You don’t need a huge budget or a PhD in AI to succeed at AEO. But you do need the right tools – not just software, but also frameworks, examples, and places to stay informed as this space evolves.
Let’s walk through the essentials. No overwhelm. Just a well-stocked toolbox for real-world work.
First, let’s talk about answer tracking – the backbone of understanding if your AEO strategy is actually working. While there’s no official “Answer Console” yet, there are several tools that give you visibility into which sites, products, and sources LLMs are citing. Platforms like Profound, Glean, AlsoAsked, and SGE Radar let you monitor citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, and Gemini. Some scrape answers directly. Others map question clusters to where your brand shows up. Try a few, but don’t overthink it. Even a shared Google Sheet can go a long way.
If you’re writing content – and you probably are – use tools that help you craft AEO-optimized pages. Frase and SurferSEO can be helpful for structuring content around clusters and comparing what other top-ranking or cited pages are doing. For writing semantically rich, structured answers, even ChatGPT itself can be a great co-pilot, especially when paired with markdown formatting and clean HTML.
Want to track how LLMs crawl your site? Don’t forget the basics: Bing Webmaster Tools is still relevant here (especially because ChatGPT’s web browsing often leans on Bing’s index). Google Search Console helps you identify long-tail keywords that might align with AEO variants. And if you’re running a product with developer docs or API references, consider exposing clean, crawlable versions via robots.txt, llms.txt, or a full .md dump – especially if you’re using platforms like Docusaurus or ReadMe.
For experimentation, it’s helpful to set up controlled tests. This doesn’t require anything fancy – just pick two similar topics, optimize one, leave the other alone, and use something like Perplexity or ChatGPT to see which gets picked up. It’s SEO-style A/B testing, but for citations instead of clicks.
Curious what’s happening in the space overall? LinkedIn is where most of the real-time knowledge exchange is happening right now. Follow people like Ethan Smith (Graphite), Josh Blyskal (Profound), and others sharing tactical insights weekly. Reforge also occasionally drops deep dives that are worth bookmarking. There’s no single canonical blog – yet – but this is a fast-moving space. Staying plugged in matters.
Lastly, for structured knowledge, Google’s own documentation on AI Overviews, Structured Data, and Search Generative Experience (SGE) are all worth reading. They’re dry, sure. But they show how Google thinks – and how it wants you to participate.
And don’t underestimate Reddit, either. Searching for recent Reddit discussions in your niche is a goldmine not just for citations but for language modeling. You’ll learn how people actually phrase things – which is exactly how LLMs learn, too.
This chapter wasn’t meant to be a tool roundup. It’s more of a compass. The best tools for you are the ones you’ll actually use to track, test, and iterate. Start small. Go deep. Stay curious.
We’re almost at the finish line. One last chapter to go: a simple glossary to help you talk AEO like you’ve been doing it for years. Enter AEO/GEO Glossary – Fast Reference for the New Search Era.
AEO & GEO Handbook 2026 by People, business, and AI systems clarity coach Mike Moisio