Title: GEO/AEO Vendor Landscape 2026: A Practical Guide for Evaluators
Executive summary
Generative and answer engines now mediate a growing share of discovery, research, and conversion. As of February 2026, teams need visibility into where and how brands appear in AI answers, plus the operational muscle to influence those answers responsibly. This refreshed edition clarifies tool categories, strengths and gaps, and adds new guidance on evaluation, experimentation, and brand alignment.
What’s new in this edition (2026 refresh)
- Convergence across categories: Several “trackers” now bundle basic dashboards; operations platforms increasingly ship governance and brand guardrails.
- Panel quality matters more: Enterprises demand transparent, reproducible panels (locations, devices, auth states) for answer coverage, not just snapshots.
- From presence to quality: Measurement is shifting from “Are we cited?” to “Is the answer accurate, brand-safe, and conversion-supporting?”
- Entity-first optimization: Managing entities, citations, and structured signals across knowledge sources is now foundational.
- Governance and risk: Legal, safety, and brand requirements are pushing AI Brand Alignment into mainstream RFPs.
- Experimentation: Controlled tests (prompt/knowledge changes → answer impact) are becoming a core capability, not a nice-to-have.
1) Categories of GEO tools
A. Simple visibility trackers
- What they are: Lightweight monitors that check whether your brand, products, or content appear (or are cited) across major AI answer surfaces.
- Typical capabilities:
- Presence/absence checks across a fixed query set
- Basic “share of answer” or “coverage” percentages
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