The AEO audit: exactly what you get for $2,500 + GST
Most agencies give away an audit to win a retainer, which makes the audit a sales document. Ours is the product. You can hand the output to your existing agency, your in-house team, or us. Below is every deliverable, a sample of the findings format, and the day-by-day timeline.
The short answer
For a fixed $2,500 + GST, the AEO audit (also called an AI visibility audit) measures how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Gemini answer the questions your buyers ask, records every source they cite, and turns that into a costed, prioritised action list. It takes ten business days, needs no logins and no calls, and you keep the raw data.
- 30–50 questions written in your buyers' words, not your brand name.
- A citation map: the short list of pages that decide whether you exist in AI answers.
- An entity audit, a costed action list, and the measurement file to re-run it later.
The six deliverables
- A real prompt set, 30–50 questions. Built from how your buyers actually ask — quote requests, sales emails, support tickets, search queries — grouped into hiring, problem, how-to and comparison questions. Never your brand name on its own, which always returns you and tells you nothing.
- Run across every major engine. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Gemini, in clean sessions so personalisation does not flatter the result. Every answer and every cited URL is recorded.
- The citation map. Every domain and page the engines quote when answering your category, ranked by how often. This is the single most useful artefact: it shows exactly which pages on the internet decide whether you get named. In our own category, most of them were third-party roundups, not anyone's own website.
- Your entity audit. How consistently your business is identified across the sources engines trust — directories, review platforms, industry bodies, profiles — and which authoritative ones you are missing.
- A costed action list. Prioritised by measured effect size from published research, with roughly what each item costs and who could do it. It includes the items you should not bother with, which is often where the savings are.
- The raw measurement file. Prompts, answers and citations, so you, your agency or we can re-run the identical set in three or six months and see what moved.
What a finding looks like
Rather than invent a client, here are four findings from the audit we ran on our own category — answer engine optimisation in Australia — on 19 September 2026. The full data is public in the AI Citation Index (September rows as CSV). A client report has one of these for every material gap, in this format.
Finding: Hiring questions are answered from third-party lists, not agency websites.
Evidence: Across ten hiring questions the engine cited 188 sources. The most-cited single page was a "best AEO agencies in Australia" roundup published by a third party, and Semrush's agency directory appeared in four of the ten answers.
Action: Get listed in the directory that keeps appearing, and get onto the roundups that are cited, by being genuinely worth including. Effort: a few hours for the directory; ongoing outreach for roundups. Why it matters: earned media is cited roughly 325% more than brand-owned content (source and detail).
Finding: The brand is absent everywhere.
Evidence: 0 citations across all 29 questions, including the ones that name the city we are based in. (The site launched that day, so this was expected — it is the baseline.)
Action: Entity work first: consistent naming, organisation markup with a deep sameAs list of authoritative profiles, and the directory listings above. Effort: low. Why it matters: deep entity linking measured +34% citations, +52% on Gemini and Bing, in a 90-day controlled study (source).
Finding: The acronym is ambiguous, and the engine sometimes resolves it to someone else.
Evidence: For "AEO consultant Brisbane", two of the 20 cited sources had nothing to do with marketing: a study-abroad agency that trades as AEO, and an education-agent listing.
Action: Spell the category out next to the acronym in titles, headings and markup ("answer engine optimisation"), and use it consistently in every profile. Effort: low. Why it matters: an engine that is unsure who you are will not recommend you.
Finding: Schema markup alone will not fix this.
Evidence: A matched study of 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD measured citation changes indistinguishable from zero on every engine tested.
Action: Keep markup correct (it is cheap and helps parsing); do not pay a premium for it as the AI visibility work. Detail: does schema markup help AI citations?
Timeline: ten business days
| When | What happens | What we need from you |
|---|---|---|
| Before day 1 | We confirm scope, the $2,500 + GST price and a start date in writing | A yes |
| Days 1–2 | Intake by email | A handful of real customer questions or quote requests, your main competitors, and (optional) a Search Console query export |
| Day 3 | Draft prompt set sent for approval | Change anything you like. Once approved it is fixed, so the run can be repeated identically |
| Days 4–6 | Runs across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Gemini; every answer and citation recorded | Nothing |
| Days 7–8 | Citation map, entity audit, competitor presence, action list costed | Nothing |
| Days 9–10 | Report and raw file delivered | Read it. A walkthrough call is available if you want one; it is optional |
What it will not contain: a score out of 100, a traffic-light dashboard, or a projection of revenue from AI search. Nobody can forecast that honestly yet, and a number you cannot audit is a number designed to be impressive rather than true.
If it comes back empty
Some categories genuinely have no meaningful AI answer volume yet. If the measurement shows there is nothing here worth acting on, we will say so in writing, and that is a legitimate outcome of an audit rather than a failure of one. You keep the data either way. If you are still deciding whether to spend anything, read is AEO worth it? first — or run the free check, which is a hand-run version of step two.
After the audit
Three options, all fine: do the action list yourself, hand it to your current agency, or ask us to run it as a monthly programme ($3,500–$7,500 a month + GST, three-month baseline, then month to month). We would rather sell you one honest thing than hook you into twelve months.
Audit questions
What do I get in the $2,500 + GST AEO audit?
A 30–50 question prompt set built from how your buyers actually ask, run across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Gemini; a citation map of every source the engines quote for your category, ranked by frequency; an audit of how consistently your business is identified across the sources engines trust; a prioritised, costed action list; and the raw measurement file so anyone can re-run it. Delivered as a written report in ten business days.
How long does an AEO audit take?
Ten business days from the agreed start date, provided the intake questions come back in the first two days. The prompt set is sent to you for approval on day three, the runs happen on days four to six, and the report arrives by day ten.
Do you need logins to my website, analytics or ad accounts?
No. Nothing in the audit requires access to your systems. A Search Console query export and a few real customer emails or quote requests make the prompt set better, but you can send those as files or skip them.
Can I give the audit to my existing agency?
Yes. That is the point of writing it to stand on its own. The action list says what to do, roughly what it costs and who could do it, and the raw file means your agency can repeat the measurement later without us.
What if the audit shows AI visibility does not matter for my business?
Then the report says so in writing, and that is a legitimate result. Some categories have very little AI answer volume yet. You keep the prompt set and data either way, and you will have spent $2,500 + GST instead of a year of retainer finding out.
Find out where you stand in AI answers
Five minutes. It builds the prompts a buyer would type, you paste the answers back, and it scores mention and citation separately. Runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent to us.
Start the free checkSend one buyer question for a free snapshot by email, or enquire about the $2,500 + GST audit or a monthly programme. Written reply within two business days; no call required.
Send an enquiryPrices are published: audit $2,500 + GST fixed, programme $3,500–$7,500 a month + GST. So is our own score: the AI Citation Index for Australia shows who AI engines cite for AEO questions, and the measured agency ranking puts us where the data does — at zero.