Is AEO Just Featured Snippets?

ByTyler Ziton

No, AEO is not just featured snippets. Answer engine optimization started with the snippet box in 2014 and now covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity too. Ahrefs found snippets fell from 15.41% of Google results to 5.53% in the first half of 2025, so the snippet is now the smallest part of the job.

Short answer: AEO is featured snippet work plus four newer answer boxes, and the same answer-first page wins all five.

Where Did AEO Come From?

AEO came from featured snippets, which Google introduced in January 2014 as a descriptive box at the top of the results. One page got quoted above everyone else, and SEOs started calling it position zero. Writing for that box was the first answer engine work most of us ever did.

The label followed a few years later. Jason Barnard was presenting on “answer engine optimisation” at BrightonSEO in April 2018, when the snippet and voice assistants were the only answer engines around. The name outgrew the box, and I cover the full modern meaning in what AEO is.

Google’s help page still explains the logic in one line. Snippets show “when Google thinks people want answers that can be found in a short piece of a website,” and Google picks them based on how well they answer the question. You cannot buy the box, and Google’s developer page answers “how can I mark my page as a featured snippet” with two words: “You can’t.”

What AEO Covers Now That Snippets Never Did

AEO now covers five answer surfaces, and four of them build an answer from several pages instead of quoting one. A snippet picked one winner, and the AI answers pick a panel.

Answer surfacePages quotedWho writes the text
Featured snippetOneThe page’s author
People Also AskOne per questionThe page’s author
AI OverviewsSeveralGemini
AI ModeMany, across follow-up questionsGemini
ChatGPT and PerplexitySeveral, from their own searchesThe chat model

Google describes the mechanics on its AI features page: AI Overviews and AI Mode may use a “query fan-out” technique that runs multiple related searches across subtopics. More pages get a seat, and each seat is smaller. I put the two Google boxes side by side in AI Overviews vs featured snippets.

For a store owner, that shifts the goal. You used to fight for one box on one keyword. Now you want to be quotable enough to hold a seat in several answers at once, including the follow-up where the shopper asks which brand to buy.

Say that shopper asks AI Mode for the best cast iron skillet under $100. The first answer names four brands. The follow-up asks which one needs the least seasoning, and the brands named there are the ones whose product pages answered that question in one clear sentence.

The chat tools add one more wrinkle. ChatGPT and Perplexity run their own searches and lean on what other sites say about you, so a store can hold the snippet on Google and still be missing from a ChatGPT answer to the same question. Snippet work never had to think about that.

Are Featured Snippets Going Away?

Featured snippets are shrinking fast but not gone: Ahrefs tracked one million US results pages and found snippets on 5.53% of them in June 2025, down from 15.41% in January. AI Overviews grew from 3.93% to 27.43% over the same months.

Ahrefs is careful to say that correlation is not proof, but the two lines move almost perfectly against each other. Google looks like it is swapping the quoted answer for the written one.

Still, do the math on that 27.43%. Nearly three of every four results pages had no AI Overview at all, and on those pages the snippet and the People Also Ask box are the only answer surfaces left. A store that quits snippet work gives those searches away.

People Also Ask has held up better. Semrush found the dropdowns beside 90.03% of AI Overviews in its 10 million keyword study, and each dropdown is a featured snippet in a smaller frame. If you stopped tracking People Also Ask the day AI Overviews launched, start again.

So snippet chasing in 2026 means fewer boxes, the same skill, and more places to use it. That skill is what my AI search services for Shopify stores are built on.

Which Snippet Tactics Still Work for AEO?

Four snippet tactics still work for AEO, since the AI features lift the same shapes the snippet box always did. Google confirms there are “no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode,” so a page that could win a snippet is already eligible.

  • The question is the heading. Use the words a shopper types, not a label like “Shipping Information.”
  • The answer is the first sentence. Two or three sentences total, then the proof.
  • Steps go in a numbered list, and numbers go in a small table. Snippets came in those three shapes, and the AI answers quote them the same way.
  • One question gets one page or one section. A page that half-answers six things gets picked for none of them.

Take a returns page. The heading is “Can I Return a Sale Item?” and the first sentence is “Yes, you can return a sale item within 30 days for store credit.” The policy details follow in a short table. That section can win a snippet, fill a People Also Ask dropdown, or get quoted in an AI Overview without a word changed.

Beyond those four, ranking matters less than it did for the snippet. A snippet almost always came from page one. Ahrefs found only 37.9% of AI Overview citations rank in the top 10 for the search, so a clean answer on a page-two post now has a shot the snippet never gave it. I lay out the full process in how to rank in Google AI Overviews.

You also keep the same opt-out. Google’s featured snippet documentation says nosnippet blocks all snippets, and its AI features page lists nosnippet, data-nosnippet, and max-snippet as the controls for AI answers too.

Start With One FAQ Page

Start with one FAQ page, because it already holds the questions your buyers ask and reshaping it takes an afternoon. Most store FAQ pages bury ten good answers under one vague heading, inside accordions that hide the text.

So give each question its own H2 and put the answer in the first two sentences. Move any numbers into a small table, turn any steps into a numbered list, and open the accordions so the text sits on the page.

Rewrite the five questions closest to a sale first: shipping time, returns, sizing, warranty, and how your product compares to the obvious alternative. Those are the answers a shopper asks for right before buying, and they are the ones an AI answer repeats.

From there, watch Search Console for the queries that page shows up for. When a snippet or an AI Overview starts quoting it, impressions on those queries jump, and that is your cue to run the same drill on the next page. The errors to avoid along the way are in the 7 AEO mistakes that cost you AI citations.

Want Your Store in Every Answer Box?

AEO is bigger than featured snippets, but the snippet taught the whole skill: ask the real question and answer it in a sentence. If you want to know which questions your store could own, book a call and I’ll pull your Search Console and show you the queries where one reshaped page puts you in the answer. My AI search services start with that list.

Sources:

SEO Consultant

Tyler Ziton is an SEO consultant and founder of Ziton Digital. He has driven $21M in annual organic revenue for 30+ brands including Park Seed, Flexfire, and Fieldsheer, and builds organic revenue systems for Shopify stores using SEO, AI search, and CRO.

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