Definitions · the reference

What is AI visibility? AEO, GEO and the ACE method, defined

The plain, canonical definitions: AI visibility (AEO/GEO), and ACE, the method for measuring and changing what AI assistants say about a company.

Makefield · Berlin

The field

AI visibility

AI visibility is how a company is recognised, described, and recommended when someone asks an AI assistant — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Mode. It's the AI-era counterpart to search visibility: not "do we rank?" but "when an assistant answers about our category, are we in the answer, described accurately, and recommended — and whose sources is it drawing on?"

The same work goes by two interchangeable labels: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) — being named and recommended in the answer (the outcome) — and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) — being retrievable and cited inside the answer (the machinery). As of 2026 there's no settled line between them; AI visibility is the clearest umbrella, and GEO is largely how you earn AEO.

The method

ACE — Audit, Correct, Engineer (then Measure and Monitor)

ACE is Makefield's method for AI visibility, developed and published in the open. ACE itself is the intervention — Audit, Correct, Engineer. Two further stages follow it and are not part of the acronym: Measure and Monitor.

Audit — measure what AI assistants currently say about a company: recognition, accuracy, competitor framing, recommendation, and the sources behind them — reproducibly, per engine, human-verified.
Correct — make the true, clear account of the company the easiest one for a model to find and repeat.
Engineer — make its information machine-readable: clean documentation, valid structured data, an earned presence in the sources AI trusts.
Measure — re-run the same audit against the baseline to prove a change actually moved the answer.
Monitor — watch over time, because AI answers drift as models update and the web changes.

ACE names the field's terrain worked with one repeatable loop; the audit scores seven dimensions — recognition, accuracy, competitor framing, recommendation (the outcome) and documentation, structured data, citation & authority (the machinery).

The machinery · what a company can change

The outcome · what the engines say

Seven dimensions: three machinery dimensions a company can change (documentation, structured data, citation and authority) and four outcome dimensions that describe what the engines say (recognition, accuracy, competitor framing, recommendation).

Where it's from

Open, and authored

ACE and this framework are published openly as educational material — the method on the open course, the audit framework on GitHub, the terms in the glossary. Published by Makefield, Berlin. Free to use and cite with attribution; there's nothing to buy.