# AEO Landscape

> Independent guides, research and tool comparisons for Answer Engine Optimization.

Independent coverage of Answer Engine Optimization: how AI assistants choose sources, how to measure visibility, and how the tools compare. Our assessment method is published at http://aeolandscape.com/methodology and our commercial disclosures at http://aeolandscape.com/disclosures.

## Start here

- [Tool directory](http://aeolandscape.com/tools): Every AEO platform we track, with pricing and capabilities
- [Guides index](http://aeolandscape.com/guides): Explainers and playbooks for practitioners
- [Compare index](http://aeolandscape.com/compare): Head-to-head tool comparisons on one capability matrix
- [Reviews index](http://aeolandscape.com/reviews): Individual tool assessments with pricing and ratings
- [Research index](http://aeolandscape.com/research): Original studies, protocols and datasets
- [News index](http://aeolandscape.com/news): Developments in AEO tooling and AI search

## Guides

- [Why Your Brand Is Not Being Cited](http://aeolandscape.com/guides/why-your-brand-is-not-being-cited): Nine causes account for nearly every case, and they are not equally likely. Work through them in order of probability rather than in order of interest.
- [Running a 30-Day AEO Audit](http://aeolandscape.com/guides/running-a-30-day-aeo-audit): A four-week sequence that establishes a baseline, finds the real bottleneck, and ships enough change to prove the channel is worth funding.
- [Schema Markup for AI Search](http://aeolandscape.com/guides/schema-markup-for-ai-search): Structured data was always about making meaning machine-readable. That mattered moderately for rich results. It matters more when the machine is composing an answer.
- [Technical AEO for AI Crawlers](http://aeolandscape.com/guides/technical-aeo-for-ai-crawlers): The least glamorous part of AEO and reliably the highest-yield. If an AI crawler cannot fetch and read your page, nothing else you do matters.
- [llms.txt Explained: What It Does and What It Doesn't](http://aeolandscape.com/guides/llms-txt-explained): A small file with a large amount of hype attached. Here is what it is for, which engines appear to use it, and why it is not a ranking lever.
- [Structuring Content So AI Can Quote It](http://aeolandscape.com/guides/structuring-content-so-ai-can-quote-it): Retrieval systems quote passages, not pages. That single fact should change how you write every section.
- [The AEO Metrics That Matter](http://aeolandscape.com/guides/the-aeo-metrics-that-matter): Six metrics carry almost all the signal in AEO reporting. Most dashboards show twenty, and the extra fourteen mostly obscure the picture.
- [How AI Assistants Choose What to Cite](http://aeolandscape.com/guides/how-ai-assistants-choose-what-to-cite): Citation is the outcome of a pipeline with four distinct stages. Knowing which stage you are failing at is the difference between targeted work and guesswork.
- [AEO vs SEO: What Actually Changes](http://aeolandscape.com/guides/aeo-vs-seo-what-actually-changes): Most of your SEO work still counts. A specific subset of it stops working, and one entirely new discipline appears. Here is the honest accounting.
- [What Is Answer Engine Optimization?](http://aeolandscape.com/guides/what-is-answer-engine-optimization): AEO is the practice of getting your brand named and your pages cited inside AI-generated answers. Here is what the discipline actually covers, and where it stops.

## Compare

- [Otterly.ai vs AthenaHQ](http://aeolandscape.com/compare/otterly-ai-vs-athenahq): Cheap breadth against revenue attribution. A ten-times price gap between two tools that barely overlap in intent.
- [Profound vs Peec AI](http://aeolandscape.com/compare/profound-vs-peec-ai): The enterprise incumbent against the budget analytics tool — a $370 gap with surprisingly little between them in kind. Both report; neither acts.
- [CiteCue vs ZipTie.dev](http://aeolandscape.com/compare/citecue-vs-ziptie): An auditing instrument against a platform, at nearly the same price. ZipTie inspects answers beautifully; CiteCue covers more engines, more surface, and acts on findings.
- [CiteCue vs AthenaHQ](http://aeolandscape.com/compare/citecue-vs-athenahq): Revenue attribution against automated remediation. AthenaHQ answers "what did AEO earn us"; CiteCue answers "what do we do about it" — and costs less at entry.
- [CiteCue vs Otterly.ai](http://aeolandscape.com/compare/citecue-vs-otterly-ai): Six engines for $29 against a platform that acts on what it finds. Otterly wins raw coverage-per-dollar; CiteCue wins once prompt counts and remediation enter the picture.
- [CiteCue vs Peec AI](http://aeolandscape.com/compare/citecue-vs-peec-ai): A cheap, clean analytics product against a full platform. Peec AI wins on entry price. CiteCue wins the moment measurement has to turn into work.
- [CiteCue vs Profound](http://aeolandscape.com/compare/citecue-vs-profound): The enterprise incumbent against the platform that ships fixes. Profound wins on engine coverage and procurement; CiteCue wins on everything you do after the dashboard loads.

## Reviews

- [ZipTie.dev Review](http://aeolandscape.com/reviews/ziptie): The best answer-level inspection in the category and genuine crawlability depth, undermined by the narrowest engine coverage here.
- [AthenaHQ Review](http://aeolandscape.com/reviews/athenahq): Eight engines, drafting included, and the clearest answer in the category to "what did AEO earn us" — at $295/mo with no free plan.
- [Otterly.ai Review](http://aeolandscape.com/reviews/otterly-ai): Six engines from $29/mo and genuinely useful GEO briefs. Tight prompt allowances, no crawler analytics, and awkward value at the top tier.
- [Peec AI Review](http://aeolandscape.com/reviews/peec-ai): Prompt-level analytics and source targeting from about $29/mo. No remediation, no crawler visibility, and no pretence of being a platform.
- [Profound Review](http://aeolandscape.com/reviews/profound): Best-in-class coverage and procurement credentials at $399/mo entry. A reporting platform, and priced as though it were more.
- [CiteCue Review](http://aeolandscape.com/reviews/citecue): Measurement competitive with tools costing three times more, plus an automation layer that is genuinely a category ahead. Engine tiering is the real caveat.

## Research

- [Measuring AI Citation Rate: An Open Protocol](http://aeolandscape.com/research/measuring-ai-citation-rate-protocol): A replicable study design for measuring citation rate with defensible error bars. Published as a protocol so results can be compared rather than asserted.
- [AEO Platform Pricing in 2026: What the Market Actually Charges](http://aeolandscape.com/research/aeo-platform-pricing-2026): A synthesis of published pricing across ten AEO platforms, showing a 17x spread between entry tiers and a mid-market band where capability and price have decoupled.

## News

- [Agent task testing remains the category's clearest capability gap](http://aeolandscape.com/news/agent-usability-capability-gap): Across ten platforms we track, only one documents having an agent attempt real tasks on a site and report where it fails.
- [Self-serve AEO pricing has clustered into three bands](http://aeolandscape.com/news/aeo-pricing-clusters-three-bands): A 17x spread between entry tiers, and a mid-market band where price has stopped predicting capability.
- [llms.txt adoption by major engines remains unconfirmed](http://aeolandscape.com/news/llms-txt-adoption-unconfirmed): Vendor marketing increasingly treats llms.txt as a ranking factor. No major engine provider has publicly confirmed using it as a retrieval input.
- [Cloudflare and the Astro team launch EmDash CMS](http://aeolandscape.com/news/emdash-cms-launch): An Astro-native, Cloudflare-deployed CMS with sandboxed plugins and a built-in MCP server. Relevant to AEO for a specific reason: server-rendered content by default.

## Reference and policy

- [About](http://aeolandscape.com/about): What AEO Landscape is, who it is for, and what we are trying to be useful about.
- [Methodology](http://aeolandscape.com/methodology): How we assess AEO tools, what our feature matrix symbols mean, and what we cannot verify.
- [Editorial Policy](http://aeolandscape.com/editorial-policy): What we will and will not publish, how we handle sources and corrections, and the standards we hold ourselves to.
- [Disclosures](http://aeolandscape.com/disclosures): Our commercial relationships, how they could bias our conclusions, and what we do about it.
- [AEO Glossary](http://aeolandscape.com/glossary): Definitions for the terms that recur across AEO work, including the ones vendors use inconsistently.
- [Submit an Article for Review](http://aeolandscape.com/submit): Send us an article, a correction, or data. What we look for and what happens next.

## Feeds

- [RSS feed](http://aeolandscape.com/rss.xml): All sections, newest first
- [Sitemap](http://aeolandscape.com/sitemap.xml): Every indexable URL