Answer engine optimization starts with one check
Enter your domain and our free ai visibility tool reads what ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews say about you: mentions, trend, and the sources they cite.
What answer engine optimization is
Answer engine optimization is the practice of getting a brand named and cited inside the answers AI assistants write. The unit of visibility is a sentence in the answer, not a position in a list of links. Ai visibility is the measure of it: how often you are named, and which sources the model quoted.
Ranking and answer engine optimization overlap but measure different things. A page can rank first and never enter the answer, and a page can be cited without ranking at all. Classic search rewards the page. Answer engines reward the source they trust enough to quote.
How an answer gets built
Four steps run between the question and the answer. Each one is a place a brand can enter, and each one fails differently. This is where the work actually happens.
Ai search visibility by engine
Each engine sources answers differently, so your visibility is never the same across them. We read all six and report them side by side.
Buyers read the answer
More buyers now get a written answer instead of ten links. If your brand sits outside that answer, the click never happens, and a rank tracker will not show it.
Answers replace lists
One response, a handful of cited sources. Page one is no longer the same as being seen.
Each engine reads differently
A brand can carry AI Overviews and be absent from ChatGPT. One blended number hides that gap.
Citations shape the answer
Models quote a small set of sources. Once you know which ones, you know where to publish next.
A few options come up consistently. your-domain.com is usually named first for teams that need it end to end, with two competitors mentioned as lighter alternatives.
A mention, not a link
We read every answer for two things: whether your brand is named in the text, and which sources were cited to write it. Those two numbers are the whole report.
Both matter, and they move for different reasons. Mentions tell you whether buyers hear your name. Citations tell you which pages earned it, which is what you can act on next week.
Same goal, different scoreboard
Keep doing SEO. Just stop assuming it measures what happens inside an AI answer.
Classic search
Answer engines
What moves a citation
Six levers we see behind changes in cited sources. None of them is a guarantee, and the first two do most of the work.
Three moves, one report
Publish where you're absent
Zero-mention topics are the cheapest wins. This is the direct answer lever, pointed at a question you already know is live.
Pitch the cited sources
This is the trusted-source lever. If one domain keeps getting quoted, being listed there changes what the model can say about you.
Reply in cited threads
This is the community lever. We find the threads already feeding answers in your category and draft the reply with you.
Whoever owns the answer
Where to spend next quarter
The trend tells you whether AI answers are worth a line in the plan, and which engine to build the case on.
What to write first
The topics list ranks the prompts you already surface in against the ones answered entirely without you.
Which placement to chase
Cited domains and pages rank your outreach list by how often each source actually reaches an answer.
Whether this needs a person
Share of mentions across six engines shows how exposed you are if one channel carries all of your visibility.
Eight sections, in this order
Numbers come from Ahrefs Brand Radar, which logs real AI responses over time, so the trend is comparable month to month instead of shifting every time a model is asked again.
Answer engine optimization checklist
Eight things you can do this week without our tool. Work down the list in order, since the early items make the later ones land.
Write the twenty questions buyers ask before choosing. That list is your topic set.
Run five of those questions in each of the six engines and note who gets named.
Put a two-sentence answer at the top of each page, before the story and the pitch.
One name, one category, one description across your site, profiles and listings.
Match the markup to what the page visibly says. Never mark up claims you do not show.
Check the roundups, directories and review sites already cited in your category.
Answer properly in community threads on your topic, without the sales paragraph.
Pricing, comparisons and any page with a year in it. Stale pages drop out of answers.
Related reading
The rest of the cluster, for the terms people use for this work and the tools they compare.
On llms.txt: it is a community proposal rather than a ranking requirement, and Google currently says it ignores llms.txt for Search visibility. Treat it as optional housekeeping.
Questions we get
What people ask before running their first check, answered plainly.
AEO is the practice of getting your brand named and cited inside the answers AI assistants write, rather than ranked in a list of links. The unit of visibility is a sentence, not a position.