Are AI engines citing your company
No credit card · Results emailed in 3 minutes · Run on your actual domain
Why does AEO matter more than SEO in 2026?
Your prospects ask Chat GPT, Perplexity, and Claude before they touch Google. If those engines don't cite you, you don't exist in the most important early-stage conversation in your sales funnel.
AI search is mainstream
By early 2026, 8-30% of B2B inbound traffic on AEO-optimized sites comes from AI engines. The companies winning here started preparing 18 months ago.
Citation rates compound
Sites cited once by Chat GPT are 3.2x more likely to be cited again. The longer you wait, the more your competitors lap you with authority that compounds.
Most teams have no idea
The majority of B2B websites have never been audited for AEO readiness. Schema markup is missing or wrong. llms. txt doesn't exist. AI crawlers are silently blocked.
New to AEO? Start with our complete guide: What Is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)? The 2026 B2B Guide — a 6,000-word deep dive on the four pillars, the 12-item foundation checklist, and how to measure results.
What's in the AEO Health Check report?
Six audit dimensions
AEO Infrastructure — llms. txt, sitemap, robots, schema types Content Quality Signals — author bylines, publish dates, citations SEO Authority — domain rank, keyword count, traffic trend AI Engine Citations — live queries on Perplexity, Chat GPT, Claude Top 10 Ranking Keywords — current organic positions3-Month Traffic Trend — directional indicator from SEMrush
What you walk away with
Composite letter grade — A through F overall Four sub-grades — separately scored dimensions Top 7 recommendations — prioritized Critical/High/Medium Branded HTML report — emailed to you, shareable with your team Specific gaps named — not generic advice; your actual missing pieces Next-step path — what to do this week, this month, this quarter
How does the AEO Health Check analyze your site?
The audit scores your site across five dimensions: AEO Infrastructure (30%), Content Quality Signals (20%), SEO Authority (25%), AI Engine Citations (25%), and a composite letter grade. Every domain runs through the same five-dimension scoring rubric. Each dimension produces a 0-100 score and contributes a weighted slice to your composite grade.
AEO Infrastructure 30% Weight
Does your site have llms. txt? Sitemap? Robots configured to allow AI crawlers (GPTBot, Claude Bot, Perplexity Bot)? Does your homepage have Organization schema? Person schema for the founder? FAQPage schema? Service schema? Meta description in the right length range?
Content Quality Signals 20% Weight
Visible author bylines on content. Publish and updated dates. Citations to authoritative external sources (Gartner, HubSpot, Forrester, academic). Proper H1 and H2 structure. The Google E-E-A-T signals that AI engines now weight heavily.
SEO Authority 25% Weight · SEMrush Data
Your domain authority rank (US database). Total organic keywords ranking. Estimated monthly organic traffic. 3-month traffic trend (up, flat, declining). Top 10 keywords by traffic share with current positions.
AI Engine Citations 25% Weight · Live API Queries
We send three generic questions about your company and space to Perplexity, Open AI, and Anthropic — nine live API queries total. Then we check whether your domain or company name shows up in their responses. This is the closest thing to a real test of "is my company invisible in AI search?"
Composite Grade & Prioritized Recommendations The Output
All four dimensions roll into a single A-through-F composite grade. The report then identifies your top 7 recommendations in priority order — Critical first, then High, Medium, and a Next Step. Each recommendation explains the gap, why it matters, and what to do about it.
Why it matters: AI engines need machine-readable signals to confidently cite you. Missing schema is the most common reason a real expert gets ignored.
Why it matters: AI engines verify expertise the same way humans do — by checking whether a real, named person stands behind the claim.
Why it matters: Traditional SEO authority remains a strong proxy for "is this site trustworthy enough to cite" — even for AI engines that don't directly rely on Google rankings.
Why it matters: Every other AEO tool gives you theory. This dimension tells you what AI engines actually say about you today.
You get: Branded HTML email report · Letter grade · Sub-scores · Top recommendations
How is your AEO score calculated?
Each engine (Perplexity, Open AI, Anthropic) gets three queries. If your domain or company name appears in 6 of 9 responses, your citation rate is 67% and your sub-score is 67/100.
Infrastructure Sub-Score Breakdown
llms. txt present: 25 pts Sitemap. xml present: 10 pts Organization schema: 15 pts Person schema: 10 pts FAQPage schema: 10 pts AI crawlers allowed: 10 pts Web Site schema: 5 pts Service schema: 5 pts Robots. txt present: 5 pts Meta description optimal: 5 pts
Citation Rate Scoring
Citation rate × 100 = your score
Composite = Infrastructure (30%) + Content Quality (20%) + SEO Authority (25%) + AI Citations (25%). Letter grades: A 90+, B+ 80-89, B 70-79, C+ 60-69, C 50-59, D+/D 30-49, F <30.
What does the average B2B AEO score look like in 2026?
of B2B sites have no llms. txt
The single highest-leverage AEO move is a 30-minute fix. Almost nobody has done it.
are missing Organization schema
AI engines have no machine-readable answer to "what is this company" on homepage. Every citation has to be inferred from prose.
have no Person schema for the founder
Named-expert signals are weighted heavily by AI engines. Most B2B companies leak this authority entirely.
average citation count for un-optimized sites
Most sites get cited 33% of the time on direct brand questions and 0% of the time on generic high-intent questions.
typical citation lift after the first 60 days of AEO work
$0
Companies that ship the top 3 recommendations from this report typically see 8x citation rate improvement in 60-90 days.
of the top recommendations require paid tools
llms. txt, schema markup, author bylines, citations — every Critical and High recommendation can be implemented for free with existing site infrastructure.
Who built the AEO Health Check?
Privacy & Data
HubSpot Solutions Partner. ZoomInfo Solutions Partner.
Quantum Business Solutions is a B2B revenue operations consultancy led by Shawn Peterson (Principal, 20+ years in B2B revenue ops). We serve office equipment dealers, MSPs, IT services providers, and commercial real estate firms with HubSpot implementations, AI workforce assessments, and revenue acceleration programs.
We use it on every prospect engagement
Before we kick off any RevOps or AI engagement, we run this audit on the client's site. It gives us a 90-second view of where they sit on the AEO spectrum and which recommendations are most impactful. We made it public because the same diagnostic is useful for B2B teams running their own playbook.
Your domain and email stay private. We use them to run the analysis and send you the report. We don't sell your data, scrape your site beyond the homepage, or share your scores publicly. Your email enters our nurture sequence — you can unsubscribe with one click.
When should you run an AEO Health Check?
Run the analysis now. 3-5 minutes to complete, 3 minutes for the report to land in your inbox. No commitment beyond your email.
1. You haven't audited AEO before
Most teams have never explicitly evaluated whether AI engines can find them. If "AEO" is a new term to you, run this to establish a baseline.
2. Your organic traffic has gone flat
If SEO traffic stopped growing in the last 6-12 months, the answer is often that AI engines are now intercepting queries that used to land on your site. The report tells you whether you're losing to AI engines or your competitors.
3. You've invested in content but nothing happens
Publishing blog posts that don't move the needle is usually an AEO infrastructure problem, not a content quality problem. Schema and author signals are doing more lifting than content depth right now.
4. A competitor is suddenly everywhere
If one company keeps showing up in your prospects' conversations, they probably got serious about AEO 12-18 months ago. The audit shows you the specific gaps between you and them.
5. You're planning a 2026 marketing investment
Before you spend money on content, ads, or SEO services, get a baseline of where AI engines see you today. The report tells you which investments will compound and which will fizzle.
What do you do after the AEO Health Check?
Path B · Strategy Call
Run the recommendations yourself
Most of the top recommendations are 30-90 minute fixes — add llms. txt, fix homepage schema, add author bylines. Your team can ship the top 5 in a sprint with no outside help.
30-min strategy review with Shawn
Free 30-minute call to walk through your report, identify the 2-3 highest-impact moves for your specific business, and clarify what's worth doing yourself vs. outsourcing.
Quantum builds the fix
If the gaps are bigger than your team can absorb, we offer fixed-fee AEO foundation builds. Llms. txt, full schema, content trust signals, topic clusters — shipped in 2-4 weeks.
Free · No commitment
Path C · Engagement
$5,000 – $15,000 fixed
Six months to being the answer
Your health check is month one. Here is the full journey from audit to AI citations, the same playbook we run on our own site.
01
Audit & Baseline
Month 1
Audit & Baseline
AEO audit and scorecard: the questions buyers ask, who gets cited today, and every technical gap that keeps you out of the answer.
02
Foundation
Months 1-2
Foundation
Schema, sitemaps, canonicals, and direct-answer blocks on every money page. The plumbing that makes your site quotable.
03
Answer Architecture
Months 2-3
Answer Architecture
One question, one page. Evergreen answers built around your niche expertise, interlinked to the pages that sell.
04
Authority
Month 4
Authority
Directory profiles, review velocity, and industry citations. The sources AI engines already trust start pointing at you.
05
AI Citations
Month 5
AI Citations
Scorecard re-run: measured movement from absent to cited. Your results become the case study.
06
Compounding
Month 6+
Compounding
A content system with guardrails keeps answering new questions every quarter, so visibility compounds instead of decaying.
What exactly happens, from day one
No black box. This is the engagement, phase by phase, with the deliverable you hold at the end of each one. Your health check above is the first two weeks.
Audit & Baseline Month 1, weeks 1 to 2
What we do. We define the 25 questions your buyers actually ask, run every one through the AI engines and Google, and record who gets cited today. In parallel we crawl your site for the technical gaps that keep pages out of answers: schema, sitemaps, canonicals, page structure.
What you walk away with. Your AEO Scorecard (every query, cited or absent, and who wins instead), a ranked defect list, and a tailored six month roadmap. Delivered as a working session, not a PDF that sits in a drawer.
Foundation Months 1 to 2
What we do. We fix the plumbing: canonical and sitemap corrections, redirect cleanup, a full JSON-LD schema stack (Organization, Service, Offer, FAQ, Breadcrumb), and a direct answer block on every money page so engines can quote you in two sentences.
What you walk away with. A changelog of every fix with before and after crawls, and pages that answer the question in the first screen. This is the difference between being indexed and being quotable.
Answer Architecture Months 2 to 3
What we do. One question, one page. We build a content map of the questions worth owning, ranked by difficulty and buying intent, and you approve it before anything is written. Then we publish on cadence: evergreen answers built on your expertise, interlinked to the pages that sell.
What you walk away with. The approved question map, new answer pages shipping every week, and a glossary class resource asset your niche will reference.
Authority Month 4
What we do. AI engines trust sources before they trust sites. We complete and optimize the profiles those engines already cite (partner directories, review platforms), build review velocity, and place your expertise in the industry publications your buyers read.
What you walk away with. Completed directory profiles, a review pipeline that runs itself, and citations in sources the engines already pull answers from.
AI Citations Month 5
What we do. We re-run the full scorecard and measure movement query by query: absent to present, present to cited. Winners get doubled down on. Laggards get diagnosed and fixed.
What you walk away with. A movement report against your month one baseline, and a case study built from your own numbers.
Compounding Month 6 and beyond
What we do. Visibility decays without a system. We install one: a quarterly question map, a guarded content engine that never duplicates or fabricates, and a monthly scorecard cadence.
What you walk away with. A standing monthly report: rankings, citations, traffic, and next month’s plan. The machine keeps answering new questions while you run your business.
Every phase is covered by the retainers on our marketing services page, and the audit fee applies toward any package. Book a call to start with the scorecard.
How much does the AEO Health Check cost?
Free analysis · Report in 3 minutes · No credit card
One analysis per domain per 30 days · Email required · Unsubscribe anytime
Why It's Free
The audit is free because it earns trust. Most teams who run it find 3-7 high-impact gaps they didn't know existed. Some of those teams fix the gaps themselves. Some hire Quantum. Either way, we'd rather show value upfront than hide it behind a paywall.
“The AEO Health Check costs $0. No credit card, no trial period, no upsell wall. The AEO Health Check is free. We pay the API costs to run SEMrush, Perplexity, Open AI, and Anthropic queries against your domain. You get the full report in your inbox at no cost.”
What does the AEO Health Check NOT cover?
The audit does not cover: deep content quality review, guarantee of citation, full SEO audit, every AI engine (Gemini and others), full-site crawl, or custom strategy. The audit is genuinely useful but has clear limits. Honest scoping of what it doesn't cover.
A complete content audit
This evaluates infrastructure and signals. It doesn't evaluate the actual quality of your blog content, messaging, or thought leadership. A complete content audit is a different engagement.
A guarantee of citation
Fixing the recommendations dramatically improves the odds, but no AEO tactic guarantees AI engines will cite you. Authority compounds over time and requires sustained content investment.
A full SEO audit
We sample SEMrush data and look at domain authority, but a real SEO audit involves keyword gap analysis, backlink profile review, and technical SEO that's out of scope here.
A test of every AI engine
We query Perplexity, Open AI, and Anthropic — the three engines that matter most for B2B research today. Google Gemini, Chat GPT search, and others may report different results.
An on-page SEO crawl
We only crawl your homepage to evaluate schemas and content signals. We don't crawl your full site or run technical SEO checks on internal pages.
A custom strategy
The recommendations are prioritized but generalized. A custom AEO strategy for your specific business takes 30-60 minutes of human review — that's what the free strategy call is for.
Ready to see your AEO grade?
Opens secure tool at brandcommand. thequantumleap. business
Launch the AEO Health Check
The tool runs Firecrawl crawl + Semrush data + live queries against Perplexity, Open AI, and Anthropic, then emails you a branded report with prioritized recommendations.
Prefer to talk first?
Or email Shawn directly: shawn@thequantumleap. business
Frequently asked questions about the AEO Health Check
Is this really free?
Yes. No credit card, no trial period, no upsell wall. We pay the API costs (SEMrush, Perplexity, Open AI, Anthropic) to run your analysis. You enter your domain and email, you get the report. The only "cost" is that your email enters our nurture sequence — which you can unsubscribe from with one click.
How accurate is the data?
SEO data comes from SEMrush (industry-standard, real). AI citation data comes from live API queries against the actual production engines (Perplexity, Open AI, Anthropic) — not estimates. Schema and infrastructure checks are direct site crawls. Everything in the report is real measurement, not modeling.
How long does it take?
You complete the form in under 2 minutes. The analysis runs for 90-120 seconds on our side (9 live AI API calls plus SEMrush queries plus site crawl). The full HTML report email lands in your inbox within 3 minutes of submission.
Why business email only?
We restrict to corporate email addresses (no Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) for two reasons. First, the report is most useful to people making decisions about their company website. Second, it's a soft signal against tire-kickers since we pay real API costs for each run.
Will Quantum sell my data?
No. Your domain and email are used to run the analysis, send the report, and contact you with related content. We don't sell, share, or expose your data publicly. Your AEO scores are not posted anywhere — they're yours.
Can I run this on a competitor's domain?
Technically yes, but you'd want to use your own email since we send the report to whoever submits the form. The audit only uses publicly available data (their homepage, their public SEO presence, public AI engine queries), so there's no privacy concern with auditing competitor sites.
Is there a limit on how many domains I can audit?
One analysis per domain per 30 days, with a daily cap of 50 analyses across all users. The 30-day per-domain rule prevents accidental re-runs but allows you to track improvement quarter-over-quarter.
What if my score is bad?
Most B2B sites score in the C/D range on first audit. That's normal. The point isn't the score — it's the prioritized recommendations. A site scoring D today that ships the top 5 recommendations typically scores B+/A within 60-90 days.
Do I have to talk to Shawn after?
No. The report includes a free strategy call CTA, but it's purely optional. Most teams who run the audit just take the recommendations and ship them internally. We don't follow up aggressively — one email and you're back in the regular newsletter cadence.