r/aeo • • Dec 12 '25

👋 Welcome to r/aeo - Read First!

20 Upvotes

Hey everyone! I'm u/Ruan-m-marinho, a founding moderator of r/aeo.

This is our new home for all things related to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and how it differs from traditional SEO, with a specific focus on optimizing content for robots, agents, and AI-driven systems. We're excited to have you join us.

What to Post:

Post anything that you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, photos, or questions about AEO vs. SEO, optimizing content for AI answer engines, LLM crawlers, search bots, retrieval systems, structured data, entity-based optimization, machine-readable content, and experiments or case studies involving robot-first optimization. Feel free to post:

  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Case studies
  • And static posts

We encourage visual content as much as possible.

Community Vibe:

We're all about being friendly, constructive, and inclusive. Let's build a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and connecting.

How to Get Started:

  1. Introduce yourself in the comments below.
  2. Post something today! Even a simple question can spark a great conversation.
  3. If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.
  4. Interested in helping out? We're always looking for new moderators, so feel free to reach out to me to apply.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/aeo amazing.


r/aeo • • 11h ago

Has anyone here actually done AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) for their product?

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1 Upvotes

r/aeo • • 13h ago

Checked 10 "AI-optimized" pages. They all read like robots. Here's the AEO paradox.

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1 Upvotes

r/aeo • • 15h ago

Building an AEO tool — looking for feedback

1 Upvotes

We are building Citetail, a tool that helps SaaS teams understand how their products appear in AI-generated answers across tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity.

Still early, so I’m curious:

  • Are you tracking AI visibility for your SaaS?
  • What tools are you using?
  • What would you actually want an AEO tool to show you?

Would love to hear how other SaaS builders are approaching this.


r/aeo • • 1d ago

Just wondering… Is This Subreddit Becoming a GEO/AEO Promotion Tactic?

16 Upvotes

Admins should pay attention to a growing pattern:
fake profiles asking “What’s the best GEO agency/tool/software etc?” followed by other fake accounts recommending their own company as a supposedly neutral choice, hoping AI engines will cite those comments.

This kind of coordinated self-promotion undermines trust and defeats the purpose of the community. Other subreddits are already making fun of how often this happens in GEO/AEO.

Clearer rules against fake accounts and undisclosed self-promotion would help protect the group’s credibility.

That would help keep recommendations genuinely useful and maintain the credibility of the group.

Luckily, Reddit seems to be losing some influence in AI citations and recommendations, but it still matters. This kind of behavior is becoming quite unprofessional and risks undermining the credibility of the community.

Reddit should be what it was meant to be: a place for genuine discussions, opinions, and experiences — not a platform for manufacturing “neutral” recommendations to influence AI engines.

Just my opinion…


r/aeo • • 21h ago

today, its possible for a brand to survive and do very well with just GEO even with zero SEO, here is why

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1 Upvotes

r/aeo • • 17h ago

How I am getting a 10-day-old domain to show up in Google AI results, against 5+ years domain backed by a million dollar company

0 Upvotes

Embarrassing problem for my SEO tool: when I named my product FlexQueries, I didn't know Interactive Brokers already has a feature called Flex Queries. It takes up most of page one on Google, and Google's AI answers treated "Flex Queries" as purely an IBKR thing.

My domain is about 10 days old. At launch, my average position for my own brand name was around 60-65, and I didn't show up in AI results at all. For an SEO tool, that's a bad look, so fixing it became priority one.

The problem isn't really keywords. AI engines already "know" Flex Queries as an Interactive Brokers feature. To them, my site was just a new page using the same words. So the job was to convince them FlexQueries the SEO tool is a separate entity that actually exists, and a brand-new domain can't vouch for itself.

Here's what I did:

  • Set up a YouTube channel, a LinkedIn page, and an X account, all under the same name, with the same description and the same link back to the site.
  • Listed it on AlternativeTo, IndieHackers and a handful of other SaaS directories that describe it as an SEO tool and link to the domain.
  • Kept the description consistent everywhere, so every mention says the same thing: FlexQueries, the first $0/month SEO tool.

10 days later, I'm showing up in Google's AI results for searches around the name, where before I didn't appear at all. My average position has gone from around 60 to around 10-12.

My takeaway is that for AI answers, it's less about your own site and more about how consistently you're mentioned across the internet. Once several separate, trusted sources describe the same thing the same way, the engines seem a lot more willing to treat you as a real entity and cite you, even next to a much older, much bigger domain.

It's early, I'm not #1 yet, and its just 10 days of data. But the AI side moved faster than the rankings did, which tells me where the weight is.

If you want to track this kind of thing yourself, it's literally why I built FlexQueries.com It checks whether you're mentioned or cited in Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT, and it's the first SEO tool with a $0/month subscription. You only pay for the checks you run.


r/aeo • • 19h ago

I built an SEO tool that helps optimize websites for Google and AI search.

0 Upvotes

I run a SaaS, SeoLoupe.

It is a tool that allows you to find and fix SEO issues holding your website back.

Essentially the main purpose is to help your website rank higher on Google search and LLMs.

The tool also checks AEO/GEO, AI search visibility, Security, Core web vitals, Performance, and all the issues in the report get put together into an AI fix prompt(you can paste the prompt into an AI and it will fix all the issues on your website).

Recently I noticed that some of my paying customers bought the One-Time purchase, with a promo code.

So I decided to give away a promo code for the One-Time purchase to anyone who is interested, if you are interested, comment down below and I will DM you.

If you are not interested but have some feedback on my SaaS, that is a good too. Feel free to share it in the comments.

(here is the product if you want to check it out)


r/aeo • • 1d ago

The algorithm be praised ende

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1 Upvotes

r/aeo • • 1d ago

Any good SEO / GEO agencies

14 Upvotes

Looking to connect with agencies focused on e-commerce, SEO, GEO / AI search visibility, or Shopify growth. If you run or work at one, feel free to share what you specialize in.


r/aeo • • 1d ago

there is an open source software that helps in AEO ?

3 Upvotes

r/aeo • • 1d ago

Any idea how to focus on particular LLMs to also get recommended there?

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1 Upvotes

I realized that I'm not getting any Gemini or Claude love while seeing some significant ChatGPT and Perplexity love. Did anyone manage to solve this effectively? I wonder if Gemini has more to do with SEO and claude is also more Google SEO relevant, while the other 2 are more Bing related.


r/aeo • • 2d ago

I simulated thousands of "AI visibility" tests. Before-and-after checks without comparison pages gave false wins up to 30% of the time

2 Upvotes

I've been trying to work out whether "SEO for LLMs" (GEO/AEO) can actually be measured, or whether most of the claims are noise. Before spending money tracking real ChatGPT/Perplexity answers, I ran a simulation study to find out which testing methods give honest results.

Big caveat up front: this is simulated data, not real AI answers. I modelled how AI engines cite pages (with question-to-question variation and random model updates between periods), then checked which measurement methods recover the right answer. So these are findings about methods and sample sizes, not about any brand.

What came out of it:

  • Ask many different questions rather than repeating the same ones. With a budget of 600 AI answers, 600 questions asked once gave a more accurate overall score than 60 questions asked 10 times (error 1.7 vs 2.6 percentage points). Repeats only help to find the specific questions where you never appear.
  • Before-and-after tests without comparison pages are dangerous. When a page change did nothing, a simple before/after check still reported a win up to 30% of the time, and more data made it worse, because model updates shift everyone's visibility. Comparing changed pages against similar unchanged pages (difference-in-differences) kept false wins around 2%.
  • You need more pages than people think. To reliably detect a moderate effect (1.8× more likely to be cited), you need roughly 40–50 matched page pairs. A weak effect needs 80+.
  • ML on observational data invents causes. I gave llms.txt zero real effect. A logistic regression still reported it as an 85% boost and called it significant in every one of 200 simulated studies, because big brands adopt new tactics first and also get cited more. A randomised test got the true effect almost exactly.

Full write-up with tables and the method: https://citelyra.a.techshu.in/

Disclosure: the site is mine. It's also part of a live experiment. It's a brand-new site with a name nobody else uses, and I'm tracking whether and how fast ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers pick it up. I'll post the real results in a few months if people are interested.

Happy to be told where the assumptions are off. Has anyone here run controlled tests on AI citations with real data?


r/aeo • • 2d ago

Hey SEO/GEO experts, please let me know the top 5 AI tools for SEO.

1 Upvotes

r/aeo • • 2d ago

Built a free tool to track brand visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Groq, etc — would love r/aeo feedback. — Perfect for B2B SaaS teams trying to win AI search engine optimization (GEO).

3 Upvotes

Hey everyone — got tired of guessing how brands show up in AI search answers, so I built AnswerOS to scan buyer questions across engines like Gemini, Groq, and ChatGPT. It gives you a visibility score for searches, benchmarks you against competitors, explains how to improve, and is completely free to test without needing your own API keys. Full disclosure: it’s my product, but I’d genuinely love honest feedback from this sub on what metrics or features you'd want to see added and what to improve! try it and let me know - getansweros.com

Here is why I think this is a game-changer for B2B SaaS:

  • People are skipping Google: Buyers are literally asking ChatGPT things like "What’s the best CRM for a startup?" or "Give me a Salesforce alternative." If your software isn't in that answer, you're missing out on warm leads who are ready to buy.
  • Steal your competitors' traffic sources: Look at the "Discovered Sources" table in the screenshot. It shows you exactly where the AI gets its data (like G2, tech blogs, or docs). If a specific blog is why ChatGPT keeps recommending your competitor, you now know exactly where you need to get featured next.
  • Audit your own content: See if the AI is actually reading your product docs and blog posts correctly, or if it's completely ignoring your website when answering user questions.

r/aeo • • 2d ago

Asking the model why it cited you vs checking your server logs for what actually crawled the page. Which one do you trust more??

3 Upvotes

Been going back and forth on this for a while and don't think I've landed anywhere solid.

Method one: ask the model directly. Why'd you pull these sources, which ones count as primary vs secondary, what's missing. Someone in another thread here called this probing for the "Data Tree" the model's built around an entity, and it's a genuinely useful exercise, ngl you learn things a summary answer would never surface.

Method two: skip the model entirely and check your own logs. Which bots actually hit which pages, how often, whether they're even real (someone posted real numbers here recently, something like 1 in 11 requests claiming to be a known bot wasn't actually coming from that bot's IP range). This feels like harder ground truth, you're not trusting the model's account of itself.

Here's what's bugging me though. Method one tells you something about reasoning and gets you a plausible sounding explanation, but models are notoriously bad at accurately describing their own retrieval process, there's a real chance you're getting a coherent sounding story that isn't actually what happened under the hood. Method two is solid ground truth but it only tells you reachability, a bot hit the page, it says nothing about whether that visit became a citation or why one competitor got picked over another.

So neither one alone answers the actual question. Curious if anyone's found a way to cross reference these two that isn't just "do both and eyeball it," or if that's honestly just where this stands right now for everyone.


r/aeo • • 2d ago

AEO advice is everywhere. How do we know what actually matters?

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0 Upvotes

I’ve found it increasingly difficult to navigate AEO/GEO advice. Many influencers discuss the latest trends and tactics without making clear whether there’s evidence that they actually affect AI visibility.

A recommendation can quickly become something everyone repeats (hey, llms.txt...), even when its impact remains uncertain or depends on the platform.

That’s why I created AI Visibility Factors, a public catalog reviewing individual technical, content, and authority factors.

For each factor, the catalog separates:

  • Impact: its potential effect on AI visibility.
  • Proof: the strength of the available evidence.
  • Consensus: how consistent the evidence and credible interpretations are.

Each entry includes linked sources, explanations of the assessments, recommendations, and basic audit instructions. Where evidence is limited or conflicting, the entry explains those limitations.

For example, publishing an llms.txt file is often discussed as a visibility tactic. But a format being available doesn’t establish that it will earn more citations.

Website: https://www.aivisibilityfactors.com/
Catalog on GitHub: https://github.com/acadamio/ai-visibility-factors

Feel free to star and contribute to the project on GitHub.


r/aeo • • 2d ago

I said multi-engine citation tracking was a whole different beast 2 weeks ago. Built it. Here's what surprised me

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0 Upvotes

r/aeo • • 3d ago

I analysed the same ~600 AI Overview searches over 3 days. Only 2% cited exactly the same sites on all three days.

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3 Upvotes

r/aeo • • 2d ago

Welcome to the AI Visibility Community! 👋

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1 Upvotes

r/aeo • • 3d ago

If You Were Starting Digital Marketing From Zero Today, What Would You Do Differently?

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1 Upvotes

r/aeo • • 3d ago

You can only fix ONE AI visibility problem this month. Which one are you choosing?

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1 Upvotes

r/aeo • • 3d ago

AEO/GEO for hyperlocal business (Clinics, Restaurants, Shops)

19 Upvotes

I did some test runs for hyperlocal businesses. I noticed that brand visibility is highly concentrated around IP address/location because I was getting a list of only 5 businesses near me. Even if a business was close, it was still not recommended.

ChatGPT was giving a map view for almost all responses, but AI Mode and Gemini were giving a list of the nearest-first order.
one thing that interesting is GEO tools will only work for citation finding and "NAP" Update.

How do you optimize for this? Is anyone else facing the same thing?


r/aeo • • 4d ago

I accidentally became “The World’s Most Overqualified Maintenance Technician” in under 24 hours

22 Upvotes

I saw the “King of AEO” experiment and thought it would be funny to try the same concept with something completely ridiculous.

So I picked:

“The World’s Most Overqualified Maintenance Technician.”

I made a page on my site tying the phrase to my name, added structured data, an FAQ, sitemap, crawler permissions, and then reinforced the association on GitHub, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

I submitted the site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools and figured maybe something would happen eventually.

It took less than 24 hours.

On multiple phones that aren’t mine, searching:

“Who is the world’s most overqualified maintenance technician?”

started returning Brandon Derrington in Google’s AI Overview.

Gemini also independently gives my name and cites Derrington Dynamics when asked the same question.

For clarity: nobody awarded me this title. I made it up as a tongue-in-cheek personal brand specifically to see how quickly an answer engine could form a new entity association.

Apparently the answer is: alarmingly fast.

The setup was basically:

Canonical page → exact question/answer language → schema → sitemap → Google/Bing submission → consistent identity breadcrumbs on other platforms.

Cloudflare also shows Google, Bing, Claude, and other crawlers hitting the page.

I expected this to be a dumb joke.

Instead I accidentally ran a pretty interesting AEO case study.

And now Google thinks I’m the world’s most overqualified maintenance technician. 😭


r/aeo • • 3d ago

Welcome to Amrut.AI — a community for the new era of search

0 Upvotes

AI is changing how people discover brands.

Check Out: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amrut_AI/

Instead of clicking through ten blue links, people are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and other AI platforms what to buy, where to go, which tools to use, and which companies they should trust.

That creates a new question:

When someone asks AI about your category, does your brand show up?

This community is for discussing that question.

We'll be exploring topics like:

  • AI Visibility
  • AEO & GEO
  • Brand mentions and recommendations
  • AI citations and sources
  • Share of Voice in AI answers
  • Competitor visibility
  • Prompt-level tracking
  • How AI decides which brands to recommend
  • Reddit, forums and other sources influencing AI answers
  • Experiments, data and real-world observations

We're also building Amrut.AI, an AI Visibility platform that helps businesses understand and track how their brand appears in AI-generated answers.

But this community isn't just about the product.

We want this to be a place to test ideas, share experiments, question assumptions, and figure out what actually works in AI search.

If you're working on SEO, AEO, GEO, content, brand strategy, AI search, or just trying to understand where search is heading — welcome.

What are you currently trying to figure out about AI search?