HubSpot AEO tracks four metrics in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity: your brand visibility (the share of prompts where you are mentioned), your share of voice against competitors, the sentiment of the answers, and citations, meaning the pages AI engines give as sources. Read these numbers over several weeks, never over a single day.
A dashboard inside your HubSpot
You turned on HubSpot AEO, the first numbers come in, and one question follows right away: is this good? A visibility rate, a share of voice, a sentiment score: without a frame of reference, these numbers say very little. With the right one, they become a work plan.
HubSpot AEO, still in beta, runs the prompts you track in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity every day, then records what comes back in the answers. It is the GEO (also called AEO) tracking tool built into HubSpot: according to HubSpot’s knowledge base, it tracks 25 prompts a day with Marketing Hub Professional or the standalone AEO subscription, and 50 with Marketing Hub Enterprise. Learn more: AEO or GEO: two names for the same discipline.
The four metrics, one sentence each
Here are HubSpot’s own definitions, as stated in its knowledge base and on its product page.
- Brand visibility. The percentage of tracked prompts where your brand appears at least once. This is your mention count.
- Share of voice. The proportion of all brand mentions that belong to you, against the competitors you declared, on the same prompts.
- Sentiment. How AI engines describe your brand when they name it, scored from -100 (negative) to +100 (positive).
- Citations. The pages and domains AI engines give as sources: a link to a page, or a domain name written in the answer.
Mention or citation: the difference that changes everything
A mention is the AI saying your name. A citation is the AI showing where its information comes from. HubSpot says it plainly: a brand can be named without any link pointing back to it.
Cross the two metrics and you get four very different situations.
- Mentioned and cited. AI engines know you and rely on your own pages. This is the position to protect.
- Mentioned but not cited. AI engines know you, but through other sources: directories, articles, comparisons, reviews. Look at which domains they cite instead of yours: they are the ones writing your reputation.
- Cited but not mentioned. Your content serves as a source, but the answer does not keep your name. Your expertise is useful, but your brand is not yet tied to the topic.
- Neither. This is where most companies start, and where the work begins.
Share of voice depends on your competitor list
A share of voice is only as meaningful as the competitors you are compared with. Against two small local players, a good number can hide a weak presence. Against the leaders of your market, a modest number can be a real achievement.
Ask yourself honestly: who do your customers really compare you with? Those are the names to declare, from day one. HubSpot notes that changes to the competitor list only affect future data runs: data already collected is not recalculated.
Sentiment: read the sentences, not just the score
A positive sentiment score is reassuring. But an AI can talk about you in neutral terms while describing a service you dropped, a territory you do not serve or a price that is out of date. The score does not see these errors. You do.
Our advice: every month, open the answers where your brand appears and read them the way a future partner would. What the AI says about you matters as much as whether it says it.
Why you need to read over several weeks
AI answers change from one day to the next, and HubSpot says so directly: it recommends reviewing performance across multiple days or weeks before evaluating trends.
A study published on January 28, 2026 by Rand Fishkin (SparkToro) and Patrick O’Donnell (Gumshoe) shows it clearly. 600 volunteers ran the same 12 prompts in ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s AI, for nearly 3,000 runs. The odds of getting the same list of brands twice were under 1 in 100, and the odds of getting the same list in the same order were closer to 1 in 1,000. What stays stable is how often a brand appears.
The takeaway is simple: a jump in a single day means nothing, a steady rise over a quarter does.
Prompts: where everything happens
HubSpot suggests prompts based on your products and ideal customer profiles, and you can edit them or add your own. With 25 prompts, every choice counts. What words do your customers use to find your products and services? What questions do they ask before they call you?
- Discovery prompts, such as “which agency should I choose for…”: they tell you whether you make the shortlist.
- Comparison prompts between you and your competitors: they feed your share of voice.
- Problem prompts, such as “how do I fix…”: they tell you whether your expertise is recognized.
Avoid prompts that already contain your name: they inflate visibility without teaching you anything.
What we do with HubSpot AEO for our partners
As a HubSpot Gold partner, we set up and run HubSpot AEO for our partners. We choose the prompts with you, read the metrics every month, and turn them into an action plan, page by page. Learn more: our HubSpot services.
To understand why a metric moves, we cross this tracking with your site score, built with Klide, our in-house tool, which analyzes your site against the eight criteria of our score. The dashboard tells you where you stand. The score tells you why. Learn more: our GEO score.
Set up. Read. Act.
Frequently asked questions
Is HubSpot AEO included in my HubSpot subscription?
According to HubSpot, the tool is included in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise, with more prompt capacity in Enterprise. It is also sold as a standalone subscription, with a free trial. The tool is in beta as of October 1, 2026: features and capacity may still change.
Which AI engines does HubSpot AEO track?
ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, according to HubSpot’s product page and knowledge base. Our testing protocol covers these three platforms and adds Claude, with 100 prompts run on each, for 400 real tests. Learn more: our testing protocol.
Should a drop in visibility from one day to the next worry me?
No. AI answers vary from one run to the next, even for the same question. HubSpot itself recommends reading results over several days or weeks. Look at the trend over a month, compare it with your competitors, and react to a drop that lasts, not to a one-off change.
What is the difference between a mention and a citation?
A mention is your name in the answer. A citation is a link or a domain name the AI gives as a source. Being mentioned without being cited means AI engines know you through other websites: you need to know which ones, and what they say about you.
Do I need HubSpot to track my visibility in AI engines?
No. HubSpot AEO is convenient if you already use HubSpot, and we run it for our partners. Without HubSpot, our protocol measures the same thing across four AI engines. To get started, our free AI visibility audit tests your brand live.
