The problem
Your customers already ask AI who to hire. Is your company in the answer?
B2B buyers have started building their vendor shortlists inside AI assistants. And the initial list decides almost everything.
- ≈ 50%of software buyers start their vendor research in an AI assistantSource: G2, survey of more than 1,000 buyers, via GEO White Paper v5
- 95%of winning vendors were already on the buyer's list on day oneSource: 6sense, about 4,000 purchase decisions, via GEO White Paper v5
- 61%drop in organic CTR when AI Overviews appearSource: Seer Interactive, June 2024 to September 2025
What is at stake
Companies that do not appear in those answers are left out of the choice before they know there was one.
A company can lose deals without ever knowing it was in contention, because the exclusion happens in a conversation between the buyer and a machine.
- 4.4×the value of a visitor from AI search compared with a traditional organic visitorSource: Semrush
- 0.664correlation between brand mentions on the web and visibility in AI Overviews, versus 0.218 for backlinksSource: Ahrefs, 75,000 brands, via GEO White Paper v5
- +7,851%growth in traffic from agents and agentic browsers in 2025Source: HUMAN Security, 2026 State of AI Traffic
In the first diagnostics run with the scorecard, with B2B companies in Portugal, all of them landed at the Invisible level.
The solution
Become one of the companies AI engines recommend, and prove what that is worth in business
Be the Answer is the practical guide to getting there: a diagnosis, fixes in order of impact and measurement all the way to pipeline.
Learn how to
- Diagnose. Assess your company's readiness with the 40-criterion AEO Readiness Scorecard.
- Get cited. Make your site readable, your brand recognizable and your content easy to cite.
- Measure to pipeline. Connect AI visibility to GA4, the CRM and revenue.
- Govern. Make the five decisions that belong to leadership and track six indicators every quarter.
- Prepare your site for agents. Serve people and AI agents from the same facts.
With six international case studies, real tool screenshots and a 90-day plan. For CEOs, board members and sales and marketing leaders of B2B companies who want to be the answer, not just another result.
What you will find
The book has three parts.
Understand (chapters 1 and 2)
What has changed in B2B discovery, what the numbers say and do not say, and how AI engines choose the sources they cite.
Diagnose and fix (chapters 3 to 8)
The AEO Readiness Scorecard, with 40 criteria across five dimensions: be readable, be recognized, be citable, be talked about, and measure all the way to pipeline. Every criterion follows the same format: what it is, why it matters, how to check it in 5 minutes, how to fix it and the most common mistake.
Execute (chapters 9 to 13)
A 90-day plan, the role of the leadership team and the board, what changes when the visitor to your website is an agent rather than a person, the tools that help you measure and track, and how to decide what to do in-house and what to hand to outside support.
Free sample
Read the opening of the book, free
Get the PDF with the first pages of the book by email:
- Introduction: "The shortlist you no longer see"
- For decision-makers: "The essentials in five minutes"
- Chapter 1: "From search to answer"
PDF, 29 pages.
We use your email to send you the sample and, if you agree in the form, news from Liminal. You can unsubscribe at any time.
AEO Readiness Scorecard
The AEO Readiness Scorecard is available for free, with automatic scoring and a 90-day plan. The score, the weakest dimension, the first five actions and the 90-day plan appear on screen, with no sign-up. The full report, with what to fix for each criterion, is sent by email to anyone who requests it.
About the author
Tiago J. C. Sousa is the founder and managing partner of Liminal and the author of the book From Zero to Hyper-Personalization (published in Portuguese). He is also a co-author of 110 Voices on Generative AI, Bots, Agents and Robots (Iscte Executive Education, in Portuguese).
He is a guest lecturer at the University of Aveiro, IPAM, Universidade Europeia and the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, where he teaches Artificial Intelligence, Marketing Automation, CRM, Strategic Marketing, Marketing and Web Analytics, and Marketing Innovation and Technologies.
He holds an MBA from Católica Business School and has more than 20 years of experience leading marketing and sales projects, mainly in the software sector and in B2B markets.
Tools cited in the book
Tools change quickly. This is the updated list of the tools cited in the book (Appendix C and chapter 12). .
Free
| Tool | What for | Criteria |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Indexing, sitemap, search performance | T4 T5 |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Indexing in Bing, which feeds Copilot | T4 T5 |
| PageSpeed Insights | Core Web Vitals | T6 |
| Rich Results Test | Validate structured data | T7 |
| Schema Markup Validator | Validate schema.org | T7 |
| HubSpot AI Search Grader | See how the models describe the brand | E1 E8 |
| Semrush AI Search Visibility Checker | Brand mentions, citations and reach in AI answers | M2 |
| Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker | Estimated brand mentions by AI engine | M2 |
| Google Trends | Relative interest in terms over time | C2 |
| Brandleap Fan-Out Mapper | See an approximation of the sub-questions generated from a question | C7 |
| Wikidata | Create and verify the company's entry | E4 |
| Google Analytics 4 | AI assistants channel | M3 |
AI visibility platforms
| Tool | What it is for | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Semrush Enterprise AIO | Prompt generation, competitor comparison, sentiment, most cited sources | Paid, enterprise |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Brand mentions in chatbots and AI Overviews, competitor comparison | Paid |
| Sistrix | Organic visibility and tracking of presence in AI answers | Paid |
| Similarweb | Estimated traffic for any site, including chatbot referrals, landing pages and prompts | Limited free; paid |
| Profound | Monitoring of answers across multiple engines, citation and conversation analysis | Paid, enterprise |
| Scrunch | Brand monitoring in AI engines and content optimization for agents | Paid |
| Rankscale | Tracking of rankings and citations in AI engines | Paid, with entry-level plans |
| HubSpot AEO | Visibility, sentiment, citations and share of voice against competitors, with prompts suggested from CRM data | Included in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise; also sold separately |
Keywords and questions
Keywords still matter, but the question has changed. Knowing which terms people type into Google is no longer enough; what matters is what they ask assistants: full questions, vendor comparisons and the sub-questions AI generates behind each one.
| Tool | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Semrush | Find the questions your market asks, so your website answers each one |
| Ahrefs (including Rank Tracker) | |
| Ubersuggest | |
| AnswerThePublic | |
| Keyword Tool | |
| Ranktracker |
Buy the book
In paperback and digital editions.
ISBN (paperback): 9798140840235 · First edition, November 2026 · Portuguese edition: Ser a Resposta
Frequently asked questions
Where can I buy the book?
The store links are in the "Buy the book" section of this page.
Which formats are available?
Paperback (ISBN 9798140840235) and digital.
Who is this book for?
For CEOs, board members and sales and marketing leaders of B2B companies who want to be the answer, not just another result.
What are AEO and GEO?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) means preparing the company to be the answer chosen by AI assistants; it is the term used in marketing. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the same goal, under the term used in academic research.
Which AI assistants does the book cover?
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity: these are the assistants in which the book measures brand presence and share of voice.
How long does it take to apply?
The book sets out a 90-day plan for each scorecard level. Ninety days are enough to move up one level if the company takes the right actions in the right order (chapter 9).
Does the book include real cases?
Yes. Six international case studies and real tool screenshots.
Is there a short read for the leadership team?
Yes. "The essentials in five minutes" summarizes what has changed and the five decisions that cannot be delegated; chapter 10 covers the role of the leadership team and the board.
Is there a Portuguese edition?
Yes, under the title Ser a Resposta.
How will this book help my company?
It shows how to become one of the companies AI engines recommend and how to prove what that is worth in business: diagnose with the AEO Readiness Scorecard, fix what is missing and measure all the way to pipeline, with a 90-day plan.
Is the AEO Readiness Scorecard free?
Yes. The score, the weakest dimension, the first five actions and the 90-day plan appear on screen, with no sign-up. The full report, with what to fix for each criterion, is sent by email to anyone who requests it.
Sources by chapter
See the 123 sources cited in the book, by chapter
All sources cited in the book, in the order in which they appear. URLs accessed between October and November 2026; the evidence level of each number is indicated in the text.
For decision-makers
- Resonate Labs, GEO White Paper v5 (compiles the G2, 6sense, Ahrefs and Agarwal and Sen studies). resonate-labs-content-hub.pages.dev
- Semrush, We Studied the Impact of AI Search on SEO Traffic (July 2025). semrush.com
Chapter 1
- Resonate Labs, GEO White Paper v5 (compiles the G2, 6sense, Ahrefs and Agarwal and Sen studies). resonate-labs-content-hub.pages.dev
- Seer Interactive, impact of AI Overviews on CTR (2025). seerinteractive.com
- Search Engine Journal, AI Overview CTR Fell 61%, But Clicks Didn't Collapse (Seer Interactive data, April 2026). searchenginejournal.com
- Datos and SparkToro, State of Search Q1 2026 (summary). jc-aiwiki.pages.dev
- Seer Interactive, How AI Overviews Are Impacting CTR: 5 Initial Takeaways. seerinteractive.com
- Marketing Against the Grain (Jay Fuchs), The AI search trust gap no one's talking about (September 2026). marketingagainstthegrain.com
- Gartner, press release of December 14, 2023 (predictions for 2025 to 2028). gartner.com
- Gartner, Search Engine Volume Will Drop 25% by 2026 (February 19, 2024). gartner.com
- Semrush, We Studied the Impact of AI Search on SEO Traffic (July 2025). semrush.com
- Semrush, ChatGPT Is Not Replacing Google, It's Expanding Search (August 2025). semrush.com
- HubSpot, AEO vs. GEO. blog.hubspot.es
- Forrester, The State Of Business Buying, 2026 (January 2026). forrester.com
- 6sense, 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report. 6sense.com
- CustomerThink, [Research Round-Up] 6sense Study Provides Critical Insights on B2B Buyer Behavior. customerthink.com
- TechCrunch, ChatGPT reaches 900M weekly active users (February 27, 2026). techcrunch.com
- Reuters Institute, Generative AI and News Report 2026: From standalone tools to information infrastructure (October 2026). reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk
- SparkToro, In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click (June 2026). sparktoro.com
- Pew Research Center, Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results (July 22, 2025). pewresearch.org
- The Decoder, on the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026 (June 2026). the-decoder.com
- McKinsey, The value of getting personalization right, or wrong, is multiplying (November 2021). mckinsey.com
- Salesforce, State of the AI Connected Customer (7th edition). salesforce.com
- Qualtrics, 2026 Global Consumer Experience Trends (October 2025). qualtrics.com
- PwC, Experience is everything: Here's how to get it right (Future of Customer Experience Survey 2017/18). pwc.com
Chapter 2
- From Citation Selection to Citation Absorption, arXiv 2604.25707 (2026). arxiv.org
- Brandleap, Fan-Out Mapper. brandleap.ai
- Ahrefs, Only 12% of AI Cited URLs Rank in Google's Top 10 for the Original Prompt (August 2025). ahrefs.com
- Semrush, We Studied the Impact of AI Search on SEO Traffic (July 2025). semrush.com
- Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, arXiv 2311.09735. arxiv.org
- Simon Willison, Anthropic use Brave (March 21, 2025). simonwillison.net
- Statcounter Global Stats, AI chatbot market share (September 2026). gs.statcounter.com
- Clubic, AI chatbot barometer for September 2026 (Statcounter data, October 2026). clubic.com
- Goodie, 2026 AI Search Traffic Report (May 2026). higoodie.com
- Resonate Labs, GEO White Paper v5 (Ahrefs data on volatility). resonate-labs-content-hub.pages.dev
- Profound, How Ramp Increased AI Brand Visibility 7x in Accounts Payable. tryprofound.com
Chapter 3
- Liminal, AEO Readiness Scorecard. liminalmartech.com
- Webflow, How IMB Bank built a scalable answer engine optimization strategy (February 2026). webflow.com
Chapter 4
- Google Search Central, Google's common crawlers (Google-Extended). developers.google.com
- Anthropic, Anthropic crawlers (ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User). support.claude.com
- OpenAI, OpenAI crawlers (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User). developers.openai.com
- Perplexity, Perplexity crawlers (PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User). docs.perplexity.ai
- Google Search Central, How Google interprets the robots.txt specification. developers.google.com
- Cloudflare, AI Crawler and Agent access policies. developers.cloudflare.com
- Cloudflare, Is It Agent Ready. isitagentready.com
- web.dev, Core Web Vitals. web.dev
- Google, PageSpeed Insights. pagespeed.web.dev
- Google Search Central, introduction to structured data. developers.google.com
Chapter 5
- Semrush, We Studied the Impact of AI Search on SEO Traffic (July 2025). semrush.com
- Google Search Central, helpful, reliable content. developers.google.com
Chapter 6
- Nectiv Digital, New Claude Skill: AI Search Content Optimizer (structure of content cited by ChatGPT; Kevin Indig and Nectiv data). nectivdigital.com
- HubSpot, AEO vs. GEO. blog.hubspot.es
- From Citation Selection to Citation Absorption, arXiv 2604.25707 (2026). arxiv.org
- Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, arXiv 2311.09735. arxiv.org
- Brandleap, Fan-Out Mapper. brandleap.ai
- Erlin, Generative Engine Optimization Best Practices (AirOps, Kevin Indig and GenOptima data). erlin.ai
- Artificial Studio, Semrush report on YouTube in AI search. artificialstudio.ai
- MarTech, How to make your content stand out in the age of AI (February 2026). martech.org
- Kieran Flanagan, SEO is dying: AI Engine Optimization. kieranflanagan.io
- HubSpot, How simple semantics increased our AI citations by 642%. blog.hubspot.com
- Ipsos, People still largely prefer humans to create content, not AI (August 2025). ipsos.com
- Pew Research Center, What the data says about Americans' views of artificial intelligence (March 2026). pewresearch.org
- Graphite, Webflow 2x'd Sign-Ups from LLMs (January 2026). graphite.io
Chapter 7
- AirOps, Third-Party Sources Drive 85% of Brand Discovery (October 2025). airops.com
- Resonate Labs, GEO White Paper v5 (Ahrefs data on brand mentions). resonate-labs-content-hub.pages.dev
- From Citation Selection to Citation Absorption, arXiv 2604.25707 (2026). arxiv.org
- Erlin, Generative Engine Optimization Best Practices (AirOps, Kevin Indig, GenOptima and Frase.io data). erlin.ai
- Semrush, We Studied the Impact of AI Search on SEO Traffic (July 2025). semrush.com
- Kieran Flanagan, SEO is dying: AI Engine Optimization. kieranflanagan.io
- Built In, PayPal, Head of CEO Content (job posting, 2025). builtin.com
- Justin Hammond with Marie Martens, How Tally Turned AI into Their Top Acquisition Source. justinhammond.substack.com
Chapter 8
- Seer Interactive, impact of AI Overviews on CTR (2025). seerinteractive.com
- Search Engine Journal, AI Overview CTR Fell 61%, But Clicks Didn't Collapse (Seer Interactive data, April 2026). searchenginejournal.com
- Seer Interactive, 2026 CTR research. seerinteractive.com
- Semrush, We Studied the Impact of AI Search on SEO Traffic (July 2025). semrush.com
- Google Analytics Help, What's new in Google Analytics (May 13, 2026, AI Assistant channel). support.google.com
- Google Analytics Help, About regular expressions (regex). support.google.com
- HubSpot Knowledge Base, Understand traffic source properties. knowledge.hubspot.com
- HubSpot, Sandler case: How Sandler Helps Enterprise Sales Teams Meet the Modern Buyer, by Mastering the Answer Engines First. hubspot.com
- Ahrefs, Does AI Search Traffic Convert Better Than Traditional Search? ahrefs.com
Chapter 10
- HubSpot, How HubSpot became the #1 CRM in AI search. blog.hubspot.com
Chapter 11
- WorkOS, AI agents now make up the majority of web traffic: what developers need to change (Cloudflare Radar data, June 2026). workos.com
- HUMAN Security, 2026 State of AI Traffic & Cyberthreat Benchmark Report. humansecurity.com
- HUMAN Security, State of Agentic Traffic, August 2026. humansecurity.com
- Digital Commerce 360, Gartner: AI agents will command $15 trillion in B2B purchases by 2028 (November 2025). digitalcommerce360.com
- Forrester, Predictions 2026 (Business Wire, October 2025). businesswire.com
- Digital Commerce 360, OpenAI shifts checkout plans (March 2026). digitalcommerce360.com
- Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2026. forrester.com
- Scott Brinker (chiefmartec), in partnership with Knotch, The Future of Websites: A Brand Context Model to Power Human & Agent Web Experiences (2026). content.martechday.com
- Cloudflare, The age of agents: cryptographically recognizing agent traffic. blog.cloudflare.com
- AWS, AWS WAF announces Web Bot Auth support (November 2025). aws.amazon.com
- Cloudflare, Markdown for Agents. blog.cloudflare.com
- Presenc, NLWeb Adoption in 2026. presenc.ai
- W3C AI Knowledge Representation Community Group, WebMCP Technical Notes (discussion document on the specification incubated in the Web Machine Learning Community Group). w3c-cg.github.io
- PPC Land, AI agent traffic dips in May but blocking rates keep climbing. ppc.land
- SecurityInfoWatch, DataDome report on AI agent traffic. securityinfowatch.com
Chapter 12
- Kieran Flanagan, SEO is dying: AI Engine Optimization. kieranflanagan.io
- HubSpot, AI Search Grader. hubspot.com
- Cloudflare, Is It Agent Ready. isitagentready.com
- Cloudflare, Introducing the Agent Readiness score (April 2026). blog.cloudflare.com
- Semrush, AI Search Visibility Checker. semrush.com
- Google, PageSpeed Insights. pagespeed.web.dev
- DebugBear, Lighthouse Agentic Browsing (May 2026). debugbear.com
- Google Trends. trends.google.com
- Ahrefs, Free AI Visibility Checker. ahrefs.com
- Ahrefs, Brand Radar. ahrefs.com
- Similarweb, Similarweb Expands Digital Visibility to AI Chatbots Like ChatGPT and More (April 2025). ir.similarweb.com
- Similarweb, Similarweb Launches GenAI Intelligence Toolkit (Business Wire, July 2025). secure.businesswire.com
- Semrush, AI Visibility. semrush.com
- Profound, pricing and plans. tryprofound.com
- Sistrix, Changelog Q2 2026. sistrix.com
- Sistrix. sistrix.com
- Scrunch. scrunch.com
- Rankscale. rankscale.ai
- Brandleap, Fan-Out Mapper. brandleap.ai
- HubSpot, AEO (Marketing Hub). hubspot.com
- Google Search Central, AI features and your website. developers.google.com
- Semrush (Enterprise AIO, AI Visibility Toolkit and keyword research). semrush.com
- Ahrefs. ahrefs.com
- Ubersuggest. neilpatel.com
- AnswerThePublic. answerthepublic.com
- Keyword Tool. keywordtool.io
- Ranktracker. ranktracker.com