# AEO Research

AEO Research Steps connect your AI search visibility data directly to workflows, enabling you to transform insights into automated actions. These steps are essential for building the most comprehensive AI search optimization platform, allowing you to monitor, analyze, and act on your brand's presence across answer engines.

### Why AEO Research Steps Matter

Other tools show you AI search data in a silo. AirOps takes a different approach: **insight to action**. By bringing your AEO analytics into workflows, you can:

* **Automate competitive monitoring:** Trigger alerts or content updates based on visibility changes
* **Build content prioritization pipelines:** Use real performance data to decide what to create or refresh
* **Create custom reporting:** Combine AEO data with SEO and traffic metrics for stakeholder reports
* **Scale optimization efforts:** Process hundreds of prompts or pages programmatically

### What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of optimizing your content to appear prominently in AI-generated responses from platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overview. Unlike traditional SEO which focuses on ranking in search results, AEO ensures your brand gets mentioned and cited when users ask questions across AI platforms.

| Traditional SEO                   | Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)                        |
| --------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- |
| Ranks pages in search results     | Gets your brand mentioned in AI answers                 |
| Focuses on keywords and backlinks | Emphasizes authoritative content and citations          |
| Targets search engine algorithms  | Optimizes for LLM training data and real-time retrieval |
| Measures clicks and impressions   | Tracks mention rates, citations, and sentiment          |

### Available Research Steps

#### 1. AEO Prompt Data

**Get historical answers, citations, and mentions for tracked prompts**

Pull data for the prompts you're tracking across answer engines. Access answers, citations, and mention rates with sentiment analysis for the last 7, 30, or 90 days.

**Use cases:**

* Monitor brand visibility trends across AI platforms
* Track competitive positioning for specific prompts
* Identify which prompts drive the most brand mentions
* Build automated competitive analysis reports

**Report types available:**

* **Answers**: Actual AI-generated response content
* **Citations**: URLs cited as authoritative sources
* **Mentions**: Brand visibility with sentiment scores

[View AEO Prompt Data documentation →](https://docs.airops.com/actions/workflow-concepts/workflow-steps/aeo-research/aeo-prompt-data)

***

#### 2. AEO Page Data

**Get page-level performance data across AI search and analytics**

Pull comprehensive data for any URL, combining AI search citations with Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 metrics. Ideal for content prioritization and refresh workflows.

**Use cases:**

* Automate content refresh decisions based on page performance
* Build prioritization workflows combining AI and SEO metrics
* Create reports tracking page-level citation trends
* Trigger optimization based on declining metrics

**Data sources included:**

* **AI Search**: Citation rate, citation share, unique prompts
* **Google Search Console**: Clicks, impressions, position, CTR
* **Google Analytics 4**: Sessions, users, engagement metrics

[View AEO Page Data documentation →](https://docs.airops.com/actions/workflow-concepts/workflow-steps/aeo-research/aeo-page-data)

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### Supported AI Platforms

Both AEO Research steps support all major AI answer engines:

| Platform               | Description                                        |
| ---------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| **ChatGPT**            | OpenAI's conversational AI assistant               |
| **Perplexity**         | AI-powered answer engine with real-time web search |
| **Gemini**             | Google's multimodal AI assistant                   |
| **Google AI Mode**     | Google Search's AI-powered response mode           |
| **Google AI Overview** | AI-generated summaries in Google Search results    |

### Prerequisites

To use AEO Research steps effectively:

1. **Set up a Brand Kit:** Define your brand, competitors, and tracked prompts
2. **Connect data sources:** Link Google Search Console and GA4 for page-level data
3. **Track prompts:** Add prompts to your Brand Kit to start collecting AI visibility data

See [Brand Kits](https://docs.airops.com/context/brand-kit) documentation for setup instructions.