Answer engine
A system that returns a synthesised answer instead of a list of links.
GEO
Definition
An answer engine retrieves supporting documents and generates a single natural-language response, usually with inline citations.
Perplexity, AI Overviews and assistant search modes are the common commercial examples.
Why it matters
Answer engines compress a results page into a paragraph, concentrating traffic on the few sources named in that paragraph.
How to apply it
- Measure citation share, not just rank.
- Write self-contained sections that survive being quoted out of context.