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What Do AI Answers Say About Your Brand? A 60-Minute AEO Audit Template

Run a 60-minute AEO audit to see what AI answers really say about your brand — and turn visibility, narrative, and citation gaps into a focused Webflow roadmap.

Last Updated: November 25, 2025

By: Jiaxin
In this article

At a Glance

  • AI assistants and answer engines are already telling a story about your brand — often before prospects ever reach your site. In many categories, click-through rates on top organic results have dropped since AI overviews launched.
  • A 60-minute AEO audit gives you a snapshot of where you appear in AI answers, how you’re described, and which sources AI trusts — without needing engineers or custom tooling on day one.
  • The output isn’t a score; it’s a short, prioritised backlog you can execute on: pages to rewrite, proof points to surface, and authority gaps to close, mapped to Webflow’s AEO Maturity Model.

AI Answers Are Already Pitching You (or Ignoring You)

Whether you’ve planned for it or not, buyers are asking AI tools questions like “best [category] tools for [industry]” and “alternatives to [your brand].” Those answers feel authoritative — even when they’re stitched together from partial, outdated, or AI-generated sources.

Recent research shows that nearly one-third of ChatGPT’s most-cited pages have zero traditional organic visibility, and that AI assistants increasingly prefer fresh, structured content when choosing what to cite.   At the same time, Webflow’s AEO playbook explicitly frames AEO as a reputation issue: how AI systems see, summarise, and recommend your brand across content, technical, authority, and measurement pillars.

If you’re running a growth-stage SaaS or a content-heavy services brand, you can’t afford to guess what those answers say. You need a fast, repeatable way to look in the mirror — and then decide what to fix.

The Three Lenses of a 60-Minute AI Brand Audit

This audit isn’t about debating algorithms. It’s about inspecting how AI portrays you across three simple lenses: visibility, narrative, and proof.

  • Visibility: Do you appear at all — and for which questions? Start with 10–15 “moment of truth” queries from sales and search: category, use case, comparisons, and problem-led questions. Run them in ChatGPT with browsing, Perplexity, and any AI search surface relevant to your market. Log whether you’re mentioned, how often, and alongside which competitors. Tools like Ahrefs’ Brand Radar can automate this over time by tracking your presence across multiple LLMs.
  • Narrative: How are you being positioned? When you are mentioned, pay attention to the language: are your ICP, category, and key differentiators described the way you’d describe them? Webflow’s AEO guides highlight this as a maturity signal — alignment between how you tell your story and how AI retells it.   Capture exact phrases: “best for…”, “ideal for…”, “known for…”. These become inputs for messaging and on-page copy, not just SEO tweaks.
  • Proof: Which sources is AI leaning on? Look at citations and external references. Are AI tools pulling from your product pages, docs, and thought leadership — or from generic listicles and outdated reviews? Ahrefs’ latest studies show that a meaningful share of AI citations go to educational, data-backed pages businesses can directly influence, and that LLMs reward fresh, clearly structured evidence.   This tells you whether you’re seen as a primary source or just background noise.

A 60-Minute Audit Template You Can Run This Week

Here’s how we run this exercise with clients — compressed into a one-hour working session you can replicate with a marketer and someone close to sales.

Block 1 (Minutes 0–15): Define your “AI moment of truth” queries.

Sit down with sales or CS and list 10–15 questions that actually move deals: “best [category] for [ICP]”, “[category] vs [category]”, “[problem] solution for [industry]”, “[your brand] pricing”, “[your brand] implementation risk”, “[your brand] alternatives”. Prioritise questions where being in the AI answer strongly correlates with being shortlisted. This aligns your audit with revenue, not vanity visibility.

Block 2 (Minutes 15–35): Test across 3–4 AI surfaces and capture results.

For each query, run it in at least three places: Google (with AI Overviews if available), ChatGPT with browsing, and Perplexity or another AI search tool common in your region. In a simple spreadsheet, log: query, tool, is your brand mentioned (Y/N), exact wording, competitors named, and any visible citations. If you’re using Brand Radar or similar, you can cross-check which queries already show you as a cited brand.

Block 3 (Minutes 35–60): Triage risks and turn them into a backlog.

Group findings into three buckets:

  • Missing: high-value queries where you’re absent.
  • Misaligned: queries where the description is wrong, dated, or off-strategy.
  • Weak: you’re there, but with thin or generic language.

Then map each issue to Webflow’s four AEO pillars: content gaps (we need a better explainer/comparison), technical gaps (AI crawlers can’t see the right pages), authority gaps (we lack credible, citable proof), and measurement gaps (we’re not tracking this yet).   The result is a short, prioritised backlog — not a vague “we should do AEO”.

Turning an Audit into Action

A one-hour session won’t solve AEO, but it will give you something most teams don’t have: a grounded view of what AI is actually saying about you today and a list of moves that matter.

From there, the next step is cadence. Run this audit quarterly, fold the findings into your Webflow roadmap, and treat “AI answer quality” as another lens on your content and UX — alongside SEO, CRO, and brand. If you want a deeper version, this is exactly where we start in our Webflow AEO Audit: we run a more exhaustive AI visibility review, plug it into our VCC Framework and turn the results into a phased execution plan your team can actually ship. You can’t control every answer. But you can make it significantly easier for AI systems to find, trust, and quote the story you actually want told.

Sources

the author
Jiaxin
Jiaxin is an SEO Specialist at Underscore. She brings a strong mix of technical know-how and creative strategy to the team. Over her career, Jiaxin has worked across both technical and content SEO, helping clients in the e-commerce, finance, and SaaS industries achieve measurable growth in organic visibility.‍

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Frequently Asked Questions

How often should we run an AI answer / AEO audit like this?

Quarterly is a good cadence for most teams. AI systems and SERP layouts change frequently, and new competitors or content can shift how you’re described. A simple, repeated 60-minute audit lets you track trends without overwhelming your team.

Which AI tools should we include in the audit?

Start with the AI tools your buyers are likely using: Google with AI Overviews (if live in your region), ChatGPT with browsing, and one AI search tool such as Perplexity. Over time, you can add specialised assistants if your industry uses them heavily, and pair manual checks with tools like Ahrefs Brand Radar for always-on monitoring.

What if AI answers are flat-out wrong about our product or services?

Treat inaccuracies as high-priority issues. First, make sure your own site has clear, up-to-date, structured explanations correcting the misconception. Then strengthen external signals — updated docs, refreshed comparison pages, and credible third-party content. You can’t force AI systems to change overnight, but you can give them better inputs to work with.

Can we do this audit while staying on WordPress, or do we need Webflow first?

You can absolutely run the audit on any CMS. The output is about what AI is saying, not where you’re hosted. Webflow becomes relevant when you start implementing fixes: it gives you more control over structure, performance, and AEO-friendly patterns without plugin sprawl, which makes acting on your backlog faster and less brittle.

How do we know which findings belong in marketing vs product or comms?

Use the three lenses to route ownership. Visibility gaps (you don’t appear) are usually marketing’s remit. Narrative gaps (positioning, ICP, category) often require marketing plus product or leadership alignment. Proof gaps (evidence, case studies, data) sit across marketing, comms, and sometimes CS. The audit doesn’t just show problems; it clarifies who needs to be in the room to fix them.

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