The four repeating jobs
Ask, record, compare, point. The tool asks AI engines the questions your buyers ask, records every answer with its mentions and citations, compares your presence with the competitors tracked on the same basis, and points at the gaps the evidence supports working on.
Everything else a vendor shows you is packaging around those four verbs. If one of them is missing, what you are looking at is a report, not a tool.
A working week with one
Step 1
Day one: define the measurement
Brand, aliases, domain, competitors, and the buyer questions grouped by topic. Suggested prompts speed this up, but the owner curates the set, because the set is the program.
Step 2
First run: the baseline
Each question runs several times per engine. The output is mention rate with a confidence interval per surface, share of voice against the competitor set, and the samples stored behind all of it.
Step 3
Midweek: open the evidence
A surprising number stops being an argument when you can read the samples behind it: the exact prompt, model, date, what the answer said, and which domains it cited.
Step 4
Review: read the gaps
The comparisons that matter surface here: prompts competitors win, descriptions that are wrong, and cited domains where you are absent.
Step 5
Next: pick one test
Take one evidence-linked recommendation, ship the change, and let the next scheduled run judge it on the same basis.
What it will not do
It will not write your pages, publish anything, fix your markup, or guarantee a visibility lift. Recommendations are prioritized tests grounded in observed gaps, not promises about how engines will respond.
That boundary is worth wanting. A measurement tool that also grades its own homework by generating the content it measures has a conflict of interest built into the loop.
Choosing yours
The AEO tools landscape guide maps the categories if you are still orienting. If you want to feel the loop before committing to anything, the free checker runs the first baseline in a few minutes.