AI engines do not invent recommendations. They assemble them from a small set of source pages. We find the exact pages the engines cite for your buyer queries, then get your brand added to them. Not a dashboard. Not a report. A placement.
01 — The Problem
The way software gets bought has changed. Instead of opening ten tabs and comparing pricing pages, your buyer types one question into ChatGPT, Perplexity or other AI search tool: "What is the best [your category] for [their situation]?" The engine answers with three to five names, and the shortlist is formed before your website ever loads.
Here is the part most companies miss. Those answers are built from citations: roundups, comparison guides, review articles, and industry posts that the engines treat as trustworthy sources. If your brand appears in that source material, you get recommended. If it does not, the engine confidently recommends your competitors instead, thousands of times a day, and no amount of on-site optimization changes that.
Ranking on Google does not fix it either. The overwhelming majority of pages AI engines cite sit outside Google's top 10 results. AI citation visibility is its own channel, with its own source pool, and it has to be built directly.
02 — Why Most AEO Work Stops Short
A typical AEO engagement looks like this: the agency audits your prompts, produces a citation-gap report, restructures some of your own content for "answer readiness," and sends you a monthly dashboard. All of it is real work. None of it puts your brand on the third-party pages the engines actually cite.
That is the structural flaw. AI engines build recommendations from sources they already trust, and your own website is only one voice among them, usually the least trusted voice on the subject of how good you are. The pages that decide your AI visibility belong to other publishers. Getting onto those pages requires outreach, editor relationships, negotiation, and editorial-grade writing. Dashboard companies do not do that work. Most AEO agencies do not either, and the few that touch it bury it inside $6,000 to $12,000 monthly retainers.
We built our entire flagship program around that missing step. The analysis is included. The placement is the product.
03 — How It Works
During onboarding we define the tracked buyer queries that matter: the best-of, comparison, alternative, and recommendation questions your actual customers ask AI engines. You approve the set. This becomes the scoreboard for the entire engagement.
Prompt-gap analysis identifies which pages ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews cite when answering your queries, and where competitors appear without you. The output is a citation-source map: a concrete list of URLs that currently decide who gets recommended in your category.
Every target page comes to you with domain, DR, organic traffic, ranking keywords, and the specific article. Nothing moves without your sign-off. This is mandatory on every Anchorial program, not a premium feature.
Our outreach team contacts the editor, negotiates your inclusion, and writes an entry that genuinely improves the page: use cases, differentiators, honest context. The addition has to survive the editor's judgment, which is exactly why it works. These are real publications, not link farms.
Live placements enter the engines' source pool. Your monthly report shows every placement, its status, and citation movement across your tracked queries. In our experience, visibility typically follows placements within 90 to 120 days, engine refresh cycles depending.
04 — What You Get
Publisher bar: DR 40 to 90 · real organic traffic · relevant ranking keywords · stable traffic history · no PBNs, no news-site churn, no junk.
05 — Pricing
Per placement
$600
Most engagements run 5 to 15 placements per month depending on category competitiveness and how many queries you want to win. Prompt-gap analysis, target mapping, and monthly citation reporting are included in every engagement, not sold separately.
Callout:A typical AEO retainer runs $6,000 to $12,000 per month, and placement work is rarely included. Ten Anchorial placements cost $6,000 and every dollar of it buys the one deliverable the retainer model leaves out.
06 — What We Will Not Do
We will not guarantee that an AI engine cites you by a specific date. Engines refresh their source pools on their own schedule, and anyone promising guaranteed citations is selling something they cannot control. Walk away from them.
What we guarantee is everything within our control: placement on pages the engines demonstrably cite for your tracked queries, editorial quality that survives publisher review, your approval on every domain, and a lifetime guarantee on every link. The citations follow the placements. That is how the mechanism works, and it is the honest version of this service.
We also will not place you on pages that do not deserve it. If a target page is thin, declining, or irrelevant, it does not go on your approval list, even when the editor would say yes.
07 — Who This Is For
This program fits you if buyers discover your category through recommendation-style questions, if competitors with worse products show up in ChatGPT answers where you are absent, and if you already have product-market fit worth defending. It works best alongside a real product with real reviews, because our entries are honest and editors check.
It is not for you if you want overnight results, guaranteed citations, or placements on sites that would take anyone's money. We turn that work down.
FAQ
Consulting tells you where the gaps are and optimizes your own site. We do that analysis too, then do the part consultants leave on the table: getting your brand added to the third-party pages the engines cite. Placement is the deliverable you are paying for.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Their citation pools barely overlap, roughly 11% between ChatGPT and Perplexity, so the citation-source map covers each engine separately and placements are chosen to build footprint across all three.
By evidence, not guesswork. A page becomes a target only if the engines demonstrably cite it for one of your tracked queries, it meets our publisher bar, and you approve it. Volume of citations, query intent, and competitor presence set the priority order.
Placements go live within weeks of approval. Citation movement typically shows within 90 to 120 days as engines refresh. Your monthly report tracks both so you always see the pipeline and the payoff separately.
A live, do-follow inclusion of your brand in a cited-source article: a full entry in a roundup, a section in a comparison guide, or a contextual mention with a link in an editorial piece. Screenshot-and-pray mentions in comment sections or forums do not count and we do not sell them.
Prompt-gap analysis on up to 25 buyer queries, the citation-source map for your category, your competitor citation footprint, and a prioritized placement roadmap. Credited in full to your first month if you engage.
We replace it at no cost. Lifetime guarantee, monitored monthly.
One audit shows you every page the engines cite and every gap with your name on it. Then we close them, one placement at a time.
Related Programs: Listicle & Roundup Placements·Premium SaaS Link Building