AEO: How to Track and Improve Your Brand Visibility in AI Search

A Changing Era: When Customers Stop ‘Searching’ and Start ‘Asking’ AI

Have you noticed the changing behavior of yourself or your customers lately? When we need to compare products or make a purchasing decision, many of us no longer type short keywords into traditional search engines. Instead, we type long questions or explain our problems directly to AI. We let AI summarize the data, recommend the right brand, or even select the best vendors for us, all in one place.

This poses a new challenge for businesses. If your brand only focuses on SEO to climb Google's rankings, but the AI algorithm doesn't know your brand, you risk disappearing completely from the sight of these customers! This is why you need to understand and start implementing AEO, or Answer Engine Optimization, today.

What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and Why is it More Important Than SEO Today?

AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. It is a strategy of optimizing and enhancing your brand's data so that "AI Answer Engines" will process, summarize, and recommend your brand to users when they ask relevant questions. Currently, this system has been developed and is available in the HubSpot Marketing Hub, which helps you measure, track, and improve your brand's visibility across leading AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini seamlessly.

The question is, why is this so critical for business owners like us? The first reason is that how people discover brands is changing completely. Instead of clicking through results link by link, modern buyers prefer to let AI summarize the market, recommend providers, and cite sources before they even click to visit a website.

The second reason is superior credibility. Because AI pulls data from various sources and looks for a consensus across third-party sources, consumers tend to trust AI's recommendations more than traditional search results. As a result, leads coming from AI Search are often highly informed and further along in their purchasing decision, making the closing process noticeably smoother and faster.

The Challenge of Typical AEO Tools VS. The Superior Alternative from HubSpot

For many business owners, starting with AEO might sound distant and complex. Furthermore, most AEO tools on the market merely hand you a visibility report and leave you to figure out the solutions on your own. On top of that, these tools don't truly understand your business context, seeing only the broad strokes of your industry.

However, the AEO feature in HubSpot Marketing Hub is entirely different. It clearly shows where the gaps are and connects recommendations directly to the content creation tools you already use. Most importantly, this tool gets smarter over time because it draws data directly from your own CRM system, whereas other tools don't know your business at all.

Deep Dive into the 4 Steps of HubSpot AEO: Turning Insights into Sales

The AEO feature in HubSpot is designed to be simple and work seamlessly together. The main process consists of 4 steps:

1. Set up prompt tracking: You can easily get started by going to the Marketing > AEO menu in your HubSpot account. Initially, the system will ask you to confirm basic information about your business. Since AEO connects to your CRM from day one, HubSpot automatically suggests prompts based on your industry, competitors, and actual customer segments—not generic market questions. You can also add your own custom prompts. HubSpot will test these prompts daily against leading AI Answer Engines to track your brand's visibility.
2. Review your visibility data: Once the system starts running questions daily, you can check the dashboard to analyze key metrics. These include the Brand visibility percentage, which tells you how often your brand is cited in AI responses; Competitor comparison, to see where competitors appear in spots where you don't; Visibility trends over time; and performance differences across AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
3. Analyze individual prompts: When you click into each prompt, you can immediately examine deep details. This includes the exact AI responses returned, the sources (which domains or content types the AI is citing), and seeing which competitors are being referenced and why.
4. Get recommendations and act on them: Based on all prompt data, HubSpot’s AEO system curates tailored recommendations specifically for your business on what content to create or optimize. It explains the reasoning behind each suggestion and specifies which prompt it will positively impact. You can instantly create content or post on social media without the hassle of switching between platforms.

Who is eligible to use this feature?

Currently, the AEO feature is available to users on Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise plans and is in Beta testing, which requires participants to agree to the HubSpot Beta Terms. However, for general users, HubSpot also offers a free trial to test the system and experience the future of marketing.