We scored 6,700 high-intent pages from 50 of the most influential SaaS brands to find out who is actually getting cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other answer engines and why.
The result: a leaderboard of the brands that LLMs love and a roadmap to help you join them.
What we found was clear: LLM visibility isn’t random. It’s engineered.
Top-performing companies like NinjaOne, Asana, and ActiveCampaign earned up to 4.8× more AI citations by doing five things differently:
- Updating content every 90 days
- Structuring pages for machine readability
- Citing outside sources early
- Formatting for snippet capture
- And staying on-brand and on-message
But most brands? They're flying blind.
- Inconsistent structure.
- No authorship to prove expertise
- Random or rarely updated posts
And as a result, they’re getting passed over in LLM responses losing traffic, authority, and brand control.
Want to see how your brand stacks up with answer engines and LLMs? See the Top 50 leaderboard and schedule a demo to get your AEO visibility audit.
The Top 10 AEO Leaders
How We Scored 6,700 Pages (The Methodology)
In 2025, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a competitive advantage. While the SEO world debates the role of AI, the best content teams are already adapting. This report breaks down the five levers of AEO performance, shows who’s winning across industries, and gives you a playbook to catch up.
Brand Selection: 50 top brands were selected using G2 Software charts and other leading players in SaaS
Pages Analyzed: Roughly 100 high-intent pages per brand were audited and more than 6,700 pages total.
AEO Scorecard Dimensions:
Each page was evaluated across five key levers of Answer Engine Optimization:
- Freshness: Update frequency, visible timestamps, and schema-recognized dates
- Structure / Schema / Readability: Proper use of H-tags, schema types (Article, FAQ, HowTo), and concise formatting
- Authority & Evidence: Presence of author bylines and external citations to authoritative sources
- Snippet Extractability: Layout patterns that enable easy lifting by answer engines (e.g., lists, blocks, short paragraphs)
- Brand Alignment: Consistency with current messaging, feature names, and tone across content types
Scoring Model: Each company’s AEO score was calculated using a weighted formula that reflects the relative impact of each lever on visibility in LLMs and answer engines:
Company AEO Score = (2.5 × Freshness) + (1.5 × Structure) + (1.0 × Authority) + (1.0 × Brand Alignment) + (1.0 × Snippet Extractability)
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What Drives AEO Readability? Lever-by-Lever Insights
Lever 1: Freshness Signals (Very High Impact)
Recency matters. Research shows that LLM‑generated responses favor newer publication dates, reflecting a bias toward freshness in suggested sources and our research on brands is no different. Pages with a visible "last updated" schema receive 1.8× more citations than those with no recency signal.
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Lever 2: Readability & Structure (High Impact)
Clean structure and proper schema don’t just help readers, they also make it easier for search engines and LLMs to understand what your content is about. In our research, pages that use Article, FAQ, or HowTo schema were 78% more likely to get cited. And when brands used clear heading hierarchies (like H1 → H2 → H3), citations jumped 63%.
Lever 3: Snippet Extractability
LLMs like content that answers questions directly. Write with clarity, not cleverness to be found in LLMs. Long paragraphs (≥ 3 sentences) reduce featured-snippet capture odds by 59%. Create content that’s scannable and answers questions directly. Dense blocks of text hurt snippet visibility, while concise answers and structured lists boost snippet capture by 74%.
Lever 4: Evidence & Attribution
Content that cites its sources builds trust with both users and AI. Pages that link to authoritative sites and include named experts are more likely to be seen as credible. This aligns with broader content quality standards like Google’s E-E-A-T, which still plays a major role in how information is evaluated online.
From our analysis:
- 78% of answers cite authoritative sources.
- Pages with 2+ outbound citations per 500 words get 2.4× more citations.
- Top-quartile brands for authority earn 40% more citations than bottom-quartile.
Lever 5: Brand Alignment (Medium Impact)
According to our research, content that maintains consistent brand voice, updated product names, and aligned messaging earns up to 41% more LLM citations than content that does not. This is also consistent with research from Kevin Indig into what content ranks in LLMs.
Key Visibility Trends:
- Freshness matters: Brands with high freshness scores (like NinjaOne and ActiveCampaign, scoring 90+ in freshness) dominate the top of the leaderboard. Most pages in the top 10 were updated within the last 90 days and those in the bottom quartile had not updated their pages in the last 365 days
- Named author bios add to gains: Roughly 36% of pages include named author bios. Pages that feature bios tend to correlate with stronger authority scores and higher citation rates, particularly among top performers like HubSpot and ActiveCampaign.
- Schema structure wins: Companies with strong structure and schema scores—such as Asana, Ramp, and ActiveCampaign—consistently appear in the top 10. Our analysis shows that pages using full article or FAQ schema are better understood by LLMs and more likely to be cited.
- Winning archetypes: FAQ hubs, pricing pages, and knowledge bases beat blog posts unless blogs are recently updated.
Why Top Brands Get Cited (And You Don’t)
They Keep Content Fresh to Stay in the Conversation
NinjaOne leads all brands with a Freshness score of 90 driven by quarterly updates to 72% of its audited content. In contrast, the median freshness score across all companies is just 56, and more than half of the bottom-tier performers fail to update even 25% of their content every 90 days.
Tip: Add or update “last updated” schema on high‑intent pages, and prioritize quarterly refreshes for your most visible URLs. Brands like NinjaOne stay cited by keeping their content visibly current.
They Use Schema and Structure to Make Content Machine-Readable
Brands that excel in Readability & Structure like Smartsheet (85), Grammarly (82), and ActiveCampaign (80) consistently apply clean heading hierarchies and full schema markup across content. These structural choices improve machine parsing and increase eligibility for AI citations and SERP rich results.
Tip: Use consistent heading hierarchies (H1 → H2 → H3), full Article or FAQ schema, and keep sentence length under 25 words to boost clarity and extractability.
They Format for Snippet Extraction and Human Readers
Ramp, ActiveCampaign, and Sage Software rank among the highest in Snippet Extractability, with scores ranging from 74 to 80. Their pages use bullet lists, numbered steps, and clear definition blocks to serve LLMs with snippet-ready content. Lower-scoring brands often bury answers in long paragraphs that make extraction harder.
Tip: Break up long paragraphs, lead with definitions or lists, and use formatting patterns (like FAQs) that LLMs can confidently lift into answer summaries.
They Lead with Evidence to Build Trust and Authority
Top performers like HubSpot (Authority score: 82) and Smartsheet (78) include named authors and outbound links to credible sources far more often than peers. Still, only 24% of all audited pages across companies include expert bylines—a clear opportunity.
Tip: Add named expert bios and 2+ external citations near the top of key pages to boost authority and signal credibility to both LLMs and Google.
They Align Every Page to Your Brand’s Messaging
Asana (90), Vercel (87), and monday.com (84) lead in Brand Alignment by maintaining consistency in terminology, product names, and tone across content formats. Brands that fail this often rely on outdated templates or mismatch their messaging across pages, weakening brand authority in generative search outputs.
Tip: Audit content for outdated product names, CTAs, and tone drift. Ensure brand messaging is unified across landing pages, FAQs, and editorial content.
5 No-Regret Moves to Boost Citations & Revenue
These represent the most efficient investments brands can make to improve their visibility in AI-powered search results.
1. Refresh Anything Older Than 12 Months
Why it works: LLMs and answer engines heavily favor recently updated content.
Proof: Pages updated within the last 12 months made up more than 95% of citations across leading brands. NinjaOne (90 freshness score) and ActiveCampaign (92) consistently refresh high-value pages every quarter.
Tip: Identify your top 100 traffic-driving URLs and establish a quarterly refresh cycle. Add or update timestamps, stats, screenshots, and recent product details.
2. Add or Update Schema on Every High-Intent URL
Why it works: Complete schema markup enhances machine readability and supports rich results.
Proof: Pages with complete schema are significantly more likely to be cited. Shopify (85 structure) and Smartsheet (85) earned top visibility by implementing Article and FAQ schema consistently.
Tip: Focus on core landing pages like product, pricing, and FAQs.
3. Front-Load Evidence Blocks
Why it works: Outbound links to credible sources increase trust signals for LLMs.
Proof: Brands scoring 80+ in Authority like HubSpot and Sprout Social include author bylines and ≥2 outbound citations on top-performing content.
Tip: Cite relevant research, stats, or publications early, ideally in the first 300 words. Ensure outbound links go to trusted sources.
4. Compress Paragraphs & Use Ordered Lists
Why it works: Structured content improves extractability for featured snippets and LLM-generated responses.
Proof: Pages with concise paragraphs and bullet points scored higher on Snippet Extractability. Grammarly (77) and Sage (70) stood out for using definition blocks, steps, and lists.
Tip: Break up long paragraphs. Use numbered lists for processes and bullet points for key facts. Keep sentences under 25 words where possible.
5. Map FAQs to Landing / Solutions Pages
Why it works: Centralized FAQ hubs earn more citations, especially when linked to authoritative pages.
Proof: Companies like Ramp (89 in Brand Alignment) and ActiveCampaign (80) centralize common questions and structure them for liftability.
Tip: Build standalone FAQ hubs for each product line. Internally link them from core solution pages and apply proper schema to all Q&A sections.
What a Top-Performing Page Looks Like
“How to Conduct An Invoice Audit” by Ramp
Ramp is one of our top-performing domains for AEO visibility. One of the highest scoring pages in our analysis was this on invoice audits. Expense management is one of their core Jobs To Be Done and this post on “invoice audits” addresses the pain point head on.
How to conduct an invoice audit
Score: 90/100
It appears in ChatGPT and Perplexity. Let’s look at a few of the factors that make it relevant.
Freshness
The page was recently updated within the last few months It provides a clear and recent publication date, which enhances trustworthiness for both users and LLMs.
Readability & Structure
It is well-structured with a TOC and cascading headers, from H1s to H2s to H3s, which helps with machine parsing. Short paragraphs and bulleted lists help with readability.
Snippet Extractability
The article includes bullet points and numbered lists, such as the step-by-step audit process, making it highly extractable for featured snippets and AI summaries.
Evidence & Attribution
While the Ramp article provides detailed explanations, it could offer more outbound links to authoritative external sources to help with credibility and trust signals.
Brand Consistency
The article maintains consistent terminology and aligns with Ramp’s brand voice, reinforcing its authority and reliability.
Ramp’s blog post performs well on key AEO signals. It’s fresh, clearly structured, and optimized for snippet extractability and makes it a strong candidate for LLM citation.
Successful Case Study: Descript
Descript started with an average AEO score of 61 across its key content pages. After implementing AirOps’ refresh workflows, that score jumped to 78 within 30 days. They boosted their AEO Score by 28% and saw 35% traffic growth with AirOps.
What they improved:
- Evidence enrichment: Added authoritative outbound citations to boost credibility.
- Header restructuring: Improved hierarchy and structure for better schema parsing.
- Quarterly stat and research updates: Regular content updates signaled freshness to answer engines
The impact was immediate:
- +35% in signups
- +123% increase in visits after Google AIO rollout
By aligning content with AEO best practices, Descript not only improved its visibility in LLMs but also defended high-intent branded traffic from competitors. Descript demonstrates how a structured, repeatable refresh workflow can drive significant gains in both rankings and reach.
Stay Visible. Stay Cited. Stay Ahead with AirOps.
Ready to turn these underperforming pages into high-visibility assets across SERP and AI answer engines? Identify at-risk pages, refresh high-intent content, and implement AEO best practices across your content.
Book a demo with AirOps today, and let us help you integrate these refresh tactics.
Together, we’ll transform your content into always-on, authoritative pages primed for both ranking in SERPs and in answer engines.
See the full leaderboard and schedule a demo to get your AEO visibility audit.
