AEO means Answer Engine Optimization. SEO means Search Engine Optimization. SEO is about ranking on search pages. AEO is about showing up inside the answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot.
Is AEO the same as SEO?
No. They work together, but they solve different problems.
SEO earns you a spot on the results page. AEO gets your brand named inside the answer. That matters because people often stop at the summary now. In July 2025, ChatGPT drew roughly 5.7 billion visits, while Perplexity was around 140 million, so a huge share of research is happening inside answer engines, not just Google results pages.
Google’s own AI Overviews are already mainstream. Pew found that 58 percent of users saw at least one AI summary in March 2025, and those users clicked fewer organic links when the summary appeared. That is the shift in front of us.
From our experience, SEO drives sessions to your site. AEO gets your brand into the conversation before anyone clicks.
Which tools can track your brand visibility in AI engines?
Here are the ones we’ve tested that actually move the needle.
Peekaboo (aipeekaboo.com)
Peekaboo tracks where your brand appears inside AI answers and how your share of voice changes week by week. We use it to see which prompts trigger mentions in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, then run a gap analysis to decide what to publish next. It’s fully white label on every plan, which is useful if you manage clients and want your own branding. Pricing starts at 50 dollars per month, so you can roll it out without a big ask. From our experience, the value is the loop it creates. See mentions, see sources, then get a short list of actions to raise your odds of being cited.
