Research analysis
AEO Is Mostly SEO With a New Name
The retrieval layer still depends on crawling, indexing, structure and authority. The harder problem is measuring variable AI citations.
Read the analysis →Independent research for the answer economy
Stay discoverable and profitable as Search becomes Answers.
IdeaLab studies how AI systems find, interpret, cite and recommend websites and products—then turns findings from 50+ audits into practical tools for independent operators.
52 published audits · Seven-dimension framework · Independent experiments · Practical implementation tools
50+
Audits published
1000
Audits processed
7
Dimensions scored
Latest research
Evidence before tactics.
Research drawn from published platform guidance, independent studies, controlled experiments and a growing database of comparable audits.
Citation variability
Why AI Citations Behave More Like Odds Than Rankings
A practical explanation of why isolated prompts cannot establish stable visibility—and what site operators can measure instead.
Read the finding →Ecommerce research
What AI Shopping Systems Need From Product Pages
Product identity, offer accuracy, evidence and purchase readiness shape whether a product can be understood and acted upon.
See the PDP research →Free ecommerce diagnostic
Can AI shopping systems understand your product pages?
Review one commercially important PDP, document the evidence and choose your three highest-priority fixes.
- Crawler access
- Product identity
- Offer accuracy
- Structured data
- Buyer evidence
- Purchase readiness
Ten practical checks. One action worksheet. No citation promises.
Free Word checklist · Immediate access · No account required
A growing database, not one case study
From marketing experts to global e-commerce brands
52 audits published today, growing 2–4 a day toward 100+ — spanning individual experts, SaaS, creators, and consumer brands, all scored on the same framework.
Marketing Expert
Rand FishkinB
Consistent entity linking across SparkToro, X and speaking bios makes AI resolve every mention as the same person.
Read the audit →Marketing Expert
Neil PatelB
Strong content structure and third-party citation practices; real gap found: inconsistent founder/co-founder title across his own social bios.
Read the audit →Audited Jul 24, 2026 — based on publicly observable signals, not NP Digital's internal data.
E-commerce Brand
GymsharkC
Inline third-party citations on product pages beat pure marketing copy for retrieval.
Read the audit → Your next step
Implement every tactic in one place
The Fix Playbook
15 prompt-by-prompt tactics, each pulled from a real audit — the exact moves that separate Grade B sites from Grade D.
$37 one-time · instant download · Stripe checkout
Get The Playbook → From the blog
How AI visibility actually works, explained
Audits are the evidence. The blog is where we break down the concepts, methodology, and terminology behind them — written for search, not just for people already familiar with AEO/GEO.
Fundamentals
What Is llms.txt? And Do You Need One?
A plain-language guide to the emerging standard AI crawlers use to understand your site, and how to check if you have one.
6 min readRead article →
Fundamentals
AEO vs. GEO vs. Traditional SEO: What's the Difference?
The three acronyms marketers keep mixing up, and why the difference actually changes what you should do first.
8 min readRead article →
Methodology
Inside Our 7-Dimension AI Visibility Framework
What each of the 7 dimensions actually measures, and why we score every audit — including our own — the same way.
10 min readRead article →
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about AI visibility
What is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a plain-text file placed at the root of a website that gives AI crawlers a structured summary of the site's purpose and key pages — similar in spirit to robots.txt, but written for language models rather than search engines.
What is AI visibility?
AI visibility is whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews can find, understand, and cite your business when someone asks a related question — separate from traditional search engine rankings.
What's the difference between AEO, GEO, and SEO?
SEO optimizes for ranking in search results. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) optimizes for being the direct answer AI systems give. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) optimizes for being cited as a source in AI-generated summaries. All three matter, but they're not the same thing.
How is idea-lab.ai different from an AI visibility scanner?
Scanners give you a number. idea-lab.ai gives you a number benchmarked against a growing, public database of real audits — so every gap in your score comes with a sourced example of how a real site closed it.
How often is the audit database updated?
We're publishing 2-4 new audits a day, growing from 26 today toward 100+, spanning individual marketing experts, SaaS companies, creators, and consumer brands.
Don't know your score yet?