AEO GuideApril 2, 2026
AEO FAQ: The 10 Questions Every Marketer Asks First
From 'what is AEO' to 'how do I measure it' — the 10 questions every B2B marketer asks when they first encounter AI Engine Optimization, answered straight.
10 min read
Praveen Maloo
Author · The Citation Economy
Praveen Maloo is the author of The Citation Economy — the B2B marketing playbook for the AI search era. He writes about AI Engine Optimization, B2B demand generation, and how the buyer journey is changing as AI engines replace traditional search.
Articles by Praveen Maloo
AEO GuideAugust 19, 2026
AI Is Already Describing Your Brand. What If It's Wrong?
You cannot directly edit a generated answer. You can only report it, correct the underlying evidence, and keep testing. Most companies discover this during the incident rather than before it.
6 min read
AEO GuideAugust 13, 2026
Why AI Quotes Your Old Pricing — and How to Signal Which Number Is Current
There are two different pricing problems in AI search. One is that engines can't read your price. The other is worse: they read a price you retired months ago, and quote it to a buyer with total confidence. This post is about the second one.
7 min read
The Citation EconomyAugust 12, 2026
The Citation Economy Is Out: Why AI Already Has an Opinion of Your Brand
Some buyers now research in answer products before a vendor can see any engagement. Ordinary analytics miss that part of consideration entirely — and can't surface inaccurate public information. The Citation Economy is out now on Amazon.
4 min read
Category Deep DiveAugust 10, 2026
Financial Crime Compliance: ComplyAdvantage Owns 78% of AI Discovery
ComplyAdvantage surfaces in 78% of AI discovery prompts for financial crime compliance—a commanding lead in a category with 68 brands. LexisNexis and Dow Jones trail, but the moat isn't unbreakable.
4 min read
Category Deep DiveJuly 6, 2026
Agent Frameworks: LangChain Commands 82% of AI Discovery
LangChain surfaces in 82.3% of AI discovery prompts for agent frameworks. The concentration index is 12.2—higher than almost any B2B software category we track.
6 min read
Category Deep DiveJune 29, 2026
Cursor Owns 79% of AI Coding Discovery — But the Moat Is Thinner Than It Looks
Cursor owns 78.8% of AI discovery share in coding tools. But Default sits at 66.3% and Tabnine at 62.5% — the gap is 16 points, not 50. And Codeium has the best AEO score in the category at 50/100.
8 min read
TeardownJune 22, 2026
Onshape Tops 3D CAD Discovery With a 25/100 Audit Score
Onshape holds the #1 shortlist position in 3D & CAD with 24.9% share of voice. Its audit score is 25/100. That gap tells a story about what AI engines reward right now — and what they'll punish later.
4 min read
Category Deep DiveJune 15, 2026
AI Infrastructure: Databricks Owns 80% of Discovery Share
Databricks surfaces in 80.3% of AI discovery prompts for infrastructure. Snowflake and Pinecone trail at 62% and 58%. The category concentration index is 2.5 — one brand owns the narrative.
3 min read
May 20, 2026
This Week on the Citation Index
Weaviate, Pinecone, Qdrant, and Milvus are stacked between 91% and 94% in Vector Databases. SecurityScorecard hits 95.5% in Third-Party Risk. DocuSign, Adobe Acrobat Sign, Dropbox Sign, and PandaDoc are all within 1.3 points in eSignature. UiPath runs alone in RPA while Make overtakes Zapier in AI citations. Plus Zoom = Microsoft 365 = Google Workspace in Video Conferencing — to four decimal places.
6 min read
Category Deep DiveMay 18, 2026
Make Owns 81% of AI Discovery in Workflow Automation
Make captures 81.4% of AI discovery prompts in workflow automation. Zapier and Workato follow at 76% and 59%. The concentration is extreme — and vulnerable.
3 min read
May 12, 2026
This Week on the Citation Index
ZoomInfo surfaces in 100% of Sales Intelligence discovery prompts. Salesforce is 67% in CRM, 89% in Marketing Automation, and 100% in ABM. Sales Engagement has three brands within 2.8 points. The week in citation data.
4 min read
Category Deep DiveMay 12, 2026
Elastic Owns 83% of AI Search Discovery. Perplexity Appears in 1 in 4 Responses.
Elastic surfaces in 83% of AI discovery prompts for the AI search category. Perplexity — the product most people associate with 'AI search' — appears in just 26%. The category is not what it looks like from the outside.
10 min read
Category Deep DiveMay 11, 2026
Built Owns 94% of AI Discovery in Accounting Software
Built captures 94.3% of AI discovery share in accounting software — nearly double the runner-up. The concentration is extreme, but one factor could erode it.
4 min read
The Citation EconomyMay 6, 2026
How B2B Buyers Now Use AI in the Research Phase — And What It Means for Your Pipeline
Gartner says 75% of B2B buyers now use AI tools during the research phase. What they're doing with those tools — and how it changes which brands make the shortlist — is the central question for B2B marketing in 2026.
4 min read
TeardownMay 4, 2026
QuickBooks Owns 60% of AI Accounting Answers — But the Moat Is Thinner Than It Looks
QuickBooks captures 60.4% of AI discovery mentions in accounting software. The audit score is 66/100 — strong, but not dominant. One structural weakness could let a riser break through.
3 min read
ResearchApril 16, 2026
G2: Half of B2B Buyers Now Start with AI. 69% Switch Vendors Because of It.
G2 surveyed 1,076 B2B software buyers in March 2026. The number that should stop every CMO: 69% chose a different vendor than they originally planned because of what AI told them.
6 min read
AEO GuideApril 10, 2026
What Is llms.txt and Why Every B2B SaaS Site Needs One
llms.txt is to AI engines what robots.txt is to web crawlers — except instead of telling them what not to read, it tells them exactly what to read first and how to understand your product. It's one of the fastest ways to improve how AI engines describe your brand.
4 min read
AEO GuideApril 5, 2026
SoftwareApplication Schema: The 30-Minute Fix That Unlocks AI Overview Citations
Without SoftwareApplication schema, your product homepage is just text to an AI crawler. With it, you're a structured entity with a category, a rating, a price, and a feature list — the kind of data AI engines can quote with confidence.
4 min read
TeardownMarch 28, 2026
Outreach Surfaces in Most AI Answers — But Always With a Caveat
Outreach isn't missing from AI answers — it's #2 of 192 in sales engagement, cited in 66% of buyer questions. The problem is how it's cited: hedged, caveated, 'contact sales for pricing.' Its AEO Readiness of 58/100 explains the gap between showing up and being recommended.
6 min read
AEO GuideMarch 28, 2026
Comparison Pages: The Highest-Value Content B2B SaaS Companies Aren't Creating
The highest purchase-intent query pattern in B2B software is '[Brand] vs [Competitor].' When a buyer types that into Perplexity or ChatGPT, the model is looking for a first-party source. If you don't have one, your competitor's page wins by default.
4 min read
TeardownMarch 27, 2026
Salesloft Surfaces #3 in AI — But Its Best Content Is Locked Away
Salesloft is cited in 65% of sales-engagement buyer questions — #3 of 192 brands, effectively tied with Outreach. But its AEO Readiness sits at 63/100, held back by one thing: the content that would win the consideration phase is locked behind login.
5 min read
The Citation EconomyMarch 25, 2026
Why B2B SaaS Brands Are Invisible to AI Search — And What To Do About It
When a B2B buyer asks ChatGPT 'best project management software for remote teams,' your brand either appears — or it doesn't. Most SaaS companies don't even know they're invisible.
4 min read
TeardownMarch 25, 2026
Apollo.io's AI Visibility: #2 in Sales Intelligence, One Contested Front
Apollo is #2 of 180 brands in AI answers for sales intelligence, cited in 69% of buyer questions, with solid fundamentals. But there's one front where ZoomInfo and Clay still walk away with comparisons Apollo should be winning.
4 min read
TeardownMarch 24, 2026
How Notion Built an AI Citation Engine Without Trying
Notion never set out to dominate AI search. But their community template gallery — thousands of public pages describing specific workflows — turns out to be exactly what AI retrieval engines are looking for.
5 min read
TeardownMarch 22, 2026
HubSpot's AI Citation Playbook: Why Every AI Recommends Them
When you ask any AI 'what's a good CRM for a growing sales team,' HubSpot appears. Every time, on every platform. This isn't luck — it's a machine.
5 min read
AEO GuideMarch 18, 2026
The Pricing Page Problem: Why Your Pricing Is Invisible to AI
'How much does [Product] cost?' is one of the most common B2B buying queries. If your pricing page is client-side rendered or contact-gated, the AI's honest answer is: I don't know. And then it recommends a competitor whose pricing it can read.
6 min read
ResearchMarch 11, 2026
The G2 Effect: Why Review Volume Is the #1 AI Citation Signal for B2B SaaS
When a buyer asks Perplexity for 'best CRM for mid-market sales teams,' the model almost always cites G2. Not because G2 paid for placement — but because G2 has the structured, verifiable review data that AI models trust.
6 min read