AEO & GEO tool

Answer engine optimization tool: get your site into AI answers

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of getting ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews to read, trust and cite your site. DidYouSEO checks whether AI crawlers can reach your pages, shows which AI bots actually visit, and tracks whether the assistants name you, so you know what to fix first.

Start free Check your robots.txt for AI crawlers

Ranking on Google no longer means you're in the answer

More searches now end in an AI answer. The assistant reads a handful of pages, writes a reply and cites two or three sources. If your page isn't one of them, a top-three Google ranking doesn't get you the visit.

Most sites don't know why they're left out. Sometimes robots.txt blocks the crawler that feeds the answer. Sometimes the page is fine but a competitor's page answers the question more directly. You can't fix either until you can see it.

What does an answer engine optimization tool do?

Shows the rules AI crawlers follow

Read your robots.txt rule by rule and spot the ones that shut out GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot.

Shows which AI bots really visit

A small snippet logs every AI crawler visit by page, so you see what they read, not what you hope they read.

Tracks whether AI names you

Ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity the questions your buyers ask, every week, and see who gets named.

Shows who AI Overviews cite instead

For each keyword, see if Google shows an AI Overview, whether it cites you, and which domains it cites if not.

Checks the basics AI reads from

40+ technical checks per page, plus schema validation, so assistants can parse and trust what they find.

Measures the visits AI sends

Connect GA4 to see visits referred by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Copilot next to your organic traffic.

Answer engine optimization for every job

AI visibility tracking

Ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity your buyers' questions every week and see who gets named.

AI visibility audit

A step-by-step audit of how AI assistants see your brand today.

AI crawler tracking

Which AI bots visit your site, how often, and which pages they read.

AEO checks in your AI assistant

Run audits, robots.txt and schema checks from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor.

The AEO checklist, and where DidYouSEO covers each step

Step	The question	Where to check it
1. Access	Can AI search crawlers reach your pages?	Free robots.txt checker lists your rules for each crawler; the site audit flags a robots.txt that blocks everything
2. Visits	Do the crawlers actually come, and to which pages?	Bot traffic tracking (every plan, including Free)
3. Readability	Is the answer in the HTML, clearly structured, with valid schema?	Site audit, 40+ checks per page; free schema validator
4. Mentions	Do ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity name you for your buyers' questions?	AI visibility: 10 questions on Starter, 30 on Growth
5. AI Overviews	Does Google's AI Overview cite you, and who does it cite instead?	AI Overview checks (Growth)
6. Results	Do AI answers send you visitors who convert?	GA4 integration: AI assistant referrals

AEO vs SEO: what changes and what stays the same

The foundations are shared. AI search engines mostly fetch pages from a web index, so a page that can't be crawled or indexed won't be cited either. AEO adds the parts SEO tools don't look at.

	SEO	AEO
The goal	Rank a page in the blue links	Get cited or named inside the AI answer
Who reads the page	Googlebot and Bingbot	Those, plus OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and others
What wins	Relevance, links, a good page experience	A direct answer near the top, clear facts, and other sites that mention you
How you measure it	Rankings and clicks in Search Console	Mentions and citations per question, AI crawler visits, AI referrals in GA4

What we won't tell you to do

Add an llms.txt and expect citations. It takes five minutes and our free generator makes one, but no major AI company has confirmed it reads the file. Do it last, not first.
Block every AI bot. Training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended) and search crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) are different. Blocking a search crawler removes you from that assistant's answers.
Rewrite every page for AI. Start with the pages that already get impressions in Search Console for questions AI assistants answer.

How is DidYouSEO different from other AEO and GEO tools?

It checks why, not only whether

Most AEO tools only count mentions. DidYouSEO also shows the crawler access, crawler visits and page problems behind them.

Real crawler data

Bot traffic comes from your own site, so you see which AI bots read which pages instead of guessing.

Your own Google data next to it

Search Console and GA4 sit beside AI visibility, so you can see if a page that lost clicks is now cited in AI Overviews.

Priced for small teams

Free plan for one site. AI visibility from $19 a month, without a separate GEO subscription.

How do you start with answer engine optimization?

STEP 1
Check access first
Run your robots.txt through the free checker and look for rules that name AI search crawlers. No sign-up needed.
STEP 2
Add your site
Run the site audit, connect Search Console and GA4 with read-only access, and add the bot traffic snippet.
STEP 3
Track your buyers' questions
Add the questions people ask AI about your category. Check each week who gets named, and fix the pages behind the gaps.

Ask your AI assistant to run the checks

Connect DidYouSEO to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor through MCP. The assistant can check robots.txt, validate schema and audit pages for you, and read the results back in plain words.

“Which AI crawlers does acme.com's robots.txt block?”

“Validate the schema on acme.com/pricing and tell me what's missing.”

“Audit acme.com and list the problems that would stop an AI answer from quoting it.”

“How many visits did acme.com get from AI assistants last month in GA4?”

Connect DidYouSEO to Claude or ChatGPT Use the audit fix plan skill

Free AEO tools, no sign-up

Robots.txt checker

See every rule in a site's robots.txt, grouped by crawler.

Robots.txt generator

Choose which crawlers to allow or block, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot.

Schema validator

Check the structured data AI and Google read on any page.

llms.txt generator

Make an llms.txt file in a minute, if you decide you want one.

SEO analyzer

A quick on-page check of any URL.

Readability checker

Plain, direct answers are the ones AI quotes.

How much does an AEO tool cost?

Free for one site. Paid plans start with a free trial and no card.

2 months free

Free

Explore the dashboard, no card needed

$0/ forever

1 registered site
Up to 10 pages per audit
30 crawl credits / month
40+ on-page checks per page
Bot traffic tracking
AI visibility check
AI content calendar
AI credits for keyword & backlink lookups
API & WordPress plugin (20 requests/day)

Get started free

Starter

Fix your site's SEO

$19/month

5,000 crawl credits / month (1 credit = 1 page)
Up to 300 pages per crawl
1 website
AI visibility: 1 website, 10 questions, 4 assistants
Security, accessibility & best practices audits
Bot traffic tracking
Competitor tracking (2 competitors per site)
Keyword gap analysis - top 20, refreshed monthly
100 AI credits / month for keyword & backlink lookups
PDF & Markdown export
AI content calendar
API & WordPress plugin (500 requests/day)
Branded reports with your logo
Full white-label (remove DidYouSEO)

Who it's for

For saas teams

Find out whether AI assistants name you when buyers ask for a tool like yours.

For seo agencies

Add AI search to every client report, next to their Google rankings.

Frequently asked questions

What is an answer engine optimization tool?

It's software that helps AI assistants find, read and cite your site. A useful one checks whether AI crawlers can reach your pages, shows which ones visit, and tracks whether ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews name you for the questions your buyers ask.

What's the difference between AEO and GEO?

Very little in practice. Answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) both mean getting your content used in AI-generated answers. GEO is more common in research papers and AEO in marketing. The work is the same.

Do I still need SEO if I do AEO?

Yes. AI search engines mostly fetch pages from a web index, so a page that isn't crawled and indexed won't be cited. Fix crawling, indexing and page basics first, then work on direct answers and mentions on other sites.

Which AI crawlers should I allow for AEO?

Allow the search crawlers that fetch pages for answers, such as OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search) and PerplexityBot. Blocking one removes you from that assistant's answers. Training crawlers such as GPTBot and Google-Extended are a separate choice: blocking them keeps your content out of model training but doesn't remove you from search answers.

Does llms.txt help with AEO?

There is little evidence it does. Google has said it doesn't use the file, and no major AI company has committed to reading it. It's cheap to add, so do it after the steps that matter: crawler access, direct answers and being mentioned elsewhere.

Is there a free AEO tool?

Yes. The robots.txt checker, robots.txt generator, schema validator and llms.txt generator are free with no sign-up, and bot traffic tracking is on the free plan. Tracking mentions in AI assistants starts on Starter at $19 a month.