Everything we know, published
Every figure in these guides links to the study it came from, including the studies that are inconvenient for people selling AEO. Nothing here is gated — in one controlled test, gated material earned 14 citations where open equivalents earned 1,847.
Does schema markup help AI citations?Ahrefs tested 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD schema and measured no meaningful citation lift on any AI engine. Here is the study, the counter-evidence, and what to do instead.What actually drives AI citationsEarned media beats your own website by 325%. Review profiles take brands from 1% to 75.3% of answers. The full ranked list of what moves AI citations, with effect sizes and sources.What AEO costs in AustraliaAustralian AEO retainers run $3,000–$8,000 a month, audits $1,500–$5,000 and enterprise programmes $10,000–$25,000. What sits inside those numbers, and which line items are worth paying for.AI visibility tools comparedReal pricing and honest trade-offs for the main AI citation tracking platforms in 2026 — Profound, Peec AI, Scrunch and Otterly — plus when you do not need one at all.How to check whether ChatGPT mentions your brandA free manual method for measuring whether AI assistants name and cite your business: how to build the prompt set, why a logged-out session matters, and how to score mention and citation separately.AEO vs SEOAI referrals are 1–6% of traffic but convert 4–5× better and grow ~975% a year. Only 37.9% of AI-cited URLs now rank on page one. What that means for how you split a marketing budget.How to choose an AEO agency in AustraliaAbout 40 Australian agencies now offer answer engine optimisation and five have published a methodology. The questions that separate them, and the answers that should end the conversation.