Set up and analyze AEO

Measure how your brand appears in answer engine responses using Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).

Similar to how search engine optimization (SEO) measures visibility in search results, AEO tracks how often your brand is mentioned across prompts and analyzes the sources used to generate responses.

After confirming your brand details, prompts are tracked across supported answer engines. AEO aggregates these results into visibility metrics, helping you analyze brand mentions, prompt coverage, and citation patterns over time.

Please note: you can manage AI feature access in your AI settings and configure what data is shared. Review HubSpot's AI Trust FAQs and AI Model Cards for detailed information on AI security controls, data use, and compliance.

Before you get started

Before working with AEO, review access requirements, available features, and usage limits.

• AEO includes the following supported answer engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
• To align SEO efforts with AI-driven visibility, review how to optimize content and improve brand visibility for AI.
• Data collection begins after setting up AEO and tracking prompts.
• AEO runs tracked prompts daily. Because responses change over time, review performance across multiple days or weeks before evaluating trends.
• To use AEO, access must be available through one of the following:

• • Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise subscription with Marketing Access permissions.
  • HubSpot AEO subscription.
  • HubSpot AEO 28 day free trial.

• While both experiences track brand visibility across answer engines, available features and limits differ.

Features

Limits

For full details on limits and pricing, refer to HubSpot's Product & Services catalog. 

Set up AEO

Set up AEO for the first time by confirming your brand details, competitors, products, ICPs, and prompts. 

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Marketing > AEO. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Marketing > AEO directly.
2. Click Get started.
3. In the dialog box, enter your brand name in the Brand field (e.g., AcmeDemo).
4. Enter your domain in the Domain field (e.g., acme-demo.test).
5. Enter your brand name variations.
   • You must separate each variation with a comma (e.g., AcmeDemo, Acme Demo).
   • Brand name variations are case-sensitive, so enter each variation exactly as it appears.

6. Click the Business type dropdown menu and select an option (e.g., B2B).
7. When finished, click Next.

Review competitors

Review competitors to compare your brand’s visibility against competitors in answer engine responses. Add or edit competitor names, domain, and brand name variations to improve accuracy. Update competitors later from AEO settings.

1. To edit a competitor, hover over the competitor name and click Edit. In the right panel, enter the competitor details and then click Save.
2. To add more competitors, click Add more competitors. In the right panel, add the competitor details and then click Save.
3. To remove a competitor, hover over the competitor name and click Delete. 
4. When finished, click Continue. 

Review products and ICPs

Review products and your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) to define the solutions and target audiences AEO tracks.

Prompts are generated based on your selected product and ICP. These selections decide how your brand’s visibility is analyzed. Update products and audiences in your AEO settings.

1. Select a product or click Add product. If you click Add product, enter the product details and then click Save in the right panel.
2. Select an ICP or click Add ICP. If you click Add ICP, enter the ICP details and then click Save in the right panel.
3. To add additional products or ICPs, click the Add more dropdown menu and select Add more products or Add more ICPs.
4. When finished, click Continue.

Review prompts

Prompts are questions that people might ask AI answer engines (such as ChatGPT) when searching for brands, products, or services related to your business.

After confirming your brand details, competitors, products, and ICPs, HubSpot generates suggested prompts, which you can update in your AI settings. For Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise accounts, prompts are generated using your business context.

Review prompts to ensure they reflect how your target audience would naturally search and align with your business, products, competitors, and ICPs:

1. To edit a prompt, hover over the prompt and click Edit. In the right panel, edit the prompt details and then click Save.

2. To generate more prompts, click the Add more prompts dropdown menu and select Generate with AI. An additional 8-15 more prompts will be added.
3. To add more prompts manually, click the Add more prompts dropdown menu and select Add prompts manually. In the right panel, enter the prompt details and then click Save. 
4. When finished, click Add and track [#] prompts. 

Analyze the AEO dashboard

Use the Dashboard tab to analyze your AEO performance, including brand visibility, prompts, domains, citations, and competitor benchmarks.

Each answer engine may generate different responses, cite different sources, or return different levels of detail for the same prompt. Use filters to compare results by engine. Manage competitors directly from the AEO settings.

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Marketing > AEO. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Marketing > AEO directly.
2. Click the Dashboard tab.
3. To filter the dashboard, click Filters. In the right panel, select your filter options (e.g., Date).
4. When finished, click Apply.

Brand metrics

Brand visibility is how often your brand is mentioned among the prompts you track. It also shows how answer engines interpret your brand based on public information on the web. Brand visibility is analyzed on:

• Prompt coverage: the percentage of prompts where your brand appears at least once.
• Frequency across answer engines: whether your brand shows up consistently across different answer engines.
• Relative competitor presence: how often competitors appear in the same prompt results.

Use brand visibility trends to evaluate consistency over time. A lower score may indicate that your brand appears in fewer prompts, appears inconsistently across answer engines, or is mentioned less often than competitors.

• Brand visibility: displays a percentage score on how often your brand appears in answer engine responses across tracked prompts.

• Brand visibility over time: displays how your brand visibility score changes over time.

Review the following reports on the Sentiment analysis tab:

• Sentiment score: displays a score of how positively or negatively your brand is described in answer engine responses.
• Sentiment over time: displays how your brand's sentiment changes over time.

Competitor landscape

• Share of Voice: the proportion of total brand mentions that belong to your brand across tracked prompts.
  • A higher share of voice means your brand accounts for a larger portion of total mentions across responses.
  • This metric is calculated by dividing your brand's mentions by the total number of brand mentions from all competitors for the tracked prompts. 
• Competitor Visibility: compares your brand identity to your competitors.

Citation analysis

• Top domains: displays websites that answer engines most often cite across your tracked prompts. If you click this report, you'll be directed to the Citations tab.
• Citations by channel: displays the channels of all citations for your tracked prompts.
• Citations with brand mention rate vs competitors: displays the percentage of sources cited by answer engines that mention your brand.

Review and manage prompts

After setting up AEO, review and manage your prompts to understand how your brand appears in answer engine responses for products or services relevant to your business. Prompts are generated using your HubSpot data, audience, and offerings, and can be organized into groups to track visibility by topic or brand. Learn more about reviewing and managing AEO prompts.

Analyze citations

Analyze citations to understand which websites answer engines reference, how authoritative your content appears, and whether third-party sources influence your brand’s visibility. Use this information to decide whether to update existing content or create new content.

A citation is recorded when an answer engine includes or references:

• A link to a webpage

• A domain name embedded in its answer

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Marketing > AEO. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Marketing > AEO directly.
2. Click the Citations tab.
3. To filter the dashboard, click Filter and select your options (e.g., Date).

Please note: citations are separate from brand mentions. A source can be cited without mentioning your brand name.

Owned domain citation rate vs. competitors

Use the Owned domain citation rate vs. competitors report to compare how often answer engines cite content from your website versus competitor domains across your tracked prompts. 

A higher share of owned citations means answer engines rely more on content you control when generating responses. This gives you more influence over how your brand is represented in answer engines. 

Review this report to:

• Find trends in how often your owned content is cited over time.

• Compare your citation share against competitors for the same prompt.
• Find potential gaps where competitors are cited more often. This may show opportunities to improve the clarity, coverage, or relevance of your content.

If no data is shown, no citations were detected for the selected time range.

Citations with brand mention rate vs. competitors

Use the Citations with brand mention rate vs. competitors report to understand how often your brand is referenced in citations, regardless of where the cited content originates.

This report includes citations from third-party sources such as reviews, news articles, and industry publications. Even if answer engines don't cite your website directly, they may still reference your brand through external sources.

Review this report to:

• Evaluate overall brand visibility in answer engine responses.

• Track changes in influence over time.
• Find when competitors are becoming more prominent for the same topics.

Citations by content type

Use the Citations by content type report to understand which content formats answer engines most often reference for your tracked prompts.

Content types include:

Review this report to:

• Find out which content formats answer engines prefer for your topic area.

• Find gaps where answer engines cite formats you don't produce. 
• Prioritize creating or updating content formats that are more likely to earn citations.

Citations by channel

Use the Citations by channel report to view what types of websites answer engines reference when generating responses. 

Source types include:

Review this report to:

• Understand how much of your brand visibility comes from content you control versus external sources.

• Find reliance on third-party validation such as earned or peer sources.
• Track growth in user-generated or social sources, which may show increased awareness or discussion.

Review additional citation reports

In addition to the above citation charts, review the following reports for insight into how answer engines reference your content and external sources:

• Top domains: lists the websites most commonly referenced by answer engines.
• Top owned citations: lists the pages on your domain that answer engines reference most often. This helps you understand which content answer engines consider most authoritative for your brand.
• Top citations overall: lists the websites that appear most often across all citations for your tracked prompts. This helps you understand which third-party sources most influence how answer engines describe your brand.

Review and manage recommendations

After analyzing your AEO performance, use recommendations to identify content opportunities that may improve how often your brand is cited in answer engines. Recommendations are generated from citation patterns across your tracked prompts and include a content type, channel, and priority indicator to help you prioritize actions.

Learn more about reviewing and managing recommendations.

Manage multiple brands and domains

AEO supports tracking one owned domain per setup. If you manage multiple brands or domains, you can configure and organize your AEO setup in different ways depending on your account and use case.

Track multiple brands

Track multiple brands using one of the following approaches:

• If your brands are distinct, organize prompts using groups to track brand-specific visibility.
• Use the Brands add-on to set up separate brands within your account to track each brand independently. 

Edit settings for AEO

Edit your brand name variations, competitors, products, and ICPs on the Dashboard tab. 

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Marketing > AEO. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Marketing > AEO directly.

2. On the Dashboard tab, click the settingsIcon settings icon on the top right. Then click the tab option (e.g., Brand settings or Competitors). 
   • Brand settings: in the Brand name variation section, enter your brand name variations and then click Save. 
   • Competitors: click the competitor's name. In the right panel, enter the competitor details and then click Save.
     • To add a competitor, click Add more competitors. In the right panel, enter the competitor details, then click Add competitor.
     • To delete competitors, select the checkboxes next to each competitor and click Delete [#] selected. 
   • All ICPs: click Edit to customize an ICP. To create an ICP, click Create new Ideal Customer Profile.
   • All products and services: click Edit to customize a product. To add a product, click Add new product or service.
   • More: click the More tab and select All groups. To add a new group, click Create a group. In the dialog box, enter a group name.