HubSpot Tools

AEO Grader

HubSpot's free Answer Engine Optimization Grader reveals how leading answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini interpret your brand. Get detailed competitive analysis, brand sentiment scoring, and strategic recommendations to optimize your brand's AI visibility.

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What is AEO Grader?

Optimizing for traditional search is no longer enough. When prospects search for solutions, AI systems synthesize information from multiple sources and present consolidated answers – often without users ever clicking through to your website. This creates a "zero-click funnel" where your brand's representation in AI-generated responses directly determines customer perception and purchase decisions.

HubSpot's free Answer Engine Optimization Grader (AEO Grader) analyzes your brand's AI visibility, sentiment, and competitive positioning across leading AI platforms including GPT-4o, Perplexity, and Gemini. Unlike traditional SEO tools that only measure website traffic, our AI search tool reveals how generative AI engines characterize your brand when users ask questions about your industry, products, or services.

Don't let answer engines define your brand narrative without your input. Use HubSpot's free AI visibility tool to take control of how leading answer engines represent your business.

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Understand your competitive landscape

Uncover your competitive position with AEO Grader's powerful capabilities:

Market Position Assessment: Our detailed competitive analysis categorizes your brand as a Leader, Challenger, or Niche Player based on how answer engines position you relative to competitors. This analysis examines mention frequency, context quality, and recommendation patterns across different query types.

Share of Voice Metrics: Track your brand's presence in AI-generated responses compared to competitors. Get answers to these key questions: When users ask about solutions in your category, how often does your brand appear in the synthesized answer? Which competitors receive more prominent positioning, and what factors drive these differences?

 

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Discover your brand’s narrative and perception in AI results

This AI visibility tool breaks down your narrative and perception into the following categories:

Contextual Brand Analysis: The AEO Grader examines how answer engines characterize your business across different query contexts. Whether users ask about industry trends, solution comparisons, or specific use cases, we reveal the recurring themes and associations that shape your brand image in AI responses.

Sentiment Analysis: Beyond simple positive/negative scoring, our analysis evaluates sentiment across multiple dimensions: 

  • General Brand Sentiment: Overall tone when your brand is mentioned
  • Contextual Sentiment: How sentiment varies across different topics or use cases
  • Source-Based Sentiment: Quality and credibility of sources influencing AI representations

Narrative Patterns and Topic Associations: Identify the key storylines that answer engines associate with your brand. Understanding these narrative patterns helps you optimize content and messaging for better AI visibility. 

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Maximize your answer engine performance with data-driven insights

Receive a detailed analysis of your brand's current AI visibility,  including specific examples of how different answer engines describe your company, products, and competitive advantages. The AEO Grader audit reveals critical opportunities and content gaps that directly impact how millions of users discover and evaluate your brand.

Use insights from the Answer Engine Optimization Grader to develop a comprehensive strategy for improving your brand's perception. Embark on your answer engine optimization journey with actionable guidance that helps you systematically improve your brand's representation across all major platforms. 
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Track source quality and information authority

Evaluate the credibility of sources referencing your brand with these features: 

Source Credibility Assessment: Evaluate the quality and authority of sources that answer engines reference when mentioning your brand. High-quality sources from reputable publications and authoritative websites significantly enhance your brand's credibility in AI-generated responses.

Data Richness Evaluation: Assess the variety and completeness of information available about your brand across digital channels. Our search engine visibility tool’s analysis identifies information gaps limiting how answer engines represent your company. 

How to Use HubSpot’s AEO Grader

Follow these steps to evaluate your brand performance and how it shows up in answer engine results. 
Step 1:
Enter the brand name you want to analyze– whether your own company or a competitor. The Answer Engine Optimization tool accepts any brand operating in your market space, enabling direct competitive intelligence gathering.
Step 2:
AEO Grader automatically will run queries across GPT-4o, Perplexity, and Gemini, mirroring real customer research patterns. These queries replicate how prospects discover and evaluate brands, capturing authentic AI-generated responses.
Step 3:
Access your brand performance score calculated across five dimensions: brand recognition strength, competitive market positioning, contextual relevance, sentiment polarity analysis, and citation frequency patterns. 
Step 4:
Complete the form to unlock your full brand assessment, including brand archetype classification, sentiment trend analysis, narrative themes, current competitive advantages, and recommendations for improved AI visibility.

Ready to boost your answer engine performance?

Get our complete playbook with 5 essential strategies to optimize your brand across answer engines and outperform competitors.

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Frequently Asked Questions

The Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) Grader analyzes your brand's performance across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini in four simple steps:

Step 1: Enter Brand Information
Input your company name, geography,  products/services, and business type. AEO Grader works for any brand– analyze your own company or evaluate competitors' AI positioning.

Step 2: Automated AI Query Analysis
Our AI visibility tool automatically runs the specific queries your customers use when researching solutions in your industry. The tool tests queries like "best CRM software for small business," "top marketing automation platforms," and "which [your service] should I choose" to reveal how AI systems respond to real customer research patterns.

Step 3: Comprehensive Performance Scoring
Receive an overall AI visibility performance score based on key metrics including brand recognition frequency, competitive market position, contextual analysis, sentiment scoring, and source authority assessment.

Step 4: Detailed AI Optimization Report
Access your complete answer engine analysis including brand archetype classification, sentiment patterns across different AI platforms, narrative themes that AI systems associate with your brand, and specific optimization recommendations for improving your AI visibility.

Answer engines refer to AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini powered by large language models (LLMs). Unlike conventional search engines that display a list of website links, answer engines synthesize information from multiple sources and generate comprehensive responses in natural language. When users ask questions like "what's the best CRM software," answer engines provide sophisticated recommendations, comparisons, and explanations without requiring users to click through multiple websites. 

This represents a fundamental shift from information retrieval to answer synthesis, where answer engines act as intermediaries between users and information sources. In this way, AI platforms now control how your brand is presented to millions of daily users. Use HubSpot's AEO Grader to understand and optimize your representation across these critical discovery channels.

AI SEO optimization tools are specialized platforms that analyze how your brand appears in AI-generated results across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Unlike conventional analytics tools that track website visits and rankings, AI engine visibility monitoring tools reveal how AI systems characterize your brand in response to user queries about your industry or solutions.

Use HubSpot's free AI search monitoring platform to discover your brand's current positioning in AI results, compare your mentions against competitors, and receive actionable recommendations for improving how answer engines represent your business to potential customers.

Currently HubSpot’s AEO Grader analyzes results for GPT-4o, Perplexity, and Gemini. We are actively working to incorporate more platforms soon — stay tuned!

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) focuses on optimizing content to be discovered, understood, and cited by answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. While SEO (Search Engine Optimization) aims to rank web pages highly in traditional search results, AEO optimizes for inclusion and favorable representation in AI-generated responses. 

The key difference: SEO drives traffic to your website, while AEO ensures your brand is accurately represented and cited when AI systems synthesize information for users. Use this AEO Grader to evaluate how well your current content performs in answer engine results and identify optimization opportunities.

Traditional SEO optimizes for keyword rankings and click-through rates, while AEO optimizes for AI citation and accurate brand representation. SEO focuses on driving website traffic through search rankings, but AEO recognizes that users increasingly get answers directly from answer engines without clicking through to websites. 

The success metrics differ too: SEO measures rankings and traffic, while AEO measures mention frequency, sentiment, and accuracy in AI responses. HubSpot's Answer Engine Optimization Grader helps you understand your current AEO performance and provides specific recommendations for improving your brand's AI visibility.

Top answer engine optimization strategies focus on creating structured content with semantic clarity and authoritative sources that AI systems can easily parse and confidently cite in their responses. Content should be modular and self-contained, allowing AI systems to extract specific passages for synthesis. Include authoritative sources, quantitative data, and comparison tables that answer engines can easily reference. Write in natural language that mirrors how users ask questions, and ensure your content answers the "what," "how," "why," and "when" questions in your industry. 

Answer engine visibility tools like HubSpot's AEO Grader provide a foundation for your AEO strategy by auditing your current performance across major AI platforms, identifying current content gaps and recommending areas for improvement. With Answer Engine Optimization Grader, discover which competitors are winning AI mentions, what messaging patterns AI systems favor in your industry, and which optimization tactics will deliver the fastest results for your brand's AI presence.

HubSpot's AEO Grader is the best tool for monitoring AI visibility on the market, providing a comprehensive analysis across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini – all for free. 

Use the HubSpot AEO Grader to identify gaps in your AI visibility and see if answer engines are accurately representing your brand through detailed competitive analysis, sentiment scoring, source quality assessment, and actionable optimization recommendations. The free audit reveals exactly how your brand appears when prospects use answer engines to research solutions, giving you the insights needed to improve your positioning in this critical discovery channel.

The best tool for measuring visibility in answer engines is HubSpot's AEO Grader, which analyzes your brand's presence across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. This free tool reveals not only whether your company appears in AI-generated results, but also how frequently you're mentioned, in what context, and how you compare to competitors. 

Unlike manual testing that only captures a few queries, HubSpot's Answer Engine Optimization Grader systematically evaluates your visibility across the full spectrum of customer research patterns in your industry, providing comprehensive insights into your answer engine performance.

Improving brand sentiment in AI results requires creating authoritative, factual content that AI systems can confidently cite. Focus on publishing case studies with quantifiable results, customer testimonials with specific outcomes, and thought leadership content that demonstrates expertise. Ensure your website contains structured information about your company's achievements, certifications, and positive customer feedback. 

Since answer engines synthesize information from multiple sources, maintain consistent positive messaging across your website, press releases, and third-party profiles. Use HubSpot's AEO Grader to monitor your current sentiment scores and track improvements as you implement these strategies.