Beacon is an AI-powered SEO and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) agent built for the dual-channel search era — where content must perform for both traditional Google rankings and the AI engines now answering millions of queries daily.
Search is fragmenting. Google remains the dominant traffic source for most websites — but ChatGPT search, Perplexity AI, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini now intercept a growing share of queries before users ever reach organic results. These AI answer engines don't rank content the way Google does. They retrieve, synthesize, and cite it based on a different set of signals: factual density, entity clarity, answer structure, and semantic specificity.
The result is that the content Google ranks #1 for a query is often not the content an AI engine would cite in an answer to that same query. Brands optimizing only for traditional SEO are invisible to the AI channel. Brands creating content for AI engines without SEO fundamentals are leaving organic traffic on the table.
Most SEO tools were built for the Google-only world. Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz excel at backlink analysis, keyword research, and rank tracking — but none of them natively score your content for AI engine citability. Beacon was built to fill that gap.
Beacon is a web-based analysis agent that accepts a URL or pasted content, evaluates it against both traditional SEO criteria and AEO citation signals, and returns a structured, scored report with specific, prioritized recommendations.
Every full audit produces three scores — an overall score, an SEO score, and an AEO score — alongside specific findings for each audited dimension. The report includes quick wins sorted by impact and effort, and a step-by-step priority action plan. Beacon doesn't return generic advice. Every recommendation is specific to the content analyzed: specific title tags, specific missing entities, specific atomic facts to add, specific schema types to implement.
Beacon analyzes pages against 8 AEO dimensions: answer clarity, citability, atomic fact density, entity clarity, structured data coverage, semantic coverage, freshness signals, and content gaps. It also analyzes 6 SEO dimensions: title tag, meta description, heading structure, keyword optimization, internal linking, and technical SEO.
Beacon analyzes pages against both traditional Google ranking factors and AI answer engine citation signals simultaneously — in a single analysis.
New users receive 3 free page analyses on signup with no credit card required.
Beacon evaluates content for citability by Perplexity AI, ChatGPT search, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Claude.
Every audit-mode analysis fetches real Google Lighthouse performance data (mobile and desktop) via the PageSpeed Insights API, displaying LCP, FCP, TBT, and CLS.
Beacon returns results as structured data — a JSON report with scored dimensions, quick wins, and a priority action plan — making it compatible with any content workflow.
Beacon assesses 8 AEO dimensions: answer clarity, citability, atomic fact density, entity clarity, structured data needs, semantic coverage, freshness signals, and content gaps.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content to be selected and cited by AI-powered search engines — distinct from traditional SEO ranking signals.
Beacon was designed for content marketers, SEO professionals, and SaaS teams who need visibility in both traditional search and AI-powered answer engines.
Pages optimized for AEO use FAQ schema, HowTo schema, clear heading hierarchies, and inverted pyramid writing structure — patterns LLMs are trained to extract and cite.
AI answer engines like Perplexity and ChatGPT weight factual density, entity disambiguation, and source corroboration when selecting content to cite in responses.
Beacon is built on Claude — Anthropic's AI model — which powers the content analysis, scoring, and recommendation engine. Claude is calibrated to evaluate content against the criteria that AI answer engines use when selecting citations, making it well-suited to assess AEO signals that rule-based tools cannot easily capture.
Google Lighthouse performance data is fetched via the PageSpeed Insights API, which provides the same underlying data that Google uses for Core Web Vitals assessment. Both mobile and desktop Lighthouse runs execute in parallel with the Claude analysis, adding no additional wait time to the audit workflow.
Beacon is a web application built with Next.js and hosted on Railway. User accounts and authentication are managed via Supabase. A credits system controls access — each analysis consumes one credit, with 3 free credits on signup and additional credits available for purchase.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring and writing content so that AI-powered answer engines — including ChatGPT search, Perplexity AI, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini — select and cite your content in their responses.
Unlike traditional SEO, which optimizes for ranking signals like backlinks and keyword density, AEO optimizes for the signals large language models use when deciding what to cite: factual density (how many discrete, verifiable claims are present), entity clarity (whether people, places, organizations, and concepts are unambiguously identified), answer structure (whether content leads with conclusions rather than building to them), and structured data (whether schema.org markup makes content machine-readable).
The term is relatively new, but the underlying principle is not: search engines have always preferred content that clearly and specifically answers the question being asked. AI engines simply surface this preference more directly — because they are, literally, trying to answer questions.
3 analyses included on signup. See exactly where your content stands for Google rankings and AI engine citations — and what to fix first.