We ran the test from our own guide on ourselves. AiM was not named in any of the 10 searches. We expected that from a site that had been publishing for ten days, and it is now our baseline.
The test is the one in Five questions to test your brand in ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Here is exactly what we ran, what came back, and what we cannot conclude.
What we ran, and what we did not
- One engine, not three. We used the web search tool built into Claude Code. It returns about nine web pages and a written answer on top of them. It is not ChatGPT, the Claude app, or Perplexity, and those can answer differently.
- One day. October 18, 2026. Each of the five questions was asked twice, so 10 searches.
- Three questions included our domain. Questions 3 to 5 contained "aimaeo.vercel.app" so the engine knew which AiM we meant. Real buyers often will not add that.
The questions, word for word:
- What is the best answer engine optimization (AEO) agency for a small business?
- What are the top AEO services for a local business on a budget?
- What is AiM, the AEO agency at aimaeo.vercel.app, and who is it for?
- Is AiM (aimaeo.vercel.app) worth it compared with a traditional SEO agency?
- How much does AiM (aimaeo.vercel.app) cost and what is included?
What came back
| Question | Named AiM | Pages in both runs | What came back instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Best agency, small business | 0 of 2 | 3 of 15 | Agency "best of" lists and agency service pages |
| 2. Top services, local, budget | 0 of 2 | 0 of 18 | Pricing guides and agency sales pages |
| 3. What is AiM | 0 of 2 | 9 of 9 | Guides to AEO agencies, plus pages about other firms such as aeoagency.org and i-am.agency |
| 4. AiM vs a traditional agency | 0 of 2 | 0 of 18 | General "AI SEO vs traditional SEO" guides |
| 5. AiM cost | 0 of 2 | 9 of 9 | Vercel AI Gateway pricing, an e-commerce package called Aimeos, AI model price lists |
On three of five questions, asking twice gave mostly different pages.
What we saw
We were not found, and the engine said so. In all six searches that named us, the written answer said it found nothing about AiM. None of them invented a description. That is the behaviour you want when a name is unknown.
Short names attract lookalikes. Asked about AiM, the engine returned other companies with similar names. The written answers kept them apart, but a hurried reader or a different engine might not. If your name is short or common, search it with your category and see who else shows up.
Category lists were mostly written by the companies on them. For the two questions that did not name us, all four written answers said the results were mostly vendor-written or sales pages. One said a roundup ranked its own publisher first. To be named for a category question, you need to appear in lists other people write, not only on your own site.
Two runs of the same question can disagree. Questions 1, 2 and 4 returned mostly different pages on the second run. The two identical results were questions 3 and 5, where there was nothing relevant to find. One run is an anecdote.
What we are not claiming
- That ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity would also not name us. We did not test them.
- That 10 searches on one day show how often anyone is named. This is a snapshot, not a score.
- Why we were not found. A site this new has little outside mention, but we did not test that cause.
- That the written answer is a faithful reading of every page. We read the titles and links and the answer, not each page.
What to do with this
- Run your five questions twice. Write the date and the exact wording down.
- Search your name with your category. Note any lookalikes the engine confuses you with.
- Look at who gets named for the category questions, and where those lists are published.
- Repeat monthly with the same wording. We will run ours again and report what changed, including if nothing did.
Want a scored version across ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity? The free AI Visibility Score runs a version of these questions for your brand.
How to check our work
Test run October 18, 2026 with the queries above. We keep the full list of pages returned for each run.