AEO Tools You Know About

AI search is rewriting visibility rules, and PR now determines who shows up when the answer is generated.

AI, AEO, GEO, SEO, but by its 2025 iteration - Search Everywhere Optimization - are probably acronyms you hear at least once a day, every day.

It was all over at Affiliate Summit West in January. Almost every panel had it at the center of their conversation, which was equally energizing and sobering. Energizing because the space is clearly shifting and it’s exciting to see how people are testing and reiterating. Sobering because much of what we’re calling insight is still educated guesswork inside Google and the LLM black box. Takeaways are very much moment-in-time.

If you’re a publicist, you might be thinking: great, another thing I’m supposed to learn, but the good news is there are a ton of tools that can help you pinpoint in on the zero click opportunities for your brands.

This shift isn’t about keywords. It’s about who gets cited when the answer is generated - and that’s a distribution problem, not a ranking one.

AI search tools, from Google’s AI Overviews to ChatGPT to Claude, are not sending traffic the way we’re used to. They’re synthesizing information and returning answers, not lists. ChatGPT has even announced ads (which we all knew was coming eventually).

That means brands don’t just need to rank anymore, they need to exist as a trusted source inside the model’s training and retrieval layer. If your brand isn’t there, you’re invisible to those customers. Full stop.

And, this is exactly why publicists are paying attention. But more than attention, we need to be strategically pitching these outlets — many of which require affiliate links, which is why we’re diving in here. Not just part of a larger media list in hopes for pick up.

So we’re breaking down some free and paid tools that should be on your radar to elevate your brand in LLM conversations.