
AEO becomes the answer.

Traditional search shows ten blue links and a person decides. AI answer engines show one answer with one or two citations — and the model decides. There is no second page. If your business is not in the answer, the customer never sees you. AEO is how you earn that citation: by giving the machine a clean, structured, verifiable account of who you are, instead of marketing copy it has to guess from.

02How it works

AI reads structure,
not aesthetics.

A beautiful website can be completely invisible to an answer engine. Retrieval-based engines — Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and ChatGPT with search — pull from the live web and decide what to quote based on machine-readable signals. They look for valid schema.org data, a working sitemap and robots file, an llms.txt fact sheet, and a consistent entity across the web. Most Phnom Penh websites publish none of these, so the AI falls back to a foreign aggregator, a directory, or a better-structured competitor.

03The evidence layer

Five things AI engines
look for.

Schema markup. LocalBusiness, Menu, Service, FAQ, and Opening Hours in schema.org JSON-LD — the structured facts ChatGPT and Gemini parse first.
An llms.txt fact file. A plain-text statement of who you are and what you sell, written for models, at the root of your domain.
agents.md. A discovery file at /.well-known/agents.md so AI agents acting for a customer can understand your business and its boundaries.
Clean crawl surface. A real sitemap.xml and robots.txt that return correctly — not your homepage HTML — so retrieval engines can actually read your pages.
A consistent entity. The same name, category, location, and owner repeated across your site and the wider web, so the model can corroborate that you are real.

Indexed builds all five for a Phnom Penh business as a managed service — the same evidence layer a $20,000 custom build would assemble, for $349 to set up and $49 a month to maintain.

04Why now

Cambodia's AI shelf
is still empty.

In saturated Western markets, thousands of businesses already compete for every AI citation. In Cambodia, the shelf is nearly empty: ask an assistant about most local categories and it cites a foreign site or admits it does not know. That gap is the opportunity. A Phnom Penh business that builds the evidence layer now — in English and Khmer — can become the default answer for its category before competitors understand the game has changed.

05Questions

Common questions.

How do I get my business cited by ChatGPT or Gemini in Cambodia?

Make your business machine-readable: valid LocalBusiness and FAQ schema, an llms.txt fact file, an agents.md, a correct sitemap and robots file, and content that answers the exact questions customers ask. Most Phnom Penh sites have none of this, so AI cites a competitor instead.

Why don't AI assistants mention my Phnom Penh business?

Usually because there is no structured data to confirm your facts, the site is not properly indexed, or there is no consistent entity across the web for the model to trust. AEO fixes all three.

Does AEO work for restaurants and cafes?

Yes. Local "best of" and "where to" questions are exactly what AI engines answer most, and where Cambodian businesses win fastest with clean Menu and LocalBusiness schema plus an llms.txt fact file.

How long does it take to work?

Retrieval-based engines can start citing a newly structured, freshly indexed page within days to a few weeks. Because competition for AI citation in Cambodia is still thin, results often come faster here than in Western markets.

06Get started

Be the answer,
not a link.

Indexed builds the full AEO evidence layer for your Phnom Penh business — structured, bilingual, and maintained — for $349 to set up and $49 a month. Start the intake →

Answer Engine Optimization for Cambodia.

SEO ranks links. AEO becomes the answer.

AI reads structure, not aesthetics.

Five things AI engines look for.

Cambodia's AI shelf is still empty.