AEO by industry
We asked ChatGPT 40 buyer questions across five B2B categories, and logged every source it cited.
Every category has its own sources, rules and buyer questions. Salient researches yours, then publishes the pages AI quotes, on your domain. Done for you, tracked to pipeline.
Share of cited sources, 8 buyer questions per category
sources logged across 40 buyer questions in five B2B categories.
01Industries
Any B2B or B2B SaaS category. These four have their own pages, with our data and the rules for each.
100% of cited sources were vendors' own pages, mostly product pages.
AEO for fintech96% vendors' own pages, with docs close behind product pages.
AEO for cybersecurity17 of 30 cited sources were docs pages.
AEO for developer tools6 of 28 cited sources were Gartner Peer Insights or G2 pages.
AEO for logisticsSEO and AEO in one program, for categories without their own page yet.
SaaS SEO agencyRun the 20-point AEO checklist, or book the free 30-minute audit.
Free AEO audit02Original data
Mostly vendors' own pages: 108 of 117 citations across the four industries. The type of page changes by industry, and that changes what we build first.
Scroll sideways to see the whole table.
| Category | Questions | Sources cited | On vendors' own sites | Most cited | What we build first |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fintech | 8 | 32 | 32 (100%) | Product pages (24), Pricing pages (4) | Shortlist guides and pricing explainers on your site |
| Cybersecurity | 8 | 27 | 26 (96%) | Product pages (16), Docs pages (7) | Comparison and framework mapping pages, linked to docs |
| Developer tools | 8 | 30 | 30 (100%) | Docs pages (17), Product pages (6) | How-to guides that link into your docs |
| Logistics | 8 | 28 | 20 (71%) | Product pages (14), Gartner Peer Insights (5) | Integration pages, plus review profiles that match |
| SEO agencies (our market) | 8 | 29 | 13 (45%) | Directories, mostly Clutch (16), Agencies' own sites (11) | A directory profile, and pages that answer the exact question |
Method: 8 buyer questions sent to ChatGPT (gpt-5.4-mini with web search on, US) through the DataForSEO API on 7 October 2026, one run each. A snapshot, not a ranking: answers change between runs. For SEO agencies, “vendors' own sites” means the agencies' own sites.
03What it means
Your own pages do most of the work. Which pages depends on how your buyers ask.
In four of five categories, at least 7 in 10 cited sources were the vendors' own pages.
Developers got docs, finance and security buyers got product pages, logistics buyers got review pages too.
ChatGPT named one to eight companies per answer, usually two to four. Everyone else was left out.
04Questions
B2B and B2B SaaS companies in any category. We have dedicated pages for fintech, cybersecurity, developer tools and logistics, and we run the same process for other B2B software categories.
In our test of 32 buyer questions across fintech, cybersecurity, developer tools and logistics on 7 October 2026, 108 of 117 citations were on vendors' own websites. The rest were Gartner Peer Insights, G2, a Forrester blog post and a 3PL marketplace's lists.
No. Developer tool answers mostly cited docs pages, fintech and security answers mostly cited product pages, and logistics answers also cited review sites such as Gartner Peer Insights.
We run your buyers' real questions through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews and Copilot, log who gets named and which pages get cited, and check the rules that apply to claims in your category. That becomes your first gap report.
No. Salient works only with B2B and B2B SaaS companies.
In 30 minutes we run your buyers' questions through AI and show you who gets named, and the first pages we'd build.
No credit card, no sales script. Thirty minutes with the pod that would run it.
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