AEO Audit
See which prompts your brand owns, which you lose to competitors, and get a prioritized content plan to close every gap in AI answer attribution.
Overview
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is about ensuring AI systems choose your brand when users ask for recommendations in your category. The AEO Audit produces a prompt-level attribution matrix — for every tracked prompt on every AI engine, it records whether your brand, a competitor, or neither was mentioned in the response.
This gives you a precise map of where you win, where you lose, and exactly what to build to reclaim answer positions.
Prompt Attribution Matrix
The attribution matrix is the core output of the AEO Audit. Each row is a prompt; each column is an AI engine. The cell value indicates:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ✓ Your brand | Your brand was mentioned in the response |
| ✗ Competitor | A tracked competitor was mentioned but you were not |
| — Neither | No brand was mentioned |
| ⚑ Both | Both your brand and a competitor were mentioned |
You can filter the matrix by engine, competitor, prompt cluster, or attribution status. Rows where a competitor dominates across all engines are your highest-priority content gaps.
Category Coverage Analysis
Prompts are automatically grouped into topic clusters based on intent and keyword similarity. The category coverage view shows your brand's attribution rate per cluster:
- Owned clusters — you win the majority of prompts in this topic area
- Contested clusters — mixed results; some prompts won, some lost
- Gap clusters — competitors consistently cited; your brand rarely or never mentioned
Focus AEO content efforts on gap clusters with the highest commercial intent.
Competitive Intent Mapping
For every prompt where a competitor is mentioned but you are not, AIEO shows:
- Which competitor(s) are being cited
- The exact AI response that cited them
- The content type most likely to reclaim the answer (FAQ, comparison, case study, guide)
- An estimated effort level (low / medium / high) based on content gap depth
This turns your AEO Audit results directly into a content brief backlog.
Content Gap Recommendations
AIEO maps each attribution gap to a recommended content action:
| Prompt intent | Recommended content type |
|---|---|
| "What is the best X for Y?" | Comparison page or buyer's guide |
| "How does X work?" | Feature explainer or product documentation |
| "X vs. Y" | Head-to-head comparison article |
| "Is X good for Y use case?" | Use case landing page or case study |
| "X pricing / X free trial" | Pricing page with structured data |
Recommendations are sorted by the number of prompts they would address — fixing one content gap can reclaim attribution across many related prompts.
Displacement Alerts
Enable AEO displacement alerts to be notified when a competitor begins winning prompts you previously owned. Alerts fire via email or webhook when:
- A prompt moves from "your brand cited" to "competitor cited"
- A competitor's attribution rate in a cluster rises above a threshold you set
Set up alerts from Monitors → New Monitor → AEO Displacement.
Running an AEO Audit
AEO Audit data is generated as part of every AI Visibility run — every response is parsed for brand attribution automatically.
To review your AEO results:
- Go to AEO Audit in the sidebar.
- Use the matrix view to spot patterns across engines and prompts.
- Switch to Clusters view to prioritize by topic area.
- Click any prompt row to see the full AI responses and attribution detail.
Related
- AI Visibility — aggregate visibility score and trends
- Monitors — real-time alerts for attribution changes
- Prompts — inspect raw responses behind every attribution data point
GEO Audit
Map which of your pages AI systems cite, score every URL by citation authority, and get actionable fixes for every gap in your AI citation index.
Monitors
Set up continuous AI brand monitoring and get real-time alerts when your brand is added, removed, or displaced across any tracked AI engine.