The AEO Machine
Everybody wants more. The AEO Machine is answer engine optimization for your website. It answers the questions your buyers ask, in articles ChatGPT can quote, and shows you each week how many visits AI answers send you.
Free with the Base Machine as your free add-on machine, for a limited time. $299 on its own after that.
$499 once · Runs on a server you own · Your AI account
ChatGPTIllustrationWhat should I ask a contractor before I hire one?
Before you hire a contractor, ask for their license number and proof of liability insurance, a written estimate that lists materials, labor and schedule, and two or three references from recent jobs. Then ask how changes to the work are priced before anything starts. Your website
They open the source
Articles · Hiring a contractor
What should you ask a contractor before you hire one?
Before you hire a contractor, ask for their license number and proof of liability insurance, a written estimate that lists materials, labor and schedule, and two or three references from recent jobs.
Illustration. ChatGPT's name and logo belong to OpenAI, which is not affiliated with Ownbox.
See a real article the AEO Machine publishedNow you'll know
Connect your PostHog, and the AEO Machine's Performance screen counts the visits that arrive from ChatGPT and the other AI answer engines, this week against last.
Visitors
1,284
↑ 9% vs last week
Page views
3,960
↑ 12% vs last week
Article views
1,107
↑ 18% vs last week
From AI answers
46
↑ 31% vs last week
Example numbers, in the machine's own Performance screen: the last 7 days against the 7 before, from your PostHog.
Who it's for
The AEO Machine is for any company whose buyers ask questions before they buy. Content-heavy teams stop posting by hand, and companies that have never published start a knowledge base without hiring a writer.
How it fits together
Six parts, one job each. Your team adds the questions, and every loop's results suggest the next ones.
The AEO Machine
Each loop starts from what the last one learned.
Where each loop starts
PostHog
Counts visitors, article views and visits from AI assistants, and Search Console shows the searches one good article could win. Add those as your next questions.
The plan
Airtable
Every question you want answered, one row each. The machine takes them in order and marks each one as it goes.
On your server
Writes and checks
Writes each answer on your own AI account, then checks it against your rules.
Where the articles are kept
Sanity.io
A hosted content store in your own account. It holds every article and hands it to your website.
/articles
Your website
Shows each article at an address that never changes, marked up as questions and answers.
Where buyers ask
Search and answer engines
Told the moment an article is live. They read the page and find the short answer first.
And around again, with better questions.
Not affiliated with the companies shown; names and logos belong to their owners.
Sanity.io is a hosted content store: the back office of your blog, without anyone having to type into it. The machine writes each article into your own Sanity.io project, and your website reads from it to show the page. The project is in your account, and every article in it can be exported.
article
Organized in Airtable
Every question you want answered goes into the plan, kept organized in Airtable. The machine takes the next one, writes it and publishes it, four a week by default, or one right away when you press Write and publish now.
Airtable · one row, one article · four a week by default
| Question | Status |
|---|---|
| What is answer engine optimization? | Published |
| How is AEO different from SEO? | Published |
| What should a knowledge base answer first? | Writing |
| Which of our pages should become questions? | Planned |
| How often should a knowledge base publish? | Planned |
Answer first
The question is the headline, and the first paragraph answers it in 40 to 60 words, the passage an answer engine can quote whole, and the heart of answer engine optimization. Follow-up questions, Article and FAQ markup, and a place in your sitemap come with every one.
question headline · short answer · Article + FAQPage JSON-LD
1
2
4
// The markup on every article
{ "@type": "FAQPage",
"mainEntity": [{
"@type": "Question",
"name": "What is answer engine optimization?",
"acceptedAnswer": {
"@type": "Answer",
"text": "Answer engine optimization is writing your pages …" }
}] }
Checked before it's live
Nobody has to read each article first, because the machine refuses to publish one that breaks your rules: words and phrases you never use, a competitor's name, or any number that isn't on your approved list. A refused draft gets one rewrite. If it still fails, it waits in the plan with the reason.
never-use words · competitor names · approved numbers only
// Example check
✓ checked What should a knowledge base answer first?
✗ refused unsourced number: “cuts research time by 40%”
↻ rewritten one repair round
✓ checked passed every rule
✓ published /articles/what-should-a-knowledge-base-answer-first
Auto-blogging through Sanity.io
Each article is published to your Sanity.io project, the content system your website reads, at an address that never changes. An edit updates the same page instead of making a new one, search engines are told the moment it's live, and Google Search Console connects with one button.
Sanity.io · stable addresses · IndexNow · Search Console
// What happens when it publishes
Sanity.io article published · /articles/how-is-aeo-different-from-seo
an edit patches the same page, never a new one
indexnow search engines told it's live
search Google Search Console, connected with one button
The shift
More of the questions your buyers used to type into a search box now go to ChatGPT and other AI assistants, which answer in a paragraph and quote the pages they trust. Answer engine optimization (AEO) is how a page becomes one of them. A blog written for keyword search buries that answer under an introduction. A knowledge base written question first puts it at the top, where it can be quoted.
And posting by hand can't keep up.
Writing is one step. Then someone formats it, pastes it into the site, writes the description, adds the markup, checks the facts and tells the search engines. Every article, every week. The AEO Machine does all of it, on a machine your company owns.
The page that answers the question is the page that gets quoted.
Posting by hand
Someone formats and pastes every article
The answer sits under an introduction
Markup when someone remembers
Checked when someone has time
Search engines find it eventually
The AEO Machine
Planned in Airtable, published on its own
The answer is the first paragraph
Article and FAQ markup on every page
Checked every time, before it's live
Search engines told the moment it's live
The AEO Machine runs on the Base Machine. For a limited time the Base Machine comes with one add-on machine free, and here it's the AEO Machine. Pro includes it too. After that it's $299 on its own.
Base Machine
$499one time
Your AI business machine, set up for you on a server you own.
What you get
Base Machine Pro
$1,599one time
For a whole team, on a server with twice the memory.
Included today
Planned
Enterprise
Custom
For a company that needs its AI, data and records under its own control.
Articles are planned in your own Airtable and published to your own Sanity.io project. The server costs about $12 a month from your hosting provider, and the AI runs on your own plan. None of it is billed through us.
Answer engine optimization is writing and marking up your pages so AI assistants and AI search can find the answer on them and quote it. It rewards pages that ask a clear question, answer it in the first paragraph, and make that answer easy for a machine to read.
SEO earns a place in a list of links; answer engine optimization earns a place inside the answer. The groundwork overlaps, like fast pages and a clean sitemap, but AEO adds question-shaped headlines, a short answer first, and structured data. The AEO Machine does both.
Yes: connect your PostHog, and the AEO Machine's Performance screen counts the visits that arrive from ChatGPT and other AI answer engines, this week against last. It counts arrivals from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude and You.com, next to your most read articles and the sites that send you visitors.
Any company whose buyers ask questions before they buy and wants those answers on its own website. Content-heavy businesses that post by hand get that work taken over, and companies that have never published get a knowledge base without hiring a writer.
The AEO Machine takes over the repetitive work, not the judgement: the first version, the formatting, the markup, publishing, and telling the search engines. Your team decides which questions the knowledge base answers and sets the rules every article has to pass.
You tell it. Each question goes into the plan, kept organized in Airtable, and the machine writes them in order, four a week by default. Press Write and publish now and it takes one right away.
No. Before any article goes live, the machine checks it against the words and phrases you never use, your competitors' names, and your approved numbers, and it refuses to publish one that fails. A refused draft gets one rewrite, then waits in the plan with the reason.
To your own Sanity.io project, which your website reads to show them. The articles at ownbox.io/articles are published exactly this way.
Read the article: Articles about AI business machines
Yours. The Base Machine signs in with the Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Grok account you already pay for, so the writing runs on your plan, never on ours, under a hard monthly ceiling.
$499 once for the Base Machine, with the AEO Machine as your free add-on machine for a limited time; after that it's $299 on its own. Base Machine Pro, at $1,599, includes it too. You also pay about $12 a month for the server and use your own AI plan.
Not to run it. The Base Machine is set up for you on your own server, and the AEO Machine is set up from its screens: your Sanity.io project, your Airtable, Google Search Console with one button, and the first questions. Your website needs to show the articles from your Sanity.io project once, a one-time job for whoever runs your site.
Plan it in Airtable. The AEO Machine writes, checks and publishes a knowledge base built for answer engine optimization, on a machine your company owns.
Get the Base Machine + AEO Machine — $499$499 once · AEO Machine included
Get a box