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
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
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
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
Why AI Barely Mentions Outreach Despite Enterprise Scale
Outreach built their growth model on relationships, not content. That worked for the last decade. In 2026, it means AI scores them at 58/100 — the same tier as a seed-stage challenger — despite years of enterprise market presence.
5 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
Why Salesloft Underperforms in AI Despite a Strong Market Position
Salesloft has the reviews, the customers, and the brand reputation. But their AI citation score sits at 63/100 — the same as a productivity tool with a fraction of their enterprise presence. The gating trap explains the gap.
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: Strong Signal, One Critical Gap
Apollo is increasingly cited by AI for sales intelligence and prospecting queries. The fundamentals are solid. But there's one specific gap that's letting ZoomInfo and Clay 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