The AEO Checker Blog
Practical Answer Engine Optimization: how AI engines decide which sites to cite, how to audit a site for it, and what to fix. Written for the consultants who get asked "are we in ChatGPT?" — and for the owners asking it.
Is AEO a Scam? How to Tell a Real Audit From a Pitch Deck
2026-09-10
AEO and GEO have no accreditation body and no shared standard, which is exactly the condition vague, fear-based pitches thrive in. Here's a concrete checklist for telling a real audit from a guess dressed up in AI buzzwords.
Ranking #1 on Google Used to Get You Cited by AI. Three Studies Now Say That's a Coin Flip, and the Odds Are Getting Worse.
2026-09-09
Three independently-run 2025-2026 studies, and the query fan-out mechanism behind them, explain why 'I already rank well' stopped being a safe assumption about AI citations, and what's actually getting less safe every quarter.
Pasting Isn't Coding: Where the Two Schema Blocks Actually Go on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy
2026-09-07
Your report handed you two ready-to-use schema blocks. Here's exactly where each one goes on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy, no developer required.
You Fixed Your Yelp Listing. You Never Checked the One Listing You Actually Control.
2026-09-06
SOCi's 2026 Local Visibility Index says AI assistants drop businesses with inconsistent or incomplete data anywhere in the ecosystem, including your own website. Here's the listing inside your homepage nobody ever audited, and what our check actually catches there.
llms.txt: Who Actually Reads It, and What to Put In It
2026-09-04
The honest, sourced answer on llms.txt — what the log data says about who fetches it, what Google says, and a filled-in example you can copy.
I Took My Own Medicine: 97 out of 100, and the Three Points I Missed
2026-08-23
A friend asked what my own site scores. I ran aeocheck.net through the Full Audit pipeline and published the result: 97 out of 100, and the three points I missed.
HubSpot AEO Grader vs AEO Checker: Two Tools, Two Different Questions
2026-08-09
HubSpot's free AEO Grader and AEO Checker measure different things — here's the honest, sourced comparison and when to use each.
The AEO Audit Tool Checklist: What a Real Site Audit Has to Include
2026-07-29
A buyer's checklist for evaluating AEO audit tools — the six modules, the measure-vs-fix distinction, and the three deliverables that make a report actionable.
The AEO Report You Can Actually Put in Front of a Client
2026-07-14
What's in the AEO Checker PDF, why it's structured to be rebranded and billed, and how the price compares to retainers and subscription trackers.
How to Check a Client's AI Visibility (In About 5 Minutes)
2026-07-06
A step-by-step walkthrough for using a free AEO grade check to answer a client's 'are we in ChatGPT?' question the same afternoon.