Answer Engine Optimization, run by an agent that ships the work. Not a dashboard you drive yourself.
AEO is the practice of getting cited inside AI answers — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overview. Most tools show you the gap. Cite closes it: long-form writing behind an independent quality gate, citation tracking across 8 sources, and an outreach queue drafted in your voice.
Two articles a month. Each one engineered to be the cited answer.
By Ville Ylläsjärvi · Updated May 29, 2026 · Written & optimized by Cite
See your three pillars before you sign up.
Paste your URL. Cite names the three pillar topics you should own to get cited by AI search.
Search is being replaced by answers. The blue link is now a paragraph with three sources cited inside it.
of US Google searches now end without a click — users read the AI Overview or snippet and leave. If your page isn’t inside the answer, you’re invisible even when you’d have ranked #1.
Source: SparkToro 2024 Zero-Click Study ↗of AI citations point to brand-owned domains (Claude ~9%, Perplexity ~7%, ChatGPT lower still). The overwhelming majority is third-party and earned media. Writing more on your own blog doesn’t move this — earned mentions do.
Source: Semrush: AI citing third-party sources ↗of Google searches now trigger an AI Overview (May 2025), on top of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. AEO means showing up across all of them with one consistent voice — not optimizing for one.
Source: Semrush AI Overviews data, May 2025 ↗Agencies sell AEO as a $3–8k/month strategy engagement, and much of that spend funds slide decks. Cite does the writing, the tracking, and the outreach for €99/mo — no retainer, no setup call.
What Answer Engine Optimization is, actually.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of getting a brand cited inside the answers that AI engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview — return to a user. Unlike SEO, which optimizes a page to rank in a list of links, AEO optimizes an idea so a language model retrieves it, trusts it, and quotes it, often without sending a click.
Answer Engine Optimization is the discipline of getting your brand cited inside the answers that AI models — and Google’s AI Overview — return to a user. The unit of success is no longer a ranked link. It is a sentence inside someone else’s paragraph, attributed to you.
AEO is not a rename of SEO. SEO optimizes a page to rank in a list of ten links. AEO optimizes an idea so a language model retrieves it, trusts it, and quotes it. The page is incidental. The retrievable, citable claim is the asset.
AEO is also not strictly the same as GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). The two terms cover the same surface area and we use them interchangeably. GEO tends to be the term agencies prefer; AEO is what most buyers actually type into search. Same job, two labels.
What AEO requires that SEO did not: a consistent named-entity layer (your brand, your frameworks, your definitions) repeated across enough trusted third-party surfaces that an LLM treats you as an authoritative source for a given concept. That is what Cite is built to produce.
Four jobs. One agent. No retainer.
Citation tracking across 8 sources
Cite watches ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overview, Perplexity, Google Search Console, Bing, and earned media on third-party sites. You see which query triggered each citation, which model returned it, and how your share of voice is moving week over week.
Written in full context, independently scored
Every article runs through Write → Critique → Rewrite → Voice-pass → Score. If it doesn’t clear 80, it goes back through. You never see a draft that hasn’t earned the right to be published under your name — which is the only way the citation math works.
Earned-media outreach in your voice
Brand-owned domains earn under 10% of AI citations — the rest is third-party and earned media. Cite surfaces ranked authority opportunities (directories, podcasts, partner mentions, guest posts) with the pitch already drafted in your Voice Operating Manual. Approve, send, track to outcome.
Anchor query watcher (Pro)
Name the queries you must own. The moment your brand first appears as a citation in any of the eight surfaces, Cite alerts you by email and Slack with the exact query and source. No dashboard refresh, no weekly report wait.
Five passes. One pillar article. Twelve minutes.
The same Quality Gate loop that runs on every Cite article. Each stage is checkpointed — if anything fails, the workflow resumes from where it stopped instead of restarting.
Full-context write — voice profile + glossary + research, guardrails built in
- Write
- Independent review
- Score
Each pass is checkpointed — if anything fails, Cite resumes from where it stopped instead of restarting.
What a Cite article looks like next to generic AI.
Same prompt: "Write a paragraph on Answer Engine Optimization for B2B founders." One went through the 5-pass Quality Gate. The other came from a generic single-pass GPT call.
In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, it's not just about ranking on Google anymore. Answer Engine Optimization is a game-changer for B2B founders who want to level up their content strategy.
We're excited to share that by leveraging AEO, you can unlock unprecedented visibility across AI engines. It's not just about being found — it's about being the answer. Through thought leadership and strategic content, you can position your brand at the forefront of this paradigm shift.
Answer Engine Optimization is the discipline of getting cited inside the answer AI models return. The unit of success is no longer a ranked link — it's a sentence inside someone else's paragraph, attributed to you.
Aggarwal et al. (2023) ran 10,000 queries against generative engines and found three tactics moved citation rates: cited statistics (+30–40%), authoritative quotes (+30%), fluent structure. Keyword stuffing did nothing. For B2B founders that means fewer thin pages and more pillar articles that answer one specific question completely.
The Cite draft also reflects your voice corpus — sentence rhythm, signature definitions, anti-vocabulary. Both panels above are real outputs, not stylised renderings.
The numbers behind the loop, not vibes.
The thresholds and math the product is built around — Quality Gate gating, voice-corpus density, citation-tracking cadence. We'll publish measured cohort numbers as founders come through onboarding.
Typical window for the first anchor-query citation to land after publish. Long-tail noise can show up sooner; the queries you actually care about take 60–120 days because earned-media density compounds slower.
The Quality Gate pass threshold. Drafts that don't clear Stage 5 at 80 are sent back through Critique → Rewrite. After the retry budget, you see the score breakdown and decide whether to ship or rework — you never see an ungated draft.
Expected size of the Voice Operating Manual after the 5-piece seed corpus, by the extraction math. The corpus deepens with every approved article and exports as portable Markdown — no vendor lock-in.
Cite vs. a generic AEO tracker vs. building it yourself.
One price. €24.90 onboarding credits month one.
Cite is €99/mo — citation tracking, 5 pillar articles, the Quality Gate, the Voice Operating Manual, unlimited anchor query watchers, Slack alerts, earned-media tracking, and the full authority outreach queue. The €24.90 paid 7-day onboarding builds your voice corpus and credits to month one.
AEO questions, answered.
Cite · Search & AI Answers
Stop reading AEO checklists. Hire the agent that runs the playbook.
Seven days of paid onboarding (€24.90, credited to month one) builds your Voice Operating Manual, indexes your competitive landscape, and ships your first pillar article. By day eight you are tracking citations across eight surfaces and have an outreach queue ready to send.
Start with one real job. FeedSquad shows you the finished work before anything publishes, and you keep the final say.
Start onboarding — €24.90Researching GEO instead? Read the Generative Engine Optimization framing →
€24.90 onboarding · 7 days · credits to month one