AEO Isn't SEO: Why You Should Let Bots Crawl Your Site in 2026

By 2026, traditional robots.txt strategies to block crawlers are outdated for those seeking visibility. Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, differs from classic SEO by focusing on appearing in responses from Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. To achieve this, site owners must allow AI crawlers to access their pages. A critical error is treating these AI crawlers as a single monolith rather than distinct entities, which requires a more nuanced approach than using a general User-agent block.