As more companies capitalize on the capabilities of AI to bring in customers, more Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) tools are hitting the market. But are all of them capable of fulfilling their promise of increasing AI search visibility? We’re breaking down key factors going into AI search visibility and the best tools worth your marketing dollars.
How Is AI Search Visibility Measured?
We’ve published an AEO study that dives deep into factors impacting AI search visibility. Some of the top critical determining factors that we found affect how AI platforms decide who shows up in AI search results are:
- Content Quality & Depth: AI search engines look for high-quality, informative, and comprehensive content that satisfies the user’s need for an answer. Content must be clear, detailed, and well-structured.
- Credibility & Trustworthiness: AI search engines prioritize sources with authority, valuing third-party validation such as recognized credentials (certifications, awards) and references from authoritative sources like government websites, academia, and high-authority publishers.
- Content Relevance: AI search engines aim to match content with user intent. If your content answers the specific questions or addresses the queries users are typing, it will rank better.
- Citations & Mentions: AI models prioritize sources cited by reputable publishers like Wikipedia, academic journals, and trusted news outlets. Given LLMs’ reliance on real-time retrieval from reliable sources, securing relevant citations from trusted industry sources is key for brands and publishers aiming to boost AI visibility.
- Topical Authority & Expertise: AI models favor content from subject-matter experts with a niche focus, often prioritizing well-known industry leaders. Publishing deep insights in a specific field enhances visibility across AI models.
And those are just the top five factors out of the fifteen that impact visibility in AI search engines. For the entire list of ranking factors and a deeper dive into each, check out our study.
Things to Consider When Selecting an AEO Tool
AI Functionality
AI functionality refers to how well a tool leverages artificial intelligence to understand and enhance content for AI search engines. Look for tools that go beyond generating content. The right tool should be able to analyze search intent, identify trends, and tailor your strategies to meet the needs of AI search algorithms. Additionally, the tool should provide real-time insights to inform ongoing adjustments to keep up with evolving search behaviors and algorithm changes.
Content Optimization for AI Search Engines
Content optimization for AI search engines like ChatGPT or Google Gemini focuses on refining content to meet the unique demands of these platforms. AI search engines prioritize direct, relevant answers to user queries, so optimization in this context isn’t just about crafting content; it’s about ensuring the content aligns with AI algorithms that prioritize clarity, specificity, and relevance.
Tools that excel in this area help you structure content to enhance visibility and search ranking, ensuring your content is properly optimized for AI search engines’ expectations.
Ease of Use
User experience and how easy it is to implement optimizations are important. A tool that’s intuitive, with a simple interface and quick setup, allows for faster adoption and better results.
Comprehensiveness of the Toolset
Tools that offer a full suite of features for both content creation, optimization, and AI search engine integration will rank higher. This includes keyword research, content analysis, topic discovery, SEO audit features, and performance tracking.
Adaptability to AI Search Trends
We are at the mercy of AI search engines, and they’re evolving every day. These tools need to be proficient in adapting to those changes with frequent updates. Tools that stay on top of trends and continuously update their features to match the latest in AI search will provide long-term value.
The Best AEO Tools in the Game
1. Goodie AI
Goodie AI is a cutting-edge, AI-native platform that specializes in optimizing your website for generative engines. But that’s just putting it mildly. We leverage advanced algorithms to help brands amplify their visibility and improve their interactions across a range of AI answer engines, including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Our powerful optimization tools ensure that brands can effectively reach their target audience, improve user engagement, and stay ahead as consumers do their research through AI.
Pricing: Different pricing tiers are available for both startups and large-scale enterprises. More details on the pricing structure are available upon request.
Founded: 2023
Headquarters: New York City, USA
Key Features
- AI Visibility Monitoring: Tracks your brand’s visibility and mentions within top LLMs and AI search programs. Goodie then scores your visibility within different answer engines.
- Sentiment Analysis: See how AI search engines perceive your content to ensure it resonates with both your audience and AI search algorithms.
- AI Search Analytics and Attribution: Goodie AI tracks and evaluates your AI search performance, linking it directly to the key metrics that drive your business, whether that’s user growth, revenue increase, or other crucial business outcomes.
- AI Content Writing: You can plug in your ‘Author Stamp’ to effortlessly generate content that aligns with your company’s branding and your tone of voice. Unlike other content tools that regurgitate the same information over and over, Goodie AI helps you quickly create content optimized for AI search engines without sacrificing quality.
- AI Optimization Hub: Offers recommendations to improve your website’s AI search visibility, along with an AI Visibility Impact (AVI) report that highlights which pages are driving the most visibility and which ones need further optimization.
Pros
- By optimizing your website for AI search visibility, Goodie AI helps you invest in a future-proof strategy, which could yield higher returns as AI search continues to grow in importance.
- The tool’s ability to analyze AI visibility can help inform your broader marketing strategy, providing insights into how your content is being perceived and indexed by modern search engines.
- Instead of spending hours on manual audits or guesswork, your marketing team can use Goodie AI to streamline the process of AI search optimization, freeing up time to focus on creative or strategic tasks.
- The insights provided by the tool give you evidence-based guidance, which can reduce uncertainty and help you feel confident in your optimization decisions.
- With clear reports and recommendations, Goodie AI can help different departments (like SEO, content, and growth) align on optimization goals, leading to better collaboration across your team.
Cons
- As a newer platform, Goodie AI is continually enhancing its capabilities. Some advanced features may still be under development.
- The platform does not yet provide a feature to export reports.
- Some of Goodie AI’s advanced functionalities may require a learning period. Users new to AI search optimization might need to invest time in understanding and utilizing these features effectively.
2. Evertune
Founders Ed, Poul, and Brian launched Evertune in 2024 as a tool to give businesses the insights they need to navigate the landscape of answer engine optimization. The founders were inspired by a key issue they experienced in their own individual work: inputting the same questions into various LLMs would generate very different responses depending on the platform. Evertune was created to provide what they call “the AI brand index.”
Pricing: Pricing information not publicly listed.
Founded: 2024
Headquarters: New York City, New York
Key Features
- Sentiment & Perception Analysis: Analyzes tone (positive/negative/neutral) in AI responses mentioning your brand and reveals how your brand is perceived compared to your competitors.
- Competitive Benchmarking: Shows where your brand ranks in AI-generated recommendation lists and queries, and identifies which brands are getting more favorable exposure.
- Actionable Insights & Recommendations: Provides specific guidance on improving content, SEO, and public perception in AI models.
- Brand Monitoring: Understands how frequently and in what context your brand appears.
Pros
- Helps businesses prioritize where to focus SEO/content creation efforts.
- Evertune can help identify inaccuracies or gaps in how AI models describe your brand, allowing you to correct AI-driven misinformation.
- By analyzing how competitors are portrayed, you gain insights into their content strategies or perceived brand strengths.
Cons
- Evertune only monitors AI-generated outputs, not traditional web, social, or ad channels.
- Being newly launched, adoption proof may still be developing. Currently, Evertune doesn’t provide much information about its capabilities, nor do they name companies leveraging the tool in their strategies.
3. Scout by Yext
While Yext’s origins were grounded in providing search and social media tools, they’re stepping into the AI search visibility pond with Scout. While the tool is still pending launch, the prospect of a centralized solution for tracking brand performance, analyzing competition, and executing improvements is promising.
Pricing: Pending launch, pricing information not yet available.
Founded: Scout was launched in 2025.
Headquarters: New York City, New York
Key Features
- Channel Integration: Many AI search visibility tools don’t offer full-scale digital marketing capabilities. Scout’s integration with Yext offers a wider point of view across your whole digital marketing strategy.
- Hyper-Local Insights: The tool offers detailed analysis at various geographic levels, enabling brands to tailor strategies for specific markets.
- Competitive Analysis: Provides insights into competitors’ strategies and performance, aiding in strategic planning.
Pros
- A unified platform that connects with the rest of Yext to provide full visibility across all marketing channels it supports.
- Delivers prioritized AI optimization recommendations that users can immediately integrate within the tool.
- Suitable for multi-location brands, offering insights at national, regional, and local levels.
Cons
- Hasn’t opened to the public. Proof of value for various niches is to be determined.
- While Scout provides visibility into LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini, Scout can’t fully explain why a result ranks the way it does.
- Full functionality is tied to the overall Yext ecosystem. If you have other tools in your marketing stack, implementation may be difficult.
- While not exclusive to retail or brick-and-mortar, Scout is more suitable for brands with many physical locations (e.g., restaurants, banks, service chains).
4. Scrunch AI
As consumer behavior shifts toward seeking direct answers rather than clicking through links, Scrunch AI argues that your most important website visitors are now AI bots scanning your content. While Scrunch AI offers a comprehensive monitoring dashboard, it lacks the additional features provided by other tools on this list.
Pricing: Pricing information is available upon request.
Founded: 2023
Headquarters: Salt Lake City, Utah
Key Features
- AI Search Audit: The tool completes a comprehensive audit of your website to understand how AI crawlers interpret your content. It then identifies key areas of improvement where crawlers might be misinterpreting.
- AI Search Visibility Monitoring: The platform refreshes every three days, so you can stay informed on how you’re showing up in AI search results.
- Knowledge Hub: Their refined report identifies discrepancies between your website’s content, third-party information, and AI-generated outputs like Google’s AI Overviews to identify information gaps and inaccuracies.
- Journey Mapping: Scrunch presents visualizations of how AI agents and crawlers perceive your business so you can optimize how you target each stage of the customer journey from an AI perspective.
Pros
- Identifies information gaps, misinformation, and outdated information, enabling users to enhance their content to be more relevant and accurate for AI evaluation.
- Track your brand’s performance against competitors in AI responses.
- Easily find which changes will be the most impactful on your website’s AI search visibility.
Cons
- Scrunch AI’s services are tailored for larger organizations, which may limit accessibility for smaller businesses seeking similar solutions.
- Some advanced features may require users to invest time in understanding and utilizing them effectively, especially for those new to AI search optimization.
- There are constraints in tailoring the tool’s insights and recommendations to fit specific business needs/industries.
5. Semrush
While Semrush’s AI Toolkit arrived later in the game than some competitors, they’ve come out with a solution designed to help brands monitor, analyze, and enhance their presence across AI search platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. The dashboard provides real-time insights into brand mentions, sentiment, and competitive positioning within generative searches.
Pricing: Semrush’s AI Toolkit is available to all Semrush users and costs $99/month per domain. Each new domain requires a separate subscription.
Founded: 2008
Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts
Key Features
- Brand Monitoring: Offers extensive coverage of AI search platforms, enabling brands to track mentions, assess sentiment, and identify visibility trends across multiple channels.
- Analysis: The platform allows for detailed analysis at various levels, from overall brand performance to specific products or topics, facilitating precise tracking of sentiment shifts and source credibility.
- Customizable Reporting: This solution includes customizable reporting features, enabling teams to create and share targeted AI search performance reports tailored to their specific needs.
Pros
- While the AI toolkit provides an overview of brand sentiment and visibility, it doesn’t provide more in-depth analysis into why your brand performs the way it does in AI searches.
- The platform delivers up-to-date information on brand mentions and sentiment, enabling timely and informed decision-making.
Cons
- Semrush’s platform is built for one user at a time. If you want your entire team to be able to access the tool, you’ll need to enroll and pay for additional seats for other users.
- You’ll need a Semrush subscription to add on their AI Toolkit feature for an additional $99 per month.
- While the tool is capable of generating content recommendations based on common related queries, it doesn’t offer additional assistance throughout the writing process.
6. Otterly.AI
Otterly.AI was built around the question, “Is your business ready for AI?” Their tool aims to get you there. They offer brand, content, and competitor monitoring within LLMs. Otterly claims their tool is the Semrush for AEO.
Pricing: Lite version goes for $29 per month, the standard model $189 per month, and the pro tier $989 per month.
Founded: 2023
Headquarters: Mountain View, California
Key Features
- AI Search Monitoring: Automatically tracks brand mentions and content visibility across major AI search platforms, offering real-time insights into how your brand is perceived in AI-generated responses.
- Keyword Research: Assists in identifying conversational keywords and prompts that audiences are searching for on AI platforms, aiding in the development of targeted AEO and content marketing strategies.
- Link Tracking: Provides automated tracking of all link citations on AI search platforms, helping you understand your website’s positioning and discover opportunities for improvement.
- Sentiment Analysis: Gain insights into how frequently your brand appears and the sentiment associated with it across AI search platforms, enabling you to assess and enhance your brand’s reputation.
Pros
- Offers detailed analytics on brand presence, sentiment, and link tracking, providing a holistic view of your brand’s performance across AI search platforms.
- Designed with ease of use in mind, allows users to navigate features effortlessly.
Cons
- Otterly.AI was built for ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, and Perplexity, which may limit its optimization capabilities for other AI platforms.
- While the tool excels at improving visibility in AI searches, it doesn’t extend its expertise to traditional and local SEO.
- Lacks border content capabilities like content creation and writing assistance. Can only optimize metadata elements.
How to Effectively Use an AEO Tool
1. Focus on Search Intent and Conversational Queries
Whichever tool you go with, ensure you prioritize answering these queries correctly, concisely, and in a conversational format. When performing keyword research using AEO tools, focus on long-tail keywords and conversational queries that your audience is searching for. Most AI search engines and voice assistants use content that directly answers these questions.
2. Create Structured Data and Snippet-Friendly Content
Many AI search engines rely on structured data to pull rich snippets. Using AEO tools or Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, you can reformat your content to make it easier for AI to interpret and present in results. Additionally, they can identify the content that’s currently ranking so you can make further improvements.
3. Analyze Your Competitor’s Content
Most of these tools allow you to track how your content compares to the competitors in your industry. Analyze the top-ranking content for keywords and optimize your content based on your findings. This can include the format, structure, tone, and topics AI search engines favor.
4. Continuously Monitor and Optimize
AI search engines change all the time, so continuous monitoring of your content’s performance is crucial. Use these tools to track visibility changes, adjust keywords, and re-optimize your content to adapt to changing AI algorithms and user search behaviors. A good tool offers real-time feedback so you can quickly adjust and improve.
5. Improve Content Quality
While AEO tools are experts in technical optimization, their writing skills are still being workshopped. Always review and revise AI-written content with high-level expertise. AI search engines reward content that’s comprehensive, valuable to users, and well-researched. Focus your efforts on creating authoritative, user-friendly content that thoroughly answers user queries.
Empower Your AI Search Visibility
If your business hasn’t implemented an AEO strategy yet, now is the time to get started. . The right AEO tool will help you meet the evolving demands of AI search algorithms so you can enhance your brand’s viability and authority.
See how Goodie can revolutionize your current AEO strategy or help you catch up so you don’t continue falling behind.
AI Search Visibility: FAQs
How can I improve my content’s visibility in AI search results?
To enhance your business’s AI search visibility, identify common queries to address in your content and ensure your information is valuable, concise, and conversational. Schema makeup can also help AI systems understand and properly categorize your content. Additionally, FAQ sections (like this one) are a great way to address common user inquiries while aligning with AI search patterns.
What challenges exist in optimizing for AI search?
Optimizing for AI search presents challenges such as ensuring content accuracy, avoiding biases, and adapting to evolving AI algorithms. Staying informed about AI advancements and continuously refining your content strategy are crucial to overcoming these challenges.
How do AI search algorithms determine content relevance?
AI search algorithms assess content relevance based on factors such as keyword alignment, content depth, user engagement metrics, and the use of structured data. Creating comprehensive, authoritative, and well-structured content can enhance its relevance as perceived by AI systems.