Founder NotesCitadexAEO transparencyfounder update

We Measured Our Own AEO. The Data Was Embarrassing. Here's Our 90-Day Plan.

By Citadex Founder on May 31, 2026 · 8 min read

Citadex sells AEO software. We ran our own methodology on ourselves before launch — and we were almost invisible in AI answers. Here's the honest baseline data and our public 90-day plan to fix it.

By the Citadex founding team

We sell AEO software. We help brands measure whether AI engines mention them. So a few weeks ago, before our public launch, we ran Citadex on Citadex.

The result was uncomfortable. Let us show you the data.

Our Day-0 baseline

We picked 40 queries that we believe an AEO buyer would ask AI:

  • "best AEO tools"
  • "track brand mentions in ChatGPT"
  • "AEO software comparison"
  • "Profound alternatives"
  • "what is AEO"
  • ...and 35 others across discovery, comparison, brand, and educational categories.

    • We ran each query across all 8 engines we support. Here's what we found:

    | Query category | Citadex mention rate |

    |---|---|

    | Discovery queries ("best AEO tools") | 6% |

    | Comparison queries ("Profound alternatives") | 3% |

    | Brand queries ("Citadex review") | 42% (mostly because no one talks about us yet) |

    | Educational queries ("what is AEO") | 0% |

    Across the board: we were almost invisible. The only category where we showed up regularly was when someone explicitly named us — and even then, AI sometimes had wrong information about what we do.

    This is, in fact, exactly what our customers' baselines look like before they engage with us. We just hadn't applied our own methodology to ourselves yet.

    Why this is fine — and why it's not

    It's fine because we're brand-new. AI engines need months of signals before they incorporate a brand into their answer patterns. No company is mentioned at launch.

    It's not fine because we're an AEO company. If we can't get ourselves into AI answers within 90 days using our own methodology, why should anyone pay us to do it for them?

    So here's our public commitment.

    Our 90-day plan

    We're going to follow our own playbook in public. Every two weeks, we'll publish an update with the actual data. No selective reporting, no cherry-picked screenshots. If the plan doesn't work, you'll see that too.

    Here's what we're doing.

    The 5 Pillar Content Pieces (Weeks 1-3)

    We're publishing 5 deeply-researched pillar pieces targeting our highest-value queries:

  • Best AEO Tools in 2026 — comprehensive comparison including ourselves and competitors
  • Best GEO Tools in 2026 — sister piece focused on Generative Engine Optimization
  • Citadex vs Profound — fair head-to-head comparison
  • Citadex vs BrightEdge — fair head-to-head with the SEO incumbent
  • How to Track AI Brand Mentions — educational primer

    • These are designed to be cite-worthy — fact-dense, well-structured, with FAQ blocks and schema. We want AI engines to learn from them.

    Third-party signals (Weeks 1-12)

    We're building out:

  • G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, SaaSworthy listings — already live
  • Wikidata entry — submitted
  • Crunchbase profile — completed
  • Real customer reviews — actively requested from satisfied early customers (no fakes)
  • Industry listicle outreach — pitching to writers covering "best AEO tools" lists

    • Founder voice (Weeks 1-12)

    We're committing to:

  • 2-3 LinkedIn posts per week about AEO
  • 1-3 X posts per day with observations and data
  • A Reddit AMA in week 6 (likely r/SaaS or r/marketing)
  • This biweekly public progress update

    • Engineering and content rhythm (Ongoing)

  • Weekly Monday morning baseline scan (the same one we just ran)
  • Wednesday content publication on the blog
  • Thursday outreach push (5 new pitches per week)
  • Monthly retrospective shared publicly

    • The honest part

    Here's what we don't know:

  • Whether our methodology actually works on ourselves. It might not. We might be in a category where AI engines update training data too slowly to reflect our content gains. If that's the case, you'll see flat lines and we'll have to explain it.
  • Whether our timeline is realistic. 90 days is what we hope moves the needle. It might take 6 months. We'll keep going either way.
  • Whether some of our assumptions about engine behavior are wrong. AI engines change. What worked in 2025 might not work in 2026. We'll learn in public.

    • Why we're publishing this

    Three reasons.

    First, it's the honest thing to do. If we sell AEO measurement, we should be measurable ourselves. Hiding our data while charging customers to measure theirs is bad form.

    Second, it builds the trust we need. Most marketing data published online is filtered through PR. Founders write blog posts about quarterly wins, never about flat months. We think the way to build a brand that AI actually trusts is to publish data — including the ugly data — consistently. Trust is what gets you cited.

    Third, this is the test of AEO itself. If we can take a brand from 0% visibility to meaningful visibility in 90 days using our own methodology, that's the proof of concept. If we can't, we have to be honest about that too.

    What's next

    The next update is 14 days out. By then, we'll have:

  • Published 3 of the 5 pillar pieces
  • Launched G2 review acquisition
  • Started outreach to 20 industry writers
  • Run another full baseline scan to see what's moved

    • If you're tracking AEO yourself, follow along. If you want to apply this methodology to your own brand, start a free Citadex baseline scan. The methodology is the same one we're using on ourselves — and the data isn't going to lie to you, either.

    — The Citadex team

    Subscribe to our newsletter for the biweekly updates. Or just check this page in 14 days; we'll add the update inline.

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