Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is getting your company named when a buyer asks an AI assistant who to use. These guides answer the questions that come before any of that, in plain words, with the prices and the method.
What an AEO audit costs in 2026An AEO audit, a check of whether AI assistants like ChatGPT name your company, costs between nothing and about $12,000 depending on who does it. The real price bands, and what each buys.
Is a free AI visibility score real? How to tellSome free AI visibility scores are measured by asking ChatGPT and the other engines. Others are estimated from training data and say so in small print. Four questions that tell them apart.
How Answer Audit writes and asks its questionsAnswer Audit writes 25 buyer questions for your category without naming you, asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google Search's AI answer, and records who each answer names. The method, the five engines, and what the score does not measure.
How to get your company recommended by AI assistantsFive jobs: let the AI crawlers in, say what you do in words a machine can quote, answer the questions buyers ask, keep your name the same everywhere, and get mentioned on the sites the assistants already read. Plus the tools ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude recommended for it on 22 September 2026.
How to compare what AI assistants recommend: you against your competitorsAsk several assistants the same buyer questions, without naming anyone, and count who each answer recommends, including the rivals you did not list. The tools ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude recommended for benchmarking and alerts on 22 September 2026.
How to track whether AI assistants recommend your companyAsk the same buyer questions every month, without your name in them, across several assistants and Google, and keep every answer. What to record, why Google needs its own column, and the tracking tools ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google recommended in September and October 2026.