The AEO tool that measures before it optimizes
Answer engine optimization is being the source ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews cite. AuditAE shows whether they cite you today, whether they can even read your site, and what to fix first. Two free checks, then pay per check.
Monitoring tells you that you lost. Optimization tells you why, and what to change.
Most tools sold as AEO stop at the first half: a dashboard of prompts and whether you appeared. AuditAE runs both halves on the same domain, so the fix list is built from the prompts you actually lost and the checks your site actually failed.
Measure: are you the answer?
Your buyers' real questions, run live on all four engines. Per prompt and per engine: cited, mentioned only, or absent; every source used; every competitor named; and what the same click costs in Google Ads.
Run the free citation checkFix: can they cite you at all?
A live read of the site against what answer engines need: GPTBot and friends allowed, text that survives without JavaScript, JSON-LD that says who wrote it, an llms.txt, one h1 and an answer-first opening. Every failed check ships with the code.
Run the free AI search auditAre you the answer? Ask the engines.
One buyer prompt × four engines. No signup, no card. Your mention, your citation, and every competitor named, in about three minutes.
Six of the checks that decide whether an engine can cite you
Half the time a site isn’t cited for a technical reason, not a content one. The free AI search audit runs these on your key pages, scores the site 0–100, and emails the copy-paste fix for each failure.
Citation bots allowed
GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended and OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt. Blocked here, invisible everywhere.
Readable without JavaScript
Answer engines read the HTML the server sends. Client-rendered copy is blank to them.
llms.txt served
A plain-text map of what the site is and which pages matter. Drafted for you from the pages we crawl.
Organization and Article schema
JSON-LD that names the publisher, the author and the dates, so the engine can trust and attribute the page.
Answer-first structure
One h1, a two-sentence answer up top, one idea per h2. The shape an engine can quote.
Updated within 12 months
A visible dateModified. Engines prefer sources that look maintained, and say so.
Run it now on any domain, no login: free AI search audit. On WordPress the free AuditAE plugin scores these daily and fixes most of them itself.
Optimization means a list you can hand to whoever edits the site
Every citation audit ends in a ranked “do this first” list built from the prompts you lost and a live read of your own pages. Each item names the page, the change, and which lost prompts it closes. On losses where the engine named you but cited a third party, it names that third party too.
- 1Open /compare with a 60-word answer, then the table
Perplexity and ChatGPT quote ledgerly.io/compare on 3 of 4 prompts. It answers in the first paragraph; yours opens with a hero image and 700 words of story.
closes 6 of 13 lossesledgerly.io/compare - 2Get named in the two roundups Gemini already trusts
Both cite billsimple.co and ledgerly.io by name. Neither has been asked to include you.
closes 4 of 13 lossestoolfinder.iothe-roundup.com
Three acronyms, two jobs
SEO measures a position. AEO and GEO measure a citation, which is why they need a different tool. The names differ more than the work does.
| The question | The unit | The tool | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | Where do I rank on the results page? | Position | Rank tracker |
| AEO | Does the answer cite me, and can the engine read my site? | Citation, per engine | AuditAE |
| GEO | How do I shape content so generative engines use it? | Same measurement, different name | AuditAE |
The long version: what is answer engine optimization, generative engine optimization and the SEO, GEO and AEO research roundup.
Site audit, citation audit, fix list
Ten site checks and six page checks over your key pages, scored 0–100, with the copy-paste fix for each. No login.
AuditAE drafts the buying questions worth the most; every prompt runs on all four engines the same day.
The list is ranked by which lost prompts each change closes. Schedule the re-run and get the email when the score moves.
The site audit is free. The citation audit costs cents per check.
Subscription tools charge whether you run an audit or not. AuditAE charges per (prompt × engine): Perplexity 5¢, ChatGPT 7¢, Google AI Overviews 9¢, Gemini 12¢. A 5-prompt audit across all four is $1.65.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Cost · one 5×4 audit | Per-domain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AuditAE | 5–12¢ / check | Pay-as-you-go | $1.65 | No — any domain |
| Otterly Lite | $29 / month | Subscription | $29 | Tier-dependent |
| Semrush AI Visibility | $99 / mo / domain | Sub + per-domain | $99 | Yes — multiplies |
| Profound Lite | $499 / month | Subscription | $499 | Yes |
| Peec AI | ~€49 / month | Subscription | tier-dependent | Yes |
That is a different pricing model, not a discount. The pricing page shows the per-engine math.
Questions about AEO tools
Looking at it from the SEO side? The AI SEO tool page explains the two meanings of the phrase and prices every citation in Google Ads clicks.
What is an AEO tool?
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An answer engine optimization tool helps a site become the source an AI answer engine cites. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews write one answer per question and link a few sources; AEO is the work of being one of them. A complete AEO tool does two things: it measures whether you are cited today, prompt by prompt and engine by engine, and it checks the site for the things that stop an engine citing you at all: blocked crawlers, text hidden behind JavaScript, missing schema, no llms.txt, pages that never state their answer. AuditAE does both.
Is there a free AEO checker?
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Two, no login. The free citation check on this page runs one buyer prompt across all four engines and shows who was cited and who was named instead of you. The free AI search audit crawls your site and scores it 0–100 on the site-side AEO checks, then emails every fix with its code. A full account starts with $5 of free credit, no card.
AEO vs SEO: what is the difference?
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SEO asks where you rank on a results page; AEO asks whether the engine's answer names and links you. You can rank first and never be cited, because the engine pulled its answer from a review site, a directory or a competitor's comparison page. The levers differ too: rankings respond to links and keywords; citations respond to crawler access, quotable structure, machine-readable authorship and the third-party pages the engine already trusts. AuditAE measures the second thing and leaves rank tracking to rank trackers.
Is AEO the same as GEO?
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In practice, yes. Generative engine optimization and answer engine optimization both describe being the source a generative AI answer cites. GEO tends to be used for the content side and AEO for the technical side, but the measurement is identical: did the answer cite you, and if not, who did it cite. AuditAE covers both under one score.
What does an AEO audit check?
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Two layers. The citation audit runs your prompts on all four engines and records the citation, the mention, the sources and the competitors per cell. The site audit checks robots.txt for the AI crawlers, whether the main text is in the server HTML, llms.txt, Organization and Article schema, FAQ schema where questions exist, one h1 with an answer-first opening, sitemap presence and a visible last-modified date. Each failed check comes with the exact fix.
How much does it cost?
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Per check, by engine: Perplexity 5¢, ChatGPT 7¢, Google AI Overviews 9¢, Gemini 12¢. A 5-prompt audit on all four engines is $1.65. The site audit is free. There is no subscription and no per-domain fee, and signup comes with $5 of free credit.
Does it work on WordPress?
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Best of all there. The free AuditAE WordPress plugin runs the AEO score daily from wp-admin and fixes most of it itself: it serves llms.txt, writes Organization, Article and FAQ schema, manages the AI crawler rules, pings IndexNow and finds broken internal links. It sits alongside Yoast or Rank Math without touching titles, metas or sitemaps.
Four answer engines, one grid, one score
ChatGPT
The biggest AI answer surface, with zero native analytics.
Track ChatGPT PPXPerplexity
Citation-first answers where every response names its sources.
Track Perplexity GEMGemini
Google's assistant, grounded in Search, a different index than ChatGPT.
Track Gemini AIOAI Overviews
The answer box above the blue links, captured live on every run.
Track AI OverviewsBecome the source the answer cites.
Run the free site audit, then sign up and run your buyer prompts on all four engines. AuditAE hands you the score, every source, every competitor named and the fix list. About three minutes.