FAQ

AEO stands for answer engine optimization. The audit reviews your site’s structure and pages for how easily AI answers can use them as a source, and ranks what to fix so your site is easier to cite. It does not guarantee search visibility or citations.

If SEO is about showing up in search results, AEO is about being a good source for AI answers. The audit covers both: on the search side, indexing and speed (when access and keys are in place) and Naver web-document and blog rankings (when the search API key is set); on the AI side, whether first paragraphs answer the question right away and other signs a page is easy to cite.

Places people find by searching, such as clinics, tax firms, churches and academies.

Customer-supplied observations from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overview screens are kept separate. Provider API samples can differ from those screens; we confirm the engines, questions and measurement conditions before agreeing the scope. Unmeasured items remain labelled as such. Naver rankings need the relevant key and agreed keywords.

No. For Naver, when the search API key is set, we read only web-document and blog rankings; we don’t look at the full results page, AI Briefing or Place. We haven’t confirmed whether Naver officially provides AI Briefing data, so we don’t cover it today. Naver Maps and Place visibility are outside this service. Collecting rankings on a regular schedule happens only if we agree on it in the consultation.

You can request a free first report with your site URL and reply email. We review the target, questions and available scope before confirming what can be provided.

For the first report, all we need is your site URL and an email for the reply. If you hire us for an audit, we ask for view access to Search Console (for the index check) and your sitemap URL. Until we have that access, we don’t run the index check.

When measurement proceeds, we report business mentions and own-site citations by question, engine, repeat and time, with the scope actually checked. Failures and unmeasured items are distinguished from zero. Page scores, speed and top improvements appear only when supporting data and review are available. Page audits, implementation and monthly checks are agreed separately. Index checks, which need Search Console access, are done only after you grant it; Naver rank checks start once the keywords are set.

By email, at the address you leave. We review your request and send what we can provide to that address, and you don’t need an account to get it. Client portal accounts are registered by SAGAMORE when the audit begins.

They are used only to reply with your report. Requests are stored in a database in Supabase’s Seoul region, and only SAGAMORE’s operator can see them. To have them deleted, reply to our email and ask.

The AI answer lists your site as a source and builds on its content. When we assess citations, this is the standard: an answer that mentions your name without a source is not counted. This audit does not count site visits or inquiries.

At the start we agree on a list of the questions your customers actually ask. We don’t run automated checks on the answers shown in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews, so if you check those yourself and send us the date and result, we log them question by question as a separate category. AI answers can change from one ask to the next, so we read the record over time rather than a single result.

On three things: answer fit, trust signals and a direct first paragraph. Score = 0.4 × answer fit + 0.3 × trust signals + 0.3 × direct first paragraph, and pages under 2.5 are reviewed by a person first. Answer fit (how usable the page is as a source for AI answers) and trust signals (whether author, date, sources and expertise are visible) are rated 1–5; a direct first paragraph counts 1 if the first paragraph answers the question right away, 0 if not. We also sort each page by search intent and pick out pages too thin for their intent. We read up to the first 8,000 characters of each page and score up to 300 pages within the separately agreed scope.

The score is how we choose which pages to fix; it does not mean citations will rise. A higher score means the page is closer to a citable form; whether citations actually changed is checked separately, from the records you send us. We do not guarantee that citations increase.

For the index check. Which pages made it into Google’s index, and why others were left out, comes from Search Console data. We ask only for view access, when you hire us for an audit; the first report doesn’t need it, and we don’t run the index check until we have it.

With PageSpeed Insights data, judged by Core Web Vitals. It runs only when an access key is set up; without one, this item is left out of the report. The report flags pages that fall short on loading (LCP), responsiveness (INP) or layout shift (CLS).

Yes. We rewrite the first paragraphs and Q&A of pages below the bar, and write and publish new articles where needed. Sentences with figures, legal references or professional judgment are confirmed by you before publishing. For indexing and speed issues that need code or server changes, the report names the page and the reason, and your developer or hosting provider makes the change.

Sentences with figures, legal references or professional judgment. First paragraphs and articles that contain them go live only after you confirm them, and the request to confirm appears at the top of the client portal under “What you need to do”, with a deadline.

No. For indexing and speed issues that need code or server changes, the report names the page and the reason, and your developer or hosting provider makes the change.

In the client portal. Audit progress and reports are posted there, and only records published to you are visible.

With the Google or Kakao account of your registered email. SAGAMORE registers your account when the audit begins, and emails that aren’t registered can’t get in.

What you need to do, which stage we are at and this week’s work, new articles and rewritten pages, and monthly reports, on one screen. Articles and rewritten pages stay there as deliverables with their published URLs.

This is the report you get if you choose monthly checks. Six parts: summary, AI citation readiness and observation records, page scores, indexing and speed, Naver search, and next steps. It compares results with last month on the same standard and lists pages below the bar and what to fix first. Indexing needs access and speed needs a key. Provider API observations and client-supplied consumer-screen records are kept separate; questions that don’t name your business (discovery) and questions that do (branded) are counted separately. Missing data or comparable earlier results are marked unassessed or not comparable.