Answer engine optimization: what it is and how to measure it
AEO is the work of making sure AI assistants can find, understand and name your brand when a buyer asks them a question. This page explains the term, the three numbers worth reporting, and how to run the measurement yourself.
The Polish figures come from 12 buyer questions about SEO agencies, asked through the APIs of six models, 15 repeats each: 1,080 answers collected on 7 September 2026. The same protocol ran in seven more markets on 7 and 8 September 2026, and those figures name their market.
One kind of work, several names
Answer engine optimization (AEO), generative engine optimization (GEO), LLM SEO and AI search optimization all describe the same work. The names came from different corners of the industry in the same year. Pick one and keep it consistent inside your reporting, because two names make one measurement look like two.
Short definitions: AEO, GEO, LLM SEO, AI visibility.
The three numbers worth reporting
A position in a list of links does not describe an answer. These three numbers do, and they can disagree with each other for the same brand.
- Share of answers that name you. How often your name appears at all.
- Share of answers where you are named first. The first company in an answer holds a different position from the fifth.
- The sources the assistant cited. Which pages the answer was built from.
| Company | Named in answers | Named first |
|---|---|---|
| Delante | 64.2% | 38.1% |
| Widoczni | 54.5% | 6.6% |
| Artefakt | 14.2% | 0.0% |
1,080 answers, Polish questions about SEO agencies, 7 September 2026. Artefakt appears in one answer in seven and never opens the list. A count of mentions alone would miss that.
One answer is one draw
Ask the same question twice and you can get two different company lists. In this measurement, 42 of the 72 question and model pairs still produced a company name that had not appeared before at repeat 13, 14 or 15. A single screenshot from a chat describes one answer on one day.
Models also differ from each other. In the same measurement one model named Delante in every one of its 180 answers, another named it in four. A third gave no company name at all in 120 of its 180 answers.
Web search changes the list
One of the six models answered with web search. The five others answered from what they already hold. The same company can be common in one mode and absent in the other.
| Company | With web search | Without web search |
|---|---|---|
| Eactive | 71.7% | 1.7% |
| Up&More | 62.2% | 2.0% |
| DevaGroup | 0.0% | 52.4% |
180 answers with web search, 900 answers without. These are different products from different providers, so the table compares two assistants, and web search is one of several differences between them.
Where those answers came from
In all 180 answers from the assistant with web search, at least one cited page was a ranking of agencies published by an agency on its own website. Three such rankings appeared in every one of the 180 answers. If you want to be named in that mode, the pages your category already publishes are the ground to work on.
Links that lead nowhere
The models also differ in the links they write. In the SEO answers of the eight markets below, Mistral Large wrote 5,117 of the 5,124 agency links that led to hosts with no DNS record, and 22,929 of the 23,805 agency links in those answers (96.3%). Claude, Grok and Perplexity wrote none. Perplexity, the one model with web search, named none of the seven names marked † in the top tens below. The figures per market are in AI agency rankings 2026.
What this looks like in eight markets
The same protocol ran in Poland, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Latvia and Lithuania. Each market got its own questions in its own language, 1,080 answers, and the same six models. These are the ten companies AI named most often in each one. Each market's page in AI agency rankings 2026 has the top 20 for every question set, the split between answers from memory and answers with web search, and the names we could not verify.
Poland PL
Polish questions, 1,080 answers, 89 companies named
| 1 | Delante | 64.2% |
| 2 | Widoczni | 54.5% |
| 3 | Bluerank | 43.9% |
| 4 | DevaGroup | 43.7% |
| 5 | Verseo | 27.0% |
| 6 | Sempai | 24.9% |
| 7 | Whites | 24.5% |
| 8 | Semcore | 23.6% |
| 9 | SEOgroup | 16.6% |
| 10 | Fox Strategy | 14.5% |
Estonia EE
Estonian questions, 1,080 answers, 142 companies named
| 1 | Convertal | 35.3% |
| 2 | SEO.ee † | 25.3% |
| 3 | Nobel Digital | 21.0% |
| 4 | Lavii | 19.4% |
| 5 | Strateeg | 15.9% |
| 6 | Optimist Digital | 13.3% |
| 7 | Business Media * | 13.2% |
| 8 | SEO Partner | 12.8% |
| 9 | WSI Online Estonia | 12.8% |
| 10 | Holini | 12.6% |
Ranks 8 and 9 are tied on 138 answers each.
Finland FI
Finnish questions, 1,080 answers, 178 companies named
| 1 | Suomen Digimarkkinointi | 39.2% |
| 2 | Hopkins | 32.9% |
| 3 | Tulos Helsinki | 24.0% |
| 4 | Genero | 21.9% |
| 5 | OIKIO | 21.5% |
| 6 | SEOSEON † | 19.9% |
| 7 | Avidly | 19.6% |
| 8 | Advance B2B | 16.9% |
| 9 | Generaxion | 15.6% |
| 10 | Netello | 15.3% |
Sweden SE
Swedish questions, 1,080 answers, 172 companies named
| 1 | Pineberry | 62.4% |
| 2 | Brath | 50.4% |
| 3 | Topdog | 30.4% |
| 4 | Viva Media | 21.3% |
| 5 | Precis Digital | 20.3% |
| 6 | Topvisible | 20.0% |
| 7 | Curamando | 19.9% |
| 8 | Synlighet | 14.1% |
| 9 | Sunbird Webbyrå | 13.0% |
| 10 | Viseo | 12.2% |
Norway NO
Norwegian questions, 1,080 answers, 167 companies named
| 1 | Synlighet | 52.7% |
| 2 | Bonzer | 35.0% |
| 3 | Netlife | 22.4% |
| 4 | Journey Agency | 17.2% |
| 5 | Semway | 16.9% |
| 6 | Bouvet | 16.2% |
| 7 | Making Waves | 14.9% |
| 8 | Amedia | 14.0% |
| 9 | Trigger | 14.0% |
| 10 | Rocket Agency | 13.3% |
Ranks 8 and 9 are tied on 151 answers each. Rank 10 is tied with Search Planet on 144 answers each.
Denmark DK
Danish questions, 1,080 answers, 150 companies named
| 1 | Bonzer | 42.1% |
| 2 | Obsidian Digital | 35.0% |
| 3 | Webamp | 34.1% |
| 4 | InboundCPH | 31.6% |
| 5 | IIH Nordic | 31.5% |
| 6 | s360 | 28.0% |
| 7 | Novicell | 25.3% |
| 8 | SeoDanmark | 16.4% |
| 9 | Morningtrain | 14.8% |
| 10 | Search Partners | 14.0% |
Latvia LV
Latvian questions, 1,080 answers, 149 companies named
| 1 | SEO.lv | 32.9% |
| 2 | Infinitum | 29.1% |
| 3 | iMarketings.lv * | 28.3% |
| 4 | Digital Minds † | 14.4% |
| 5 | SEO Media | 12.8% |
| 6 | Scandiweb | 12.2% |
| 7 | Webmedia † | 11.1% |
| 8 | Top Media | 8.9% |
| 9 | Coltana | 7.9% |
| 10 | Inbound.lv † | 5.9% |
Rank 10 is tied with Juice Digital on 64 answers each.
Lithuania LT
Lithuanian questions, 1,080 answers, 154 companies named
| 1 | Market Rats | 26.1% |
| 2 | SEO.lt † | 23.2% |
| 3 | Digital Star | 19.2% |
| 4 | GoodOne | 16.9% |
| 5 | Evolvery | 16.2% |
| 6 | Digital Mind † | 15.6% |
| 7 | SEO Banginis | 15.1% |
| 8 | Rocket Science Baltic | 15.0% |
| 9 | SEOExpert.lt | 14.3% |
| 10 | Adverum | 12.1% |
Share of answers that contain the company name, counted once per answer. Local-language questions, six models, 15 repeats each, 1,080 answers per market, collected 7 and 8 September 2026. These are counts of names in AI answers. They do not measure quality of work, client results or market share.
† The name appears in answers and the company behind it is not established. SEO.ee is the case we documented: the domain serves a parking page. Mistral wrote 176 of the 273 Estonian answers that name it, GPT 49, Gemini 26 and Grok 22; Claude and Perplexity never named it. * Counted from the answer text because the name registry had no entry for it, the same correction we applied to Grupa iCEA in Poland, which lands at rank 18 there.
What the named companies had behind them
- Web-search answers cite pages that exist. In Estonia, Strateeg's page strateeg.ee/seo-agentuurid/ was cited in 164 of the 180 Estonian answers from Perplexity, and Perplexity named Strateeg in 165 of the 180 (91.7%). The five models answering from memory named Strateeg in 0.8% of theirs.
- The pages cited most are lists and directories. A list of Estonian SEO agencies on seoeesti.ee, written by the lead of Strateeg, was cited in all 180 of those answers, and the Estonian SEO directory on clutch.co in 177.
- Some names come only from answers written from memory. SEO.ee and SEO.lt are category-plus-country names with no company we could find behind them. Every answer that names them came from a model answering from memory.
- A category domain with a parking page got no web-search mentions. The seo.ee domain serves a parking page, and Perplexity named SEO.ee in none of its 180 Estonian answers. SEO.lv runs a working site, and Perplexity named it in 127 of its 180 Latvian answers (70.6%).
The pages cited in each market are listed on its page in AI agency rankings 2026.
How to run the measurement
- Write the questions your buyers actually ask, in their language.
- Ask each question several times in each assistant.
- Record the date, the model, the language and whether web search was on. A result without these four is not repeatable.
- Count the share of answers that name you and the share where you are named first.
- Save the full answers, so you can read what was said.
- Repeat on the same protocol before you compare anything.
Rankfor also runs this as a 90-day managed service (opens in a new tab).
The companion page explains the reporting side: AI share of voice and its three denominators.
See what AI tells your buyers about you
We help buyers find useful answers about your business when they ask AI what to choose. For the audit, we run the questions your buyers ask, in your buyers' language and in English, across the AI assistants they use. You see where your company is named, which sources the answers rely on, and what to publish first. Dmitrij Żatuchin, founder of Rankfor.AI, answers every request himself within one working day.
What the audit shows
- Where your company appears in the answers, and next to whom
- The pages AI cites in your market
- What to publish first on your own site
Questions people ask
What is answer engine optimization?
Answer engine optimization, or AEO, is the work of making sure AI assistants can find, understand and name your brand when a buyer asks them a question. It covers what you publish, which sources describe you, and a measurement of how often assistants name you.
What is the difference between AEO and SEO?
SEO measures where your page sits in a list of links. AEO measures whether your brand appears inside a written answer, and in which position. A brand can rank well in search and still be missing from the answer, because assistants often name companies without linking to them.
Is GEO the same as AEO?
In practice yes. Generative engine optimization (GEO), answer engine optimization (AEO), LLM SEO and AI search optimization all describe the same work. Pick one name and keep it consistent inside your reporting, because mixing them makes two reports look like two different measurements.
How do you measure AI visibility?
Ask the questions your buyers ask, in their language, several times, in more than one assistant, and record the date, the model, the language and whether web search was on. Then count three things: the share of answers that name you, the share where you are named first, and which sources the assistant cited.
How many times should you repeat a question?
More than once, because one answer is one draw. In our September 2026 measurement, 42 of 72 question and model pairs still produced a company name that had not appeared before at repeat 13, 14 or 15. The right number of repeats depends on how stable the answers are, so measure the variation before you fix a number.
What is AI share of voice?
AI share of voice is your part of the attention inside AI answers. It is reported on three different denominators that people often mix up: the share of answers that name you, your share of all company names mentioned, and the share of answers where you are named first.
Does AI invent companies?
Sometimes, when it answers from memory. In our September 2026 measurement, SEO.ee was named in 273 of 1,080 Estonian answers about SEO agencies, and Mistral wrote 176 of them. We found no company behind the name, and the seo.ee domain serves a parking page. Perplexity, the one model with web search, named SEO.ee in none of its answers.
See what AI says about your brand
Ask one buyer question several times and read the answers yourself. Answer Trail shows whether AI recommends your brand.
Answer Trail (opens in a new tab)What AI visibility means