Plain definitions of the words this category keeps inventing: answer engine optimization, AI visibility, appearance rate, share of voice, and how each one is actually measured. Then the practical half: how to evaluate a platform, how to sell this to a client, and what can honestly be tracked. Written to be quoted, including by the assistants doing the discovering.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of getting your business named inside the answers AI assistants give, rather than ranked in a list of links. The unit of success is a mention, not a position.
SEO earns a position in a list of links. AEO and GEO earn a mention inside an AI-generated answer. GEO is the research term, AEO the industry one; in practice they name the same work.
Rayhaan RasheedAI visibility is how often AI assistants name your business when someone asks a question you should win. You measure it by asking the same questions on a fixed schedule and counting how many answers name you.
Rayhaan RasheedAppearance rate is the share of checks in which an AI assistant names your business. Apex publishes that same number as your AI Visibility Score: one number under two names, always shown with the counts behind it.
Rayhaan RasheedShare of voice is your portion of all the business mentions across a set of AI answers: your mentions measured against every other business named, over a stated window, and published with the counts behind it.
Rayhaan RasheedAI assistants read a handful of sources about your area (directories, review sites, maps data, and your own pages) and name the businesses that appear consistently across them. Consistency across sources beats optimizing any single one.
Rayhaan RasheedAsk nine questions: what is counted, ratio or index, which engines, whether gaps arrive drafted, who approves client work, whether the archive is dated, whether white label costs extra, what a seat covers, and what a bad month looks like.
Rayhaan RasheedShow them a real answer. Ask an assistant the question their customers ask, in their market, and read out who gets recommended. If they are missing, the gap sells itself. If they are named, the work becomes holding the position.
Rayhaan RasheedCheck what carries your brand and what does not. Dashboards are the easy part. The tell is whether reports, alerts and client-facing pages do too, whether it costs extra, and whether anything reaches a client without your approval.
Rayhaan RasheedStandard analytics mostly cannot tell you. Some assistants pass a referrer and some do not, so identify the visits you can attribute, count them as a floor rather than a total, and never present an estimate as a measurement.
Rayhaan RasheedA free scan puts real customer questions to every engine we measure and comes back with your AI Visibility Score and its counts, the questions we asked, and the businesses being discovered instead of you.