Answer Engine Optimization

Your buyers ask AI first. Does it mention you?

When an AI answers for your category, it names two or three brands. If you're not one of them, you're not losing a click — you're not in the conversation at all. We find out where you stand, then get you named.

20 buyer prompts, run for free 5 engines, checked on a schedule $999/mo, cancel any month
The method

AI visibility, made measurable

Asking ChatGPT about yourself once proves nothing — run the same question twice and you can get two different answers. We put the same set of buyer questions to all five engines on a fixed schedule, so what you get back is a percentage that moves month to month, not an anecdote.

Citation rate by engine · sample dashboard, not client data
ChatGPT72%
Perplexity64%
AI Overviews55%
Gemini48%
Claude41%

Illustrative figures, not client results. Your first report replaces every bar here with your own — how often each engine names you out of 20 buyer questions.

Research-backed
40%

Maximum lift in AI-answer visibility reported from targeted optimization, across roughly 10,000 test queries — in the Princeton and IIT Delhi paper that named the field. Not our claim, theirs.

Always on
--:--

Your prompt set re-runs on a schedule — not whenever someone remembers to check.

What we listen for
Your customer asks What's the best [your category] for a small team?
The assistant answers Three good options are a competitor, another competitor

If you are not in that sentence, you were never shortlisted — and nothing tells you it happened.

Quotations
+30–40%

Visibility lift reported from one change on its own: adding sourced, authoritative quotations to a page. This is the kind of edit we make.

Search ≠ answers
<20%

Less than 20% overlap is reported between page-one Google results and the sources AI actually cites. Your rankings are no longer the same job.

The discipline

What answer engine optimization actually is

Answer engine optimization is the practice of structuring a brand's content and online footprint so that AI systems cite it when they answer a question. SEO competes for a position in a list of links someone still has to click. AEO competes to be named inside the answer itself — which for a growing share of your buyers is the only result they ever see.

A citation means clearing three gates, in order. Retrieved: the engine can reach your page, parse it, and judge it relevant to the question. Ranked: it treats you as authoritative, current, and a clearly defined entity it can name without hedging. Selected: your wording is specific and quotable enough that the model repeats it rather than a competitor's. Most brands never learn which gate they failed at. The answer simply comes back without their name in it, and no dashboard anywhere records the loss.

Services

Six workstreams, run as one system

Content without technical groundwork never gets retrieved. Technical work without authority never gets trusted. They ship together or they do not work.

01

AI visibility auditing

Where you stand today, engine by engine: which questions name you, which name a competitor instead, and which return you nothing at all. Everything later is measured against it.

02

Prompt research

Keywords are not questions. We map how buyers actually phrase it, plus the follow-up queries engines run underneath — which is where the shortlist gets decided.

03

Answer-optimized content

Pages a model can lift cleanly: the answer in the first sentence, question-shaped headings, specific numbers, and sources worth repeating.

04

Technical AI SEO

Schema markup, one consistent set of facts everywhere you appear, crawl access for AI agents, and an llms.txt that tells models what you do.

05

Authority & citations

Models repeat what the wider web agrees on. We earn mentions in the review sites, roundups and publications each engine leans on hardest.

06

Citation tracking

Scheduled checks that log every mention — and every competitor named in your place — so what you get is a trend line, not an anecdote.

How it works

The same loop, every month

You always know what is happening, what changed, and why.

Audit & analyse

Baseline your AI visibility, then benchmark it against whoever is being cited in your place.

Strategy & plan

Pick the questions actually worth winning, and name the pages and mentions it will take to win them.

Optimize & implement

Rewrite, mark up, and place. Content, schema and off-site citations move in the same month or none of it counts.

Track & improve

Re-run the same questions, report what moved and what did not, and feed both into next month.

The evidence

Three numbers, none of them ours

8%

Share of Google searches where someone clicks a normal result once an AI summary appears — against 15% when it does not. Clicks roughly halve the moment the answer is written for them.

Pew Research Center · 68,879 searches, March 2025
1%

Share of those visits where anyone clicked a source link inside the AI summary itself. The citation is the exposure. Assume the click is not coming.

Pew Research Center · same study
4.4×

How much more valuable the average AI-search visitor is than one from traditional organic search, measured on conversion. They arrive already recommended, not still comparing.

Semrush · AI search traffic study, 2025

Fewer visitors, each worth considerably more, and the whole selection happening before anyone reaches your site. That is the entire case for AEO — and the reason a monthly audit beats a guess.

Pricing

Month to month, because results should be why you stay

Both retainers run month to month. Cancel at the end of any one of them — we would rather earn the renewal than hold you to a year of it.

Starter

For teams who need to know where they stand, and start closing the gap.

$999 / MONTH

  • AI visibility audit
  • Competitor AI share of voice
  • Prompt research
  • Up to 5 priority pages optimized monthly
  • Technical AI SEO & structured data
  • Monthly report + dashboard
  • Quarterly content roadmap
  • Monthly strategy call (30 min)
Start with an audit
Most popular

Premium

For brands that intend to be the name AI gives in their category.

$2,999 / MONTH

  • Everything in Starter
  • Authority & citation building (digital PR)
  • Social amplification
  • Advanced content strategy
  • Advanced dashboard & historical trends
  • Ongoing competitor tracking
  • Founder thought leadership
  • Bi-weekly calls (60 min) + dedicated manager
Book a strategy call
FAQ

Questions worth asking

What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?

Answer engine optimization is the practice of structuring a brand's content and online footprint so that AI systems cite it when they answer a question. Those systems — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews — field millions of buying questions a day, and each answer names only two or three brands. AEO is the work of being one of them.

How is AEO different from SEO?

SEO gets you into a list of ten links and waits for the click. AEO gets you into the single answer that replaces the list. They share foundations — crawl access, page quality, authority — but they measure different things. SEO tracks position and traffic. AEO tracks how often you are cited, and how much of the answer is yours rather than a competitor's.

How long does AEO take to show results?

Technical and on-page changes can shift citations within two to six weeks, because AI engines retrieve live pages and reflect updates quickly. Authority-driven gains, which depend on third-party mentions accumulating, typically take three to six months. Anyone promising movement in days is describing luck rather than a method.

Can you guarantee my brand will be recommended by ChatGPT?

No, and any agency offering that guarantee is misleading you. AI answers are probabilistic, and engines change their retrieval behaviour without notice. What we commit to is method and measurement: a defined set of buyer questions, a documented baseline, specific optimization work, and honest monthly reporting on what moved and what did not.

How do you measure AI visibility?

We fix a representative set of buyer questions, run it across every engine on a schedule, and log whether you are cited, in what context, and which competitors appear in your place. You get three numbers back: citation rate, share of voice against named competitors, and sentiment. The questions and the schedule stay fixed because AI answers vary between runs, so a single spot check proves nothing in either direction.

How much does AEO cost?

Two month-to-month retainers. Starter, $999 per month, covers auditing, prompt research, optimization of up to five priority pages monthly, technical AI SEO and reporting. Premium, $2,999 per month, adds authority and citation building, advanced tracking, competitor monitoring, thought leadership and a dedicated account manager. Both can be cancelled at the end of any month.

More detail on the services page and the full FAQ.

Start here

Find out what AI says about you

We run your brand through 20 prompts your customers genuinely ask, across every major engine, and send you the raw answers — including which competitor gets named when you do not. Free, and useful whether or not you ever hire us.

Please enter an email we can send the results to.
We need the brand name to search for.
Do you have a website?
Add your domain, or switch the answer above to "Not yet".

We will run your brand through 20 real customer prompts and send the results within 2 business days. No calls unless you ask for one, and we will not pass your details to anyone else.

Thanks — that's all we need.

We'll run your brand through 20 real customer prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, and send the results to you within 2 business days.

Nothing else is needed from you. The report lands in your inbox — including which competitors get named when you don't.

Prefer email? Write to hello@rippleagents.co and we'll reply the same day.