AEO Tools That Check
What Answer Engines Say About You
Answer engine optimization starts with knowing what the engines say. 99Visibility asks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude the prompts your buyers ask, scores the answers from 0 to 100, flags what they get wrong about you, and checks whether each engine's crawler can actually reach your site. Then it tells you what to fix.
The first audit is free and covers ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.
What an AEO Audit Measures
Four things, each read straight from the engines' answers or from your own site. No estimated traffic, no guessed ranking factors.
Presence
Whether each engine names your brand for the prompts you track. Coverage is weighted by each engine’s share of use, so missing ChatGPT costs more than missing Claude.
Accuracy
Whether an answer contradicts the facts you give us: your pricing, founding date, location, and the features you do and do not have. Each flag shows the engine and the answer it came from.
Citations
Which sources the engines cite for your prompts: your own site, your other properties, or someone else’s page.
Crawler access
Whether each AI crawler may and can reach your pages: robots.txt per bot, what your firewall or CDN returns to that bot, and noindex or nosnippet controls.
Access Comes Before Everything Else
An engine that retrieves pages can only cite a page its crawler was allowed to fetch and actually got. OpenAI says it plainly: sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.
Allowing a bot in robots.txt is half of it. If your firewall or CDN answers that bot with a 403, the permission never matters. Every audit requests your pages as each AI crawler and reports where robots.txt says yes but the network says no.
Only 37.9% of URLs cited in Google AI Overviews also rank in the first ten results. Rank is not the gate.
Non-Google AI crawlers fetch JavaScript but never execute it. A fact that only renders client-side is invisible to them.
What the Evidence Does Not Support
Much AEO advice has never been tested. Where it has, the result is often nothing. So we do not tell you to add markup for the engines' sake:
Adding schema markup produced no citation uplift on any AI platform. AI Overview citations fell 4.6%.
Structured data is not required for generative AI search, and there is no special markup to add.
The full review, with every source, is on the GEO research page.
Five Answer Engines in One Score
The same prompt gets different answers from different engines, so one engine tells you little about the rest.
ChatGPT
The largest share of use, and the biggest weight in the score.
Google AI Overviews
Read from Google’s own results. A search where Google shows no AI Overview is skipped, not counted as a miss.
Gemini
Google’s assistant, measured separately from AI Overviews.
Perplexity
Answers from live retrieval and names its sources.
Claude
Queried without web search, so it shows what Claude says from what it already knows about you.
How each engine finds its answers: the platform guides.
AEO Tool Pricing
Every paid plan covers all five engines, accuracy checks and crawler access checks. The first audit is free and covers ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.
| Plan | Price | Keywords | Audits a month | Brands | Competitors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $49/mo | 25 | 15 | 1 | 1 |
| Growth | $99/mo | 50 | 50 | 3 | 2 |
| Pro | $149/mo | 100 | 150 | 5 | 3 |
Full details on the pricing page, and how other AEO tools compare on the comparison pages.
AEO Tools FAQ
What are AEO tools?
AEO (answer engine optimization) tools measure how answer engines such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude describe your brand. Instead of tracking a position in a list of links, they ask the engines your prompts and check the answers: are you named, is what they say true, and which sources do they cite.
What is the difference between AEO, GEO and SEO?
SEO is about ranking in a list of links. AEO and GEO (generative engine optimization) are about being named, and described correctly, in an answer an AI writes. The two terms overlap almost completely. 99Visibility measures both the same way: by asking the engines and scoring what comes back.
How does 99Visibility check whether an answer about my brand is accurate?
You enter your brand facts: pricing, founding date, location, and the features you do and do not have. Every answer in an audit is checked against them, and an answer that contradicts one is flagged with the engine and the answer it came from. With no facts entered there is nothing to check against, so fill them in first.
Which answer engines does it cover?
Five: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude. Claude is queried without web search. A search where Google shows no AI Overview is skipped rather than counted as a miss.
Does adding schema markup help with answer engines?
The evidence says no. Google’s own AI search guidance says structured data is not required for generative AI search and there is no special markup to add, and an Ahrefs matched-control test of 1,885 pages found no citation uplift on any AI platform, with AI Overview citations down 4.6%. What does decide whether you can be cited is access: whether each engine’s crawler is allowed in and actually gets your page.
How much do AEO tools cost?
99Visibility plans are $49/mo (Starter), $99/mo (Growth) and $149/mo (Pro), and each covers all five engines. The first audit is free and covers ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. See the comparison pages for how other tools price.
Keep Reading
See what answer engines say about you
A score, every answer that contradicts your facts, and whether each crawler can reach your site. Paid plans cover all five engines; the free audit covers ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.