AEO for startups
Find out where AI answers place you today, and spend a small budget on the reason you are missing.
A new brand starts out invisible to AI engines, because there is little for the models to have learned. The job is to build a credible footprint quickly: clear content, early reviews, and mentions on sources the models trust.
Budgets are tight, so the question is not how much visibility you have but which of the four reasons explains the gap. Two of them can be ruled in or out from your own site for free: whether the engines can fetch your pages at all, and whether they can tell which company you are.
Prompts that matter here
- best [new category] tools
- alternatives to [incumbent]
- what is [your brand]
What to do
- 1
Define a tight prompt set
A handful of high-intent prompts beats a broad, expensive list. Track the questions your earliest buyers ask.
- 2
Tell a clear category story
Help engines place you by explaining your category and product plainly, with consistent naming.
- 3
Earn your first reviews
Early mentions on trusted sources give the models something to ground an answer about you in.
- 4
Track weekly
Visibility moves as you publish and get covered. A weekly read shows whether it is working.
Where Recall fits
Recall audits your own site for free and without an account, then scopes a pilot to the handful of questions your earliest buyers actually ask, so a small team gets a real measured baseline without an enterprise contract.
Run the free audit — it needs a domain and nothing else. No account, no card, and it reports what the engines can already see about you.
Other industries
/ FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is there a free way for a startup to start?
- Recall audits your own site for free and needs no account: crawler access, whether an engine can resolve who you are, and whether your pages carry enough to answer with. Measuring what the engines actually say is paid, because every answer collected costs money to gather, so a pilot is scoped to the questions that matter most.
- When should a startup start doing AEO?
- As soon as buyers in your category ask AI engines for recommendations, which is early for most categories now. Starting sooner builds the trusted footprint that later answers draw on.
Ready to track your AI visibility?
Start with the buyer questions closest to revenue or deal flow, preserve every answer and source, then measure whether the work changed the shortlist.