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Agencies·6 min·Nostimates
What AEO agencies should actually report to clients
An AEO report should contain four things: citation share per surface with a confidence interval, the raw AI answers as evidence, alerts when share moves beyond the interval or a new competitor appears, and per-client history long enough to prove the retainer moved the needle.
Four things, in this order
- Citation share per surface, with an interval. "34% ±17 points at n=25 on AI Overviews, US" beats a composite score nobody can audit.
- The evidence. When the client asks "says who?", show the actual answers behind the number.
- Alerts on movement. Push them when share jumps, drops, or a new competitor enters, rather than waiting for someone to open a report.
- History. A QBR needs a quarter of data, per client, per surface, or the retainer is unprovable.
What to leave out
Composite visibility indices, single-sample screenshots, and surface counts. All three feel impressive and none of them survive a skeptical client asking how it was calculated.
The most defensible sentence in AEO reporting is boring: "you were cited in 34% of ten samples, plus or minus six points, and here are the ten answers."
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