A common question we get: does AEO Grader actually work? Has the team tested the tool on themselves?

The honest answer was no - until today. So we scanned ourselves. The tool that audits how AI engines describe B2B brands queried ChatGPT, Google AI (Gemini), Claude, and Perplexity with 60 real prompts about AEO Grader. Same prompts, same scoring, same recommendations any buyer would get.

The result: 45/100. AI Emerging band.

The full breakdown

Five-dimension scores from the live scan on 2026-05-27:

  • Brand Recognition: 31/100. AI engines do not consistently know AEO Grader exists when asked about B2B SaaS or AI visibility tools.
  • Competitive Position: 44/100. When AI named competitors in comparison queries, Surfer SEO led with 42% share of voice. AEO Grader landed at 35%. Profound 21%, Otterly.AI 1%.
  • Contextual Relevance: 43/100. Eight of twelve contextual queries did not connect AEO Grader to the buying questions buyers ask about AI visibility tools.
  • Sentiment: 57/100. AI sentiment is broadly neutral. No engine returned a clearly negative description, but only a few returned strongly positive ones.
  • Citation Authority: 75/100. The strongest dimension. When AI was asked for sources about AEO Grader, it could cite specific URLs - our own blog and the Armitage Media site, plus some third-party mentions.

The engines that recommended us least: Claude and Gemini

Per-engine scores: Perplexity 49, OpenAI 47, Gemini 43, Claude 42. The spread is tight, which means the gap is not driven by a single engine failing. We are roughly evenly invisible across all four.

That said, the engine-gap recommendation our own tool generated flagged Claude as the engine to invest in first - Claude weights authoritative sources (Wikipedia, Tier-1 publications, .edu/.gov citations) more heavily than the others. AEO Grader has none of those yet because the product is new.

The top fix our own tool gave us

AEO Grader did not connect “AEO Grader” to B2B SaaS topics in 8 of 12 contextual queries. The example failed prompt:

What should I look for in a B2B SaaS provider? What are the most important criteria and features to evaluate?

The recommendation our tool generated: build a /buyers-guide hub with FAQPage schema answering the ten most common buyer questions in our space.

We did not have that page. We do not have it now. It is on the build queue this week.

The second fix: a real /about page with Organization schema

Seven of twelve direct-recognition queries did not surface AEO Grader. AI engines could not consistently describe what the product does because we lacked authoritative facts they could cite. The recommendation: add Organization schema with sameAs links to LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and Wikipedia (if we meet notability), claim a Wikidata Q-item, and verify our Google Business Profile is complete.

We have a Crunchbase entry but no LinkedIn Company page yet (intentional - the parent agency Armitage Media is the public-facing brand). We do not have a Wikidata entry. These are the cheap wins from a 45-score starting line.

What this tells us about the tool

AEO Grader scored AEO Grader. The tool generated specific, actionable recommendations referencing actual failed prompts and naming concrete next steps (URL patterns, schema types, directories). The exact buyer experience we built the product to deliver, delivered to ourselves.

The recommendations are not generic platitudes (“improve your brand recognition”). They reference the specific prompts where we failed, the specific competitors AI named instead of us, and the specific pages and schemas we need to build.

That is the test. If AEO Grader produced a generic top fix for itself, we would have a product problem. It produced a specific top fix that we can act on this week.

What is next

We will execute the top three recommendations over the next two weeks: (1) buyers guide hub, (2) /about page with Organization schema + aggregator profiles, (3) ten case-study or methodology pages that give AI engines something to cite. Then we re-scan and publish the delta. If the score does not move, we have a problem with the recommendations and we fix the recommendations.

AEO Grader at 45 today. We will tell you the score in 30 days whichever direction it goes.

Run your own scan

The free AEO Grader scan queries ChatGPT, Google AI (Gemini), Claude, and Perplexity with 60 real prompts about your brand. Same engine queries, same scoring, same specific recommendations we got. 60 seconds, no account required.