GUIDES

AEO Guides

Stobo's guide library helps startup founders understand Answer Engine Optimization from first principles. Each article explains one technical factor that determines whether ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity cite your business: robots.txt configuration, llms.txt files, schema markup, FAQ optimization, and our scoring methodology. Learn the theory, then run your free audit.

Top 10 AEO Audit Tools for 2026: Complete Technical Comparison

We audited every AEO tool provider. Most don't practice what they preach. Here's the complete ranking with scores, features, and pricing.

The Technical Foundation of AEO: A 2026 Guide

Answer Engine Optimization requires six technical elements. Yext's 6.8M citation study found 44% come from websites. Copy-paste code inside.

Stobo vs Otterly.ai: Technical Foundation vs Content Quality

One focuses on execution. The other on monitoring. The choice depends on where you are in your AEO journey.

Stobo vs AI Rank Lab: Focused Depth vs Broad Coverage

AI Rank Lab''s "100+ factors" claim doesn''t hold up. We found around 20 distinct checks with scores that contradict themselves in the same report. Stobo takes the opposite approach: fewer checks, deeper analysis, no confusion.

Stobo vs BotRank: Implementation Depth vs Monitoring Breadth

BotRank checks 24 criteria across authority, content, structure, and technical categories. Stobo focuses on 7 AEO-specific checks with unique features like FAQ-schema pairing. Both are legitimate tools serving different needs.

Methodology: How the Stobo Score Works

How we evaluate your technical foundation for AI search engines. What we measure, why it matters, and how scores are calculated.

FAQ Optimization: The 2.7x Citation Advantage Most Startups Miss

Only 0.6% of websites implement FAQ schema properly. The ones that do see 41% citation rates in AI search results. Everyone else sits at 15%. That's a 2.7x difference from a fix that takes a few hours per page.

Robots.txt: The File That Controls Whether AI Can Find You

AI systems are crawling your website right now. Some want to train their models on your content. Others want to cite you when users ask questions. Your robots.txt file determines which ones get access.

llms.txt: The File That Tells AI What Your Business Actually Does

Your website is already being scraped by AI systems. Without llms.txt, they pull random marketing copy and miss your documentation. llms.txt is a standardized markdown file that tells AI systems exactly what matters about your company.