How do I do AEO for my website?
Crawler access, raw HTML, llms.txt, structured data and AI Overview citations, with a short list of what to change first.
Question How do I do AEO for my website?
AEO tool
Answer Engine Optimization Tool
Can AI search reach, read and cite you?
Use this AEO tool to check whether AI search can reach, read and cite your site.
Part of generative engine optimization
Run an AEO check on your site
Paste your domain or a page URL.
Run AEO checkThe AEO tool opens SpringBrand with your request. Each run spends credits from your balance.
What the check returnsRuns in SpringBrandAfter you sign in or create an account, the agent reads your robots.txt, fetches the page as an AI crawler would, checks llms.txt and structured data, and pulls the keywords where Google AI Overviews cite your domain.
- Robots.txt rules for AI search crawlers
- Raw HTML compared with the rendered page
- llms.txt and structured data
- Keywords where Google AI Overviews cite you
- Fixes in order
AI crawler access and raw HTMLllms.txt and structured dataGoogle AI Overview citations
START WITH A REQUEST
One site. Three ways to check AI search.
Each card is a real question people ask. Add your domain and the AEO tool opens it in SpringBrand.
Audit Crawlers Which AI crawlers should I allow in robots.txt: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot?
The robots.txt rules that apply to each crawler, kept apart from training crawlers like GPTBot.
Question
Which AI crawlers should I allow in robots.txt: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot?
Citations What is the best way to get mentioned in Google's AI Overview or a featured snippet?
The keywords where AI Overviews cite your domain and a competitor's, with the cited page and search volume, from DataForSEO's index.
Question
What is the best way to get mentioned in Google's AI Overview or a featured snippet?
WHAT YOU GET
What does an AEO audit check?
An answer engine can only cite a page it can fetch and read. The AEO tool starts there, then looks at the signals that help an answer quote you, and ends with real citation data from Google AI Overviews.
01 / REACH
Start with crawler access
The AEO tool reads your robots.txt rules for AI search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot and Claude-User, kept apart from training crawlers like GPTBot, which you may block on purpose.
A small SaaS team wrote on r/SaaS that ChatGPT search named them in 2 of 67 unbranded questions, and then found the cause: "Our Cloudflare rules were refusing its crawlers, and our pages said little without JavaScript." Both problems show up in an AEO check before any content work. Our own robots.txt, as served on 2026-11-13, names the search and user-triggered crawlers explicitly, so a stricter default rule cannot block them by accident (the full file also disallows /admin, /settings and /api/ for each group).
OUR ROBOTS.TXT, AI CRAWLER SECTION
# AI search and user-triggered crawlers explicitly welcomed
User-agent: GPTBot / OAI-SearchBot / ChatGPT-User → Allow: /
User-agent: ClaudeBot / Claude-User → Allow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot / Perplexity-User → Allow: /
02 / READ
Raw HTML vs rendered page
Whether the title, headings and main text are in the HTML a crawler downloads, or only appear after JavaScript runs. AI crawlers that do not run JavaScript miss the second kind.
Answer-ready structure: one H1, question-style headings where they fit, and a direct answer near the top of each section that an AI answer could quote.
WHAT A CRAWLER SEES
Readable without JavaScript
Title, headings and main text in the raw HTML
One H1
Question-style headings where they fit
A direct answer near the top of each section
03 / CITE
llms.txt, structured data and AI Overview citations
Whether you publish an llms.txt file and which schema.org types the page declares. Both are reported for information; neither guarantees a citation.
Then publish an llms.txt index if you want one; the llms txt generator drafts it from your sitemap. For a full check of titles, meta and links, use the SEO checker.
- Google AI Overview citations: the keywords where Google AI Overviews cite your domain, with the cited page and search volume, from DataForSEO's index.
- Fixes in order: a short list of what to change first, starting with anything that stops AI crawlers from reaching or reading the page.
SIGNALS AND CITATIONS
What helps an answer quote you
llms.txt file
schema.org types on the page
Keywords where AI Overviews cite you
Fixes in order
04 / THE LIMITS
Four different jobs are all called "AEO tool"
One AEO vendor, Geoptie, puts it plainly: the term "is an umbrella term that hides four distinct jobs." In their breakdown those are tracking whether AI engines cite your brand, optimizing content, a one-off diagnostic score, and an AEO module inside a full SEO suite.
This AEO tool does the diagnostic job and adds Google AI Overview citation data. It does not run your prompts in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini every day; if that is the job you need, the AI visibility tracker page lists what to use instead and how to check those answers by hand.
FOUR JOBS
Pick the job first
Tracking AI citations of your brand
Optimizing content
One-off diagnostic score (this page)
AEO module inside an SEO suite
Which tools check ChatGPT answers, and what do they cost?
AEO tools do different jobs, so compare them by the job first and the price second. The table shows what each tool's own page said when we checked.
| Tool | Main job | $0 option | Paid from | Checks ChatGPT answers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SpringBrand AEO check | Diagnostic: crawler access, raw HTML, llms.txt, schema, plus Google AI Overview citations | 100 credits a month at $0, no card | Plus: $29/mo for 3,000 credits | No |
| HubSpot AEO | Tracking the prompts that matter across answer engines | Not stated on the page | $50/mo | Yes, per the vendor |
| Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker | One-off check of brand visibility in AI search | $0, no login | Brand Radar for ongoing tracking | Yes, per the vendor |
| AEO Tool (aeotool.com) | FAQ schema generator | $0 | Not stated on the page | No |
Checked 2026-11-13 from each tool's public page. "Not stated" means the page did not say. Prices are the vendors' published monthly prices in USD. Written by SpringBrand, which is one of the tools listed.
How to run an AEO audit
An AEO audit answers one question before any other: can AI search reach and read the page? Fix that first, then work on what gets quoted.
1
Check crawler access
Read robots.txt for the AI search crawlers, and check that your firewall or CDN is not blocking them. Blocking a training crawler like GPTBot is a choice; blocking OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot keeps you out of their answers.
2
Compare raw and rendered HTML
Fetch the page without running JavaScript and compare it with what a browser shows. If the main text is missing from the raw HTML, server-render it.
3
Look at who already gets cited
Pull the keywords where Google AI Overviews cite your domain and a competitor's. Pages a competitor is cited for and you are not are the ones to improve first.
A FEW THINGS TO KNOW
Is AEO different from the SEO you already do?
What an AEO tool checks, what it costs and what it leaves out.
Can I use an AEO tool without paying?
Yes. Several AEO tool vendors offer a one-off check at no cost. New SpringBrand accounts get 100 credits a month with no card, and you spend them on the checks you actually run.
What does an AEO audit check?
Whether AI crawlers are allowed in robots.txt and not blocked by your firewall, whether the main text is in the raw HTML, whether you publish llms.txt and structured data, how the page is structured for quoting, and where Google AI Overviews already cite you.
What is the difference between AEO and SEO?
SEO aims for a ranking position in search results; AEO aims to be quoted or cited inside an AI answer. They overlap heavily: Google says its AI features are rooted in its core ranking systems, so pages that are hard to crawl or rank rarely get cited.
How do I do AEO for my website?
Make sure AI search crawlers can reach the page and read it without JavaScript, answer the question directly near the top, and keep normal SEO in good shape. Then compare the pages AI Overviews cite for your topics with your own.
Can an AEO tool track ChatGPT answers?
Some tracking tools do, by running a fixed list of prompts every day. SpringBrand's AEO tool does not query ChatGPT or Perplexity. To check by hand, write the questions buyers ask, run each a few times in each assistant and note which brands and sources come up.