u/Confident-Rush8127

Do AEO answer engine optimization for a living. The entire job is getting brand mentioned and cited inside AI-generated answers: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI overview.

Last week, a quick experiment I did for myself: I checked 20 Indian startups that raised Series A and above in the last 18 months. They have solid products, good traction, and are funded by very well-known VCs. We ran their core category queries through ChatGPT and Perplexity to see if their brand shows up with better AI-generated answers. 17 out of 20 were completely absent. No branded queries showed up. I just typed "what is brand name", and most of them showed up fine. The queries that actually drive buying decisions are the problem:

• Best [product category] for [use case] in India
• Top alternative for [dominant competitor]
• [Category] comparison in 2026
• Which [product type] should I use for this [specific problem]

These are the queries founders assume they are very visible for because they rank on Google or just funded, but AI agents don't care about the funding around. They care about whether your content is structured in a way they can extract that information out or not. Whether you exist as a recognized entity in their knowledge base and whether third-party sources on the open web mention you in the right context

A few patterns from the data:
The three startups that did show up in AI answers all had something in common:

• Good Reddit presence where real users discuss their product
• Comparison pages with structured tables instead of marketing clips
• Review sites profiled with actual reviews schema markup
• Page word

The first paragraph answered a question directly instead of starting with "In today's fast-paced world."

The 17 that were missing had a beautiful website, strong SEO from keywords, but zero AI traction and surface. The content was written for human browsing a website, but not for the people that use AI and not for the AI engines that pull exactly. Their brand exists in the Google index, but they are totally invisible in the AI answers bro

Did you get my point?

The part that should worry founders is this: when someone asks, "Is ChatGPT the best expense management tool for Indian startups?" Your funded, well-reviewed product isn't in the answers, but your bootstrapped competitor is showing up. Here shows that a good, high-intent distribution channel which can bring you high-intent customers just given business to your competitor.

One specific category which most likely stood out: two direct competitors. One raised $12 million, and another raised $2 million. The $2 million shows up in the Perplexity answers like 6 out of 10 times, but the $12 million company shows up like zero.

The answer of the company structured comparison content: the Reddit threads where the team answered questions and FAQ schema across the site. The bigger company had a sleeker website with gated content, no public comparison, and the robot AXT were blocking two AI crawlers without anyone on the team knowing. Funding dawned by AI visibility. Yeah, it has an added advantage that you will be in the news, but if your company is not known for the product now on AI answers, you are losing customers.

I can't explain everything about how you can fix this right now. I just made a previous post over this. You can check that out. Few pieces of information are still left to share on the technical part. Will be sharing soon.

If you are a founder ending this, go try it yourself. Open ChatGPT or Perplexity and try non-branded queries that your ideal customer will ask when looking for a product like yours. If you are not mentioned, else is that somebody is going to consider before you are. Always remember to use a new account of ChatGPT or Perplexity or any AI model. Don't use your day-to-day-use model, because it already knows about your business.

and just to let you know, the shift from Google to AI-mediated discovery is happening fast. Most funded teams are realizing we are working with very good startups in India, even one of the tops in Delhi NCR. Everyone is right now optimizing for AI, and even if you're working, most of your visits in the next one or two years will be coming from AI, or you will be having no visitors (this is harsh i know but this is the truth) - you know this also google ai overview is enough for most people now thats also AEO

the brand building AI citation presence now will own those answers for a long time. AI engine has a self-reinforcing cycle. Once a brand gets cited, it gets cited more often, which builds its entity strength, which gets it cited more.

happy to share which categories were tested. If anyone is curious, don't name specific startups here for obvious reasons

now I am finally done with Wispr Flow. By the way, I love this product now

run an AEO agency. We don't do traditional SEO anymore. All us do is get brands cited in AI-generated answers.

• ChatGPT
• Perplexity
• GEMINI
• Google AI Overview

That's it!
After running AEO campaigns across SaaS startups, dental clinics, edtech platforms, and content businesses, want to lay out what I have learnt, not generic content like theory, no, 10 tips for AEO, something which recycled from Samrush. This is actual what I did and actual metrics.

First, wanna tell you: if you are not into this, traditional SEO helps you rank on the pages. AEO helps you get cited and extracted into the AI answers. They are two different games. They are not competing with each other.

Here in AEO, even if you are ranking at 7th on Google, you can rank 1 on Perplexity. It cares more about context, pulled out into a clean, stand-alone answer block.

How each AI engine picks sources and why this is important for you to understand.

Each platform has different relative behavior. You can't treat them as one bucket. Google AI overview pulls from pages already ranked in the top 10-15 organic results. If you don't rank in the traditional search for a query, you are unlikely to show up on AIO. Google AI is one AI engine where traditional SEO still matters the most.

ChatGPT with Search: uses Bing index but pulls from a wide range of results. Page ranking outside the top 10 can still get cited. ChatGPT weighs context, structure, and authority signals more than the raw ranking position.

About Perplexity, it is more about aggressive citer. It always links sources. It favors recent content, well-structured pages, and authoritative domains. Perplexity is also the easiest platform to win on because it indexes content fast and it is less brand biased than Google.

Gemini Lens on Google Knowledge Graph pulls the standard Google Index entity. Established matters here more than anywhere else. If Google doesn't recognize you as the entity, no knowledge panel, no Wikipedia mention, no structured data. Gemini will struggle to cite you.

Most people optimize for AI search as one thing. Each engine has a different retrieval type plan, and a one-size-fits-all AEO strategy doesn't work.

The AEO Framework I use with every client
I break every engagement into four phases.
Phase 1: The AI Visibility Audit Before touching anything else, I test the client on 20 most important queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google, AIO, and Gemini. For each query, I log:

• Does an AI answer exist?
• Is the client cited?
• Who is cited?
• Competitor?
• Wikipedia?
• Some random blog?
• What page is cited and what content format is it?

This tells me two things:

• Where the client is invisible
• Where AI considers cite-worthy for these queries

phase 2: Entity Establishment Most startups fail at AEO because they even start because AI engines don't know they exist. If ChatGPT doesn't recognize your brand as an entity, your content won't get cited, no matter how well structured it is. Entity Establishment means:

• Getting your brand mention into Google KnowledgE - Craft structured datA , Wiki daTA , Constant NAP across directories
• building third-party mentions on sites, AI engine trust, Wikipedia references, G2, kept area review, industry publications, Reddit threads.
• Creating constant brand mentions across the open web so that LLM's train data and retrieve pipeline can associate your brand with your category

had a client go from 0 to 10% AI visibility in 3 months with 0 ad spend. The biggest mover wasn't content optimization; it was the entity establishment. We got them listed on 6 review sites, built consistent wiki data entries, added organization schema, organized their website, structured their SEO, and planted genuine helpful answers on Reddit threads where their category was being discussed

phase 3 Answer Ready Content

this is the content restructure phase. I re-write key pages using what I call answer block formatting.
- Every section starts with a direct answer to question, 40-60 words, no intros, no throat clearing or something. The first sentence of every S2 section should work as a stand-alone answer. If an AI engine extracts only that passage
- start with Source inline. Companies using AEO see 40% citation rates. Princeton GeoStudy KDD 2024 builds companies see higher citation rates every time AI engine preferably cites contexts that it itself cites sources
- comparison tables for Any X vs Y or Best X vs Y queries get extracted at 3x the rate of the pro's comparison in my testing
- FAQ section using actual questions people ask (Pull from people also ask, reddit , alsoasked ) Mark them up with FAQ page schema.
- author byline with credentials on every page: AI system weight, expert attribution

one thing see people get wrong: they stuff their content with keywords, thinking AI Engine will look like Google circa 2015. The Princeton Geo study tested this. Keyword stuffing reduces AI visibility by 10%. Write for a reader, structure for an extractor

phase 4: Signal Building
AI engines don't solely rely on your website. The huge chunk of AI citations comes from the third-party sources. The stats that blew up my mind when I saw it: brands are like 6.5x more likely to get cited through third-party mentions than their own domain, so signal building means:
- reddit: finding threads where your category is discussed, giving details, helpful answers. Please no spammy promotions and are building a genuine comment history. Reddit thread shows up in Perplexity answers constantly
- LinkedIn: become a thought leader, grow by publishing data-backed posts about your category. Perplexity and ChatGPT love to pull your data from LinkedIn
- review sites getting listed and actually collecting reviews on G2 kept their address pilot. These are citation-heavy domains for AI engines. Please do this
- Industry publication: Guest posts, Data studies, Expert quotes, Anything that builds your presence on high authority domains

and in this, the last point is all the other relevant platforms relevant to that business. Even AI engines can read your Instagram videos, YouTube videos, check out your xThreads, and all the founder's related content as well. Your presence needs to be on multiple platforms which are relevant to that particular business

got a lot more to share, but tired speaking in front of Wispr Flow, so if you want more value, will be sharing those soon

Basically i record my whole script in 1 go and then its gets difficult to cut all those while editing

Is their any ai which can understand my script then make cuts in my video which look smooth?

Before anyone write a single piece of content, for a Saas company the real work starts with understanding the business from the founder's perspective,

Because founders want revenue

And revenue comes from understanding the customer better than the competitor does.

Step 1: Founder-to-Founder Discovery

Start by understanding:

• what problem the product solves
• why customers choose it
• what makes the product unique
• which customer segment generates the highest LTV
• the founders' vision for growth

The best positioning almost always exists inside the founder's head. It just need to be excavated

Step 2: Primary and Secondary Research

Start with the ICP. Do the secondary research first, like:

• market reports
• competitor positioning
• what is already being said about the category in the public

Then primary research: calls with the actual paying users. What was their use? What was the pain before? They found you but almost stopped them from buying what they like, or they don't like and many more

Step 3: We map out where your ICP is actually searching

After research, we know these four things:

1. What exact question your buyers are typing
2. The platforms where those questions live
3. Which answers are currently winning and why
4. What will work for you and what not

for most companies, the non-negotiables are:

• Reddit + Quora: the real buyers go there when they don't trust marketing copy. (30-40% importance)
• Your website: the technical SEO & AEO is also important, plus technical and AI credibility. (25% importance)

Step 4: The Actual Strategy

Now for building phase.

It will not be generic content on different platforms.

A citation first, platform-specific and ICP observed strategy.

Every piece of content is engineered to answer the exact question the buyer is asking on the exact platform they are asking it on, in the format AI engines love to pull from.

The goal is more traffic. The goal is an inbound, high-intent audience which already is ready to buy because you are solving their specific problem.

that's all for now

We are a young marketing agency in early stage of growth qnd we are looking for someone who want to grow with us

To be completely honest:
- We can’t offer a large salary right now but this will be a paid role
- We can offer hands-on-experience, ownership, direct exposure to building a business and significant growth opportunities as the company grows

We are looking for someone who:
- Can handle Day-to-Day operations
- Is orgainzed and proactive
- Curious about Ai and recently cleared his college
- Can Communicate professionally with clients in good English
- Take Responsibility instead of waiting for instructions
- Wants to be a part of building something from the ground up

Preferred Location: Gurgaon

If you are intrusted then
- Tell me why you want to join us?
- What skills you have?

This role is for someone who values learning, ownership and long-term growth over a short-term paycheck

We have 37k followers on Instagram and build multiple business in past

https://preview.redd.it/6n29mszp6i6h1.png?width=1184&format=png&auto=webp&s=4598ffe45625331ab2976e2802f16a23fe267822

My Strategy for my business - whats yours?

Drop your website + biggest growth bottleneck

i will share one thing I'd focus on to grow faster

No Pitch - Just honest feedback from someone who's spent a lot of time studying startup growth and distribution