AEO / Answer Engine Optimization
Answer engine optimization for B2B SaaS. Be the answer, not the tenth link.
Your buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews for vendor shortlists before they ever see a results page. AEO is the discipline of getting cited inside those answers. Two founders run it as a fixed-scope sprint, then an optional retainer.
// Last updated July 3, 2026. Written by the two founders of HuntingHydra.
The problem, measured
Ask ChatGPT for "best tools for your category" right now. If the answer names your competitors and not you, that shortlist is happening thousands of times a month, invisibly, in a channel you cannot buy your way into. No ad unit exists for AI answers. You are either retrieved and cited, or you do not exist.
This is not a future problem. AI answers already sit in front of a meaningful share of B2B software research, and the share only moves one direction. The companies getting cited today are compounding an advantage the way early SEO winners did in 2005.
The first thing we do in every AEO engagement is baseline your citation share: a fixed panel of buyer questions, asked across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews, scored for who gets mentioned. Most clients score near zero and did not know it.
What the engagement covers
1. Citation baseline and gap map
Which buyer questions matter in your category, who the engines cite for each today, and why them: quotability, retrieval presence, or third-party corroboration. This is the audit layer, and it decides everything downstream.
2. Quotable page restructuring
Answer engines lift text that answers directly. We restructure your money pages so every section leads with the answer, add question-shaped headings, and wire FAQPage, Service, and Organization schema so machines parse you correctly.
3. Retrieval assets
Models cite definitional guides and comparison pages far more than product marketing. We build the assets that get retrieved: what-is content, honest comparisons, and category explainers, each targeting questions from the baseline panel.
4. Monthly citation reporting
The same question panel, re-run monthly: citation share movement, new questions entering the panel, AI referral traffic, and what we change next. AEO without a measurement loop is decoration.
Pricing
- Site audit, $1,000. Written report in 48 hours covering AI visibility plus SEO, positioning, copy, GTM, and UX. Credits toward any sprint within 90 days. This is where every engagement should start.
- Sprint, from $5,000. Two weeks, fixed scope: baseline, restructured pages, first retrieval assets, schema, measurement setup. Positioning added as a second head at $10,000 when the category story needs fixing first.
- GEO/AEO retainer, $1,500 to $4,000/month. Monthly citation audits, content updates, structured data upkeep, new retrieval assets.
- SEO + GEO combined, $3,000 to $6,000/month. One retainer, both disciplines, because they reward the same architecture.
Why two founders instead of an agency
AEO is young enough that most agencies are relabeling their SEO deck. Ask any vendor two questions: how do you measure citation share, and what is the mechanism that gets a page cited. If the answers are vague, the practice is too.
At HuntingHydra the two people who built the methodology run your engagement. No account managers, no juniors, no handoff. We publish the method openly, including the full GEO guide and the AI Brand Visibility Audit skill we use, because founders who see the mechanism hire the people who wrote it down.
Questions, answered
AEO is the practice of getting your company cited and recommended inside AI-generated answers: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews, and voice assistants. Where SEO optimizes for a list of blue links, AEO optimizes for being the answer itself, or the cited source behind it.
Find out what the answer engines say about you.
The $1,000 audit baselines your AI visibility and your top 3 gaps across the whole funnel. Written report in 48 hours. Credits toward any sprint.