AEO/SEO
Get Cited by ChatGPT, Not Just Ranked by Google
Your buyers ask an AI which vendors to consider. We measure whether you show up in that answer, every week, across every engine, and then go fix the questions you lose.
Get StartedHow AEO Feeds the System
Every spoke strengthens the others. Here's how this service connects.
ICP language and buyer questions become the prompt set we track
The objections that come back in replies and on calls become the pages we write
Accounts that read a page get same-day outreach with context
AI-referred sessions and the leads they create land in the CRM as attributed records
Ranking and being cited stopped being the same thing.
Your buyers ask ChatGPT, not Google
Vendor shortlists get built inside an AI answer now. If you are not in it, you never enter the evaluation.
You rank on page one and get no clicks
An AI Overview plus a full screen of ads pushes the first organic result two screens down. The ranking is real; the traffic is not.
Nobody can tell you if any of it is working
Agencies report rankings and impressions because AI citations are harder to measure. Different number, same lack of an answer.
Proof
Zero to 26 cited answers in five weeks
We run this loop on DealSeam, a company we operate, before we sell it. Fifty-two buyer questions, polled weekly across four answer engines. Week one, DealSeam was cited in zero of 204 answers. Week five, 26 of 208, and 42% of the questions on Perplexity.
0%
Week 1 baseline
0 of 204 answers
12.5%
Week 5
26 of 208 answers
42%
Perplexity
22 of 52 questions
4
Engines, polled weekly
ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Exa
Engines move at different speeds, and we report all four. Perplexity picked DealSeam up within days. ChatGPT is the slowest to turn, so that is where the next round of page work goes. An engagement that only shows you the engines that moved is showing you half a scoreboard.
A measured loop: poll the questions, find the losses, fix the pages, poll again.
- The questions your buyers ask an AI, ranked by how much a citation is worth
- A weekly scoreboard of who gets cited on them, you or a competitor
- The loss list: the money questions where a competitor is named and you are not
- The answers written and shipped on the pages that have to win them
- AI crawlers let in, and your company described so an engine can tell what it is
Timeline
Baseline in week 1, first citation movement typically in 4-8 weeks
Every engagement includes weekly check-ins and a dedicated Slack channel for real-time communication.
The Citation Scoreboard
Every week we ask each answer engine the questions your buyers ask, then parse who gets cited. Not rankings, not impressions. Who the engine names when someone asks which vendor to use.
ChatGPT
OpenAI search + browsing citations
Google AI Overviews
The answer above the first organic result
Perplexity
Cited sources per answer
Exa / neural search
What retrieval-based tools surface
What the report actually says
- 1.Your share of citation this week, per engine, versus last week.
- 2.Which competitors are cited on the questions you lose, and on which engines.
- 3.The loss list, split into pages to improve and pages that do not exist yet.
- 4.What shipped last week, and whether the citation moved after it did.
AEO vs SEO
| SEO | AEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in a list of links | Be quoted inside the answer |
| Unit of work | The keyword | The buyer question |
| Measured in | Position, impressions, clicks | Share of citation, per engine |
| Rewards | Authority and link equity | Extractable, corroborated claims |
| Fails when | The AI answer sits above you | Nobody asks an AI about your category |
They are not alternatives. The pages that earn citations are usually the same pages that rank, which is why we run both and report them separately.
Frequently Asked Questions about answer engine optimization
Answer the question outright, in one quotable paragraph, on a page the engines can crawl. Then track who actually gets cited each week and write against the gaps.
Poll the questions your buyers ask across the engines on a schedule and count who gets named. Share of citation, trended, against competitors you pick.
A measurable baseline in week one and first citation movement in four to eight weeks. Engines differ: one may cite you months before another does.
Neither, if they only report rankings. Page-one positions increasingly produce no clicks, so the question is whether anyone can show you what the answer engines said.
If buyers in your category ask an AI for a shortlist, yes. If they do not, spend the money on outbound instead and we will tell you so.
Want to know if AI recommends you?
We will baseline your buyer questions across every engine and show you exactly who gets cited instead of you.