Most AEO tools only check ChatGPT. That misses over half the picture. We score AI visibility across 6 engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, DeepSeek, Claude, and Mistral — because a tool that scores 3/3 on ChatGPT can score 1/3 on DeepSeek. If you only measure one engine, you don't know where you're invisible.
The Problem With Single-Engine AEO
When SaaS founders first hear about AEO (AI Engine Optimization), the natural instinct is to focus on ChatGPT. It's the most popular AI assistant, so it gets the most attention. But here's what we found after running hundreds of audits: ChatGPT visibility tells you almost nothing about your visibility on other engines.
Each AI engine uses different training data, different retrieval methods, and different ranking signals. Perplexity searches the live web and cites sources. Gemini pulls from Google's Knowledge Graph. DeepSeek draws heavily from Chinese and English technical content. Claude emphasizes safety and factual accuracy. Mistral has its own European-trained model.
A SaaS tool can be confidently recommended by ChatGPT and completely unknown to DeepSeek. We've seen this happen with well-known products, not just obscure startups.
Why 6 Engines?
We chose these 6 engines because they represent the major AI assistants that real users rely on for product recommendations:
- ChatGPT (OpenAI) — The market leader with the largest user base. Uses GPT-4o for most queries.
- Perplexity — The AI search engine that cites real-time sources. Growing rapidly among researchers and professionals.
- Gemini (Google) — Integrated into Google Search via AI Overviews. Reaches the broadest audience through Google's ecosystem.
- DeepSeek — The Chinese AI that has gained global traction for technical queries. Strong in developer and engineering communities.
- Claude (Anthropic) — Known for careful, nuanced responses. Popular among enterprise users and developers.
- Mistral — European AI model with strong multilingual capabilities. Growing in EU markets.
Together, these 6 engines cover the vast majority of AI-assisted product discovery. If your tool is visible across all 6, you're reachable by virtually every AI user. If you're only visible on 1-2, you're leaving most of the market on the table.
How the Scoring Works
Each engine receives the same query: 'What is [your tool] and what does it do?' The response is analyzed for three signals:
- Not mentioned (1 point) — The engine doesn't know your product exists.
- Mentioned but inaccurate (2 points) — The engine mentions your product but with incomplete or incorrect information.
- Cited accurately (3 points) — The engine describes your product correctly, including features, use case, and category.
Your total AEO score ranges from 6 (invisible on all engines) to 18 (accurately cited on all 6). We classify visibility into four levels: Critical (6–8), Low (9–12), Moderate (13–14), and High (15–18).
Real Data: How Scores Vary Across Engines
Here's what we see in practice when we audit well-known SaaS tools. Even established products show significant variation:
Notion scores 18/18 — all 6 engines cite it accurately. But most SaaS tools aren't Notion. A typical B2B SaaS product scores 10–13/18 on first audit, with 2–3 engines returning incomplete or missing information.
The most common pattern: strong ChatGPT + Perplexity scores (because these pull from well-indexed English web content) but weaker DeepSeek and Mistral scores (which rely more on their own training data). This is the 'AI visibility gap' — the spread between your best and worst engine scores.