# OnlyAEO or Discovered Labs? An AEO Platform vs an AEO Agency

> OnlyAEO is an AEO platform that tracks AI answers and creates the content to change them, and our team can run it for you. Discovered Labs is an agency that runs SEO and AEO for B2B SaaS. Compare citation tracking, reporting and terms, and see which buyer each one suits.

URL: https://onlyaeo.com/blog/onlyaeo-vs-discovered-labs-citation-quality-compared · Published: 2026-05-20 · Updated: 2026-10-14 · Author: Tejas Patil

- **OnlyAEO** is an AEO platform that tracks AI answers and creates the content to change them, and our team can run it for you: on a managed plan, our people write the articles, script the YouTube videos, write in other languages and help earn third-party mentions, and nothing is published until your team signs it off.
- **Discovered Labs** is an agency for B2B SaaS that runs SEO and AEO as one service from inside the client's team.
- **On citation quality**, we count recommendations of a brand separately from plain mentions and bare links, and store every answer verbatim with its prompt.
- **Which buyer each suits:** Discovered Labs fits a team that wants Reddit marketing and link building in the same plan as its SEO and AEO; OnlyAEO fits a team that already has Google SEO covered and wants a partner for AI answers.

## Is Discovered Labs any good? What its own pages show

Judged on its own pages, Discovered Labs is a credible AI-native AEO/GEO agency for B2B SaaS companies that want specialists embedded in their team. Those pages point to four strengths.

- **Tested advice.** Its [methodology page](https://discoveredlabs.com/methodology) says every recommendation comes from sandboxed LLM testing.
- **Engineering depth.** Co-founder and CTO Ben Moore is described as an ex-Stanford AI researcher who has led engineering teams at Aurora and built fraud detection systems at Stripe, Coinbase and Brex.
- **Named frameworks.** CITABLE is its documented framework for the evidence, structure and phrasing LLMs quote, and OPERABLE is its 8-point framework, used to audit whether AI can read, trust and act on a site.
- **No go-between.** The home page says there are no account managers; clients deal with specialists across SEO, editorial and off-page work, with engineers on hand for the technical work.

This comparison uses no third-party reviews or ratings of either company. Every statement about Discovered Labs here comes from its public pages, read on 14 October 2026. For reviews, check the review sites yourself and ask each one for client references.

## How do OnlyAEO and Discovered Labs compare at a glance?

Both can do the work for the client: Discovered Labs as an agency, OnlyAEO through its platform, run by our team. Where they differ is the engines they name, how they report and how you sign up. The Discovered Labs column comes from its own pages, read on the date above.

| | OnlyAEO | Discovered Labs |
|---|---|---|
| **Engines named** | Platform: ChatGPT and ChatGPT mini, Claude Sonnet and Opus, Gemini Flash and Pro, DeepSeek Chat and Reasoner, Grok; service work also covers Perplexity | Tracker defaults: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini; its home page also names Microsoft Copilot |
| **Reporting cadence** | Run once or on a schedule (daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly); PDF export, emailed summaries, client share link | Weekly progress reports |
| **Headline metrics** | Citation share, mention rate, LLM recall frequency | Citation frequency, share of voice, sentiment, pipeline attribution |
| **Terms and start** | Opens with an AI visibility audit, returned within 48 hours | Month-to-month, performance-based; 30-day rolling agreements |

## What does Discovered Labs offer?

Discovered Labs describes itself as an organic search agency built for the AI era, combining traditional SEO with Answer Engine Optimization so B2B software brands rank on Google and get recommended in AI answers.

### Services

- **One organic-search plan.** Its llms.txt lists technical optimization, editorial content, original research, Reddit marketing and targeted link building inside one strategy.
- **Reddit marketing.** Sold on a rolling monthly contract, either standalone or included in the SEO and AEO retainer.
- **Link building.** Available without an SEO or AEO retainer, and publishers are screened by a proprietary 13-check scoring system.
- **A model of your company.** It mines a client's real artefacts into a living model of the business, which grounds each audit, brief and topic.

### Tracker and measurement

Discovered Labs runs its own AI Visibility Tracker, and the tracker page says it is not sold as standalone software; it exists to power the strategy the team runs for clients. Every retainer client gets view-only access, so they can watch the same data the team works from.

The [tracker page](https://discoveredlabs.com/technology/ai-visibility-tracker) says real buyer prompts are tested every 5 days across every model, and each prompt runs multiple times with the result bounded by a 95% credible interval.

Its AEO service page adds that it samples hundreds of buyer prompts to measure share of voice, citation rate and how accurately AI describes the client, and that share of voice is benchmarked against named competitors every month.

## What does OnlyAEO include when our team runs it for you?

Each client gets the six deliverables below from a dedicated team assigned to the account.

- **Analytics.** Each month's report on where the engines name you.
- **Articles.** Researched and fact-checked, then published on your own site, written in your voice and set in your design.
- **YouTube videos.** Videos for your channel, from planning and scripts to packaging, each month.
- **Other languages.** Spanish, Arabic, French, Indonesian, German, Portuguese and more, researched and checked to the English standard.
- **Earned mentions.** A ranked list of outside sites the engines cite in your category where you are absent, with a suggested route in for each: a guest post, a partnership, a listing or a review.
- **Site health.** A review of whether AI crawlers can reach and parse your pages.

The work runs in this order:

1. **Build the Context Graph.** We assemble a single record of the business from tools you already use, including Search Console, WordPress or Framer, Drive, Slack, Gmail and YouTube; update a fact like your pricing in one place and all new content uses the new figure.
2. **Research the personas.** We research every buyer persona from your market (job title, kind of company, goals, frustrations and buying criteria), because AI answers each persona differently.
3. **Ask the engines first.** Before writing, we put your buyer's likely question to Claude and ChatGPT, read the cited pages end to end, and give each of their searches its own section.
4. **Produce and approve.** Our team prepares the month's articles, listings and videos for your approval.
5. **Look back, then plan.** We go through what moved with you and set the next month's plan.

The full walkthrough lives on the [how it works page](/how-it-works).

## How do we count and prove a citation?

We count by answer type and back each count with the raw answer. A brand named in passing and a brand the engine tells the buyer to pick are different outcomes for anyone reporting upward, so recommendations get their own count, apart from mentions and bare links.

Every answer is stored word for word beside the exact prompt that produced it, so anyone on your side can rerun that prompt in Claude or ChatGPT and compare the fresh answer with the one in the report.

For a method you can apply to any agency's figures, see [our AI visibility measurement guide](/blog/how-to-measure-your-ai-visibility-a-step-by-step-guide).

## What has to pass before we publish a piece?

Five checks run on every article. A draft that fails any of them stays unpublished.

1. **Sources.** Each figure is traced to a row of sourced evidence, and anything unsupported is cut.
2. **Voice.** A humanizer pass rewrites the draft in your brand's voice.
3. **Links.** A validator tests every link, and a single dead link holds the piece back.
4. **Independent score.** A separate scorer has to give the draft 85 or more.
5. **Your sign-off.** Someone on your side approves it.

## Do you need SEO and AEO from the same agency?

Not necessarily, though you do need both covered. Google states that the usual SEO best practices still apply to its AI features.

Its [AI features guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features) also says no additional requirements or special optimizations are needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. That point favors the combined SEO and AEO approach Discovered Labs takes.

If your Google rankings already have an owner, in-house or at another agency, a partner focused on AI answers adds to that work, and we publish answer pages on your domain with guardrails that protect your existing search presence.

ChatGPT has its own rules. OpenAI's [crawler documentation](https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots) says: "Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links". A site health check should catch that kind of block.

Off-site signals may matter too. [Ahrefs looked at 75,000 brands](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/) and found brand web mentions track AI Overview visibility far more closely than backlinks do, with correlations of 0.664 against 0.218, though Ahrefs cautions that correlation is not causation. Our guide to [getting cited by AI engines](/blog/how-to-get-cited-by-ai-engines) covers the on-site side.

## Which client results have we published?

Our case studies page includes these two client results.

- **[FastTrackr AI](/case-studies/fasttrackr-ai).** From 0.1% AI visibility and #338 out of 458 brands, it climbed in about 100 days to #3 for AI citations among brands in its category, plus #4 among cited sources.
- **[New York edibles retailer](/case-studies/new-york-edibles-retailer).** It went from 1.5% visibility (#50) to 25% (#4 of 374 brands), and its own site became the top cited source for the category, above New York State's official site.

> We went from being essentially invisible in our category to the #3 most-cited brand inside one quarter.
>
> Vineet Mohan, Founder and CEO, FastTrackr AI

## How long do OnlyAEO and Discovered Labs take to show results?

For our clients, the first measurable results usually arrive after 60 days or more, and there is no guarantee of results, rankings or citations. Discovered Labs gives different timelines on different pages.

- **Home page FAQ.** Initial results typically within 1 to 2 weeks, and full optimization impact usually within 3 to 4 months.
- **Methodology page.** Initial citation movement in 2 to 4 weeks, share-of-voice gains in 6 to 8 weeks, and compounding effects over 3 to 6 months.
- **AEO service page.** Says "we won't put a date on it" and gives only a rough guide.

## Which questions should you put to both before signing?

Ask both for evidence you can check yourself, and send them identical questions so the replies line up.

1. **One raw answer and its prompt.** Ask for an AI answer exactly as the engine returned it, with the prompt, then rerun it in the same engine.
2. **Answer types.** Are a recommendation, a passing mention and a source link reported as separate counts or rolled into one?
3. **Engines and models.** Which model versions run, is web search on, and how often does each prompt repeat?
4. **Prompt source.** How is the prompt set built, and which buyer roles does it represent?
5. **Approval rights.** Who signs off content before it goes live, and can your team stop a piece?
6. **Unsourced claims.** What happens to a draft sentence whose number nobody can source?
7. **Exit terms.** What is the notice period, and what do you keep (reports, content, data) if you leave?

For a longer list to send in writing, use our [agency RFP question template](/blog/aeo-rfp-template-28-questions-to-evaluate-an-agency-honestly).

## Which buyer does each one fit?

Start with the scope of your brief, then check it against the two lists below. Each list draws only on what that company's own pages state, so an item on one list but not the other does not mean the other one lacks it.

### Discovered Labs suits you if

- **Google rankings matter as much as AI answers**, and you want one agency to own both.
- **Reddit or link building is the missing piece** in your current plan.
- **You would rather talk to specialists** than to an account manager.
- **Your team reads tracking data closely** and wants view-only access to the agency's own tracker.

### OnlyAEO suits you if

- **AI answers are the whole brief**, because someone else already owns your Google SEO.
- **You need YouTube videos or other languages** in the same monthly plan as your articles.
- **Every reported answer must be rerunnable.** See the citation section.
- **Your buyers use DeepSeek or Grok**, both on our engine list in the table.
- **Nothing goes live without your sign-off.** See the five checks.

## More questions about OnlyAEO and Discovered Labs

### How much do OnlyAEO and Discovered Labs cost?

This page leaves prices out on purpose, since a price means little without the scope behind it. Ask each one for a written quote, and check which services it covers and which are priced separately.

### Who posts on Reddit for each one?

Discovered Labs runs a dedicated, aged account infrastructure and manages warming, karma and standing, so clients never need their own accounts. We draft channel-native posts for Reddit, Quora, X, LinkedIn, Substack, Medium and G2, ready for a person to post.

### Is OnlyAEO certified for security?

Yes, we hold SOC 2 Type II compliance. Access works through Google sign-in invites with four roles (viewer, reviewer, client admin and operator), each workspace is isolated from the others, and provider keys stay encrypted at rest.

### Can OnlyAEO plan from an AI visibility report we already have?

Yes. Our [content engine](/content-engine) takes a report from any AI visibility tool as Word, PDF, CSV, Excel, Markdown, HTML, plain text, or from a share link, and reads it in 20 to 60 seconds.

### Does OnlyAEO track traffic and pipeline from AI answers?

Yes. [LLM Attribution](/llm-attribution) ties pipeline back to the AI answers that sent it, and our tracking recognises 170+ AI crawlers and records AI-referred visits that GA4 misses.