HubSpot AEO: The Next Layer of Search Strategy Every Marketer Needs to Know

Intro

As Perplexity handles over 780 million queries per month and ChatGPT touches 1 billion monthly active app users, one thing’s certain, the way people search has changed.

Customers today don't always start with a Google search but ask AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity direct questions to get immediate answers, often without visiting multiple websites.

And while the traditional approach to SEO has given rise to AEO - improving how AI-powered search platforms discover, understand, and recommend brands, it wasn’t until the launch of the HubSpot AEO that you could quantify this shift.

In this article, we'll explore in detail what AEO is, how HubSpot's new AEO platform works, and what marketers can do to prepare their content strategies for today’s AI-driven search landscape.

What Is AEO and Why Is It Different from SEO?

While traditional SEO focuses on improving visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs), AEO is a new approach that focuses on increasing your brand’s presence within the AI-generated answers.

Unlike what most believe, these two approaches don’t compete but bring better results when used together. Technical SEO, optimized content, and strong site architecture helps AI systems understand topics and identify authoritative sources. And AEO expands this scope by considering how AI models evaluate expertise, contextual relevance, and trusted citations across the web.

This is also evident by Ahrefs analysis of 75,000 brands which revealed that brands with stronger organic search visibility were significantly more likely to be mentioned by AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

So, as AI expands the means for customer discovery, marketers need to combine their SEO strategies with AEO to respond to this shift.

How to Set Up HubSpot AEO

HubSpot’s AEO platform was launched this Spring to help marketers understand how their brand appears across AI-powered search experiences like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. You can access this tool if you have HubSpot’s Marketing Hub Professional/ Enterprise plan or you can also purchase the AEO tool directly.

Here’s how you can set up the AEO tool in your HubSpot portal:

1. Navigate to the Marketing section in your HubSpot portal and click on the AEO tab.
2. Next enter your brand name, website domain, and select your business type (B2B, B2C etc.)
3. In the next section, select your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and core products or services.
4. HubSpot will then automatically generate a Prompt Library consisting of questions that your buyers generally ask. You can also add, edit, or upload any custom prompts that buyers might type into ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity.
5. The tool will run these prompts daily to track your brand visibility score, citation rate, sentiment, and competitor landscape.

How HubSpot AEO Works: Four Core Capabilities

The HubSpot AEO tool introduces new metrics and insights that are specifically designed for AI visibility. After setting up the tool, you will see how your brand performs in AI search and the insights gained here will help you optimize your content strategy.

Let’s cover the four core capabilities of the HubSpot AEO, or what insights you gain from this tool:

1. Brand Visibility Score and Competitive Share of Voice

One of the most valuable features of HubSpot AEO is that it can measure how frequently your brand appears in AI-generated responses for relevant prompts. This means instead of just tracking keyword rankings, you can monitor how your brand performs across AI platforms and compare it with your competitors.

Competitive Share of Voice extends this insight further, revealing which brands dominate AI-generated answers for high-value topics. This will help you gain a clear indication of where the authority gaps may exist.

2. Prompt Tracking

The search behavior of customers today is becoming more conversational. They don’t type fragmented keywords but ask complete questions like “Which CRM is best for growing businesses?” or “Which marketing agency specializes in healthcare?”

With HubSpot's Prompt Tracking you can monitor how AI responds to these real-world questions over time. This helps your teams to understand which prompts trigger your brand, how competitors appear in such conversations, and where you can strengthen your AI visibility.

3. Citation Analysis

One of the biggest challenges of AI search is understanding why certain brands receive recommendations. HubSpot addresses this through its Citation Analysis. You can now discover the sources and authority signals that contribute to AI-generated responses.

This shifts the attention beyond on-page optimization. With citation analysis you know exactly where AI generates its recommendations from and where you need to strengthen your digital presence.

4. Prioritized Recommendations

HubSpot AEO allows you to act on your AI visibility insights through prioritized recommendations. It helps you identify what your next steps should be like expanding your content around underserved topics, strengthening topical authority, or addressing gaps where competitors consistently outperform.

This helps your marketing teams to focus on opportunities that are most likely to improve your search visibility and AI discoverability.

What AEO Changes about How You Build Content

The biggest takeaway from HubSpot's AEO launch isn't just the software itself but the shift in content strategy that it encourages. As we mentioned earlier, the insights you gain from this tool can help you to better optimize your content.

Here's how this shift in AI search has led to a transformation in content strategy:

1. Build content for citation and not just ranking

For years, SEO has encouraged marketers to optimize their pages around keywords and search intent. While this is still important, AI systems evaluate content differently. They prioritize information that is clear, factual, well-structured, and supported by credible sources.

So, structure your content such that it directly answers questions, demonstrates expertise, and covers topics comprehensively as this will make it more likely to become part of AI-generated responses.

2. Treat off-site presence as part of your strategy

AI models don't just rely on your website when forming responses. They also draw context from trusted third-party sources such as industry publications, review platforms, directories, partner websites, research reports, and digital PR coverage.

Your AEO strategy should strengthen your overall digital footprint, ensuring that your expertise is consistently reinforced across the web.

3. Use citation data to shape your content roadmap

Traditional content planning often begins with keyword research, AEO adds another valuable tool for it - citation gaps. If AI consistently recommends your competitors for important customer questions while overlooking your business, it means you need to create stronger educational content and address missing topics or underserved topics.

Instead of simply focusing on what keywords to target next, you should start evaluating which conversations you are missing entirely.

4. Track mentions alongside rankings

Rankings remain an essential SEO metric, but they no longer tell the complete story. As AI-powered searches grow, you should also monitor how often your brand is mentioned, cited, and recommended across AI answers.

Together, these metrics (mentions + ranking) provide a complete picture of your digital visibility, reflecting your performance across both traditional search and the emerging AI-driven searches.

Digital marketing agencies like MarkeStac are supporting brands to cover this AI visibility gap and strengthen their SEO efforts with HubSpot AEO.

Where AEO Fits in Your SEO Stack

AEO shouldn't be viewed as a replacement for SEO. It represents the next layer of an effective search strategy.

Here’s how SEO and AEO fit in together - Technical SEO ensures that your website is accessible and crawlable while content SEO establishes topical authority and answers user intent; and other strategies like digital PR, brand mentions, and authoritative backlinks strengthen your credibility across the web. AEO builds on this foundation by measuring and improving how AI systems interpret, trust, and recommend your brand.

Integrating both is important as organizations with strong technical SEO but weak authority signals may still struggle to gain AI visibility. Similarly, businesses producing excellent content without monitoring their AI mentions could miss emerging opportunities to reach their potential customers.

A successful search strategy therefore recognizes that traditional search engines and AI assistants are a part of the same customer journey and should be integrated.

Takeaway

HubSpot AEO isn’t just another AI feature. It reflects a broader transformation in how people discover your business online and make decisions. As conversational search becomes more common, marketers will need to think beyond rankings alone.

Organizations winning today are investing in both SEO and AEO strategies to build authority, create helpful content, strengthen their off-site credibility, and monitor AI ranking to continuously improve.

Marketing agencies like MarkeStac help businesses to build future-ready search strategies that go beyond traditional rankings. They help brands stay visible in the emerging AI search behaviors. MarkeStac also offers HubSpot services to create a single source of truth and support long-term growth by creating a complete RevOps system.