Question 1

What is Sightline?

Accepted Answer

Sightline is an Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) platform that measures how AI engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude answer questions about your brand, then ships the fixes that get you named in those answers. Every plan is done-for-you — Sightline runs the scans, drafts the fixes, and publishes on your approval, so you don't need a marketing team to compete for AI visibility.

Question 2

How does Sightline work?

Accepted Answer

Sightline runs a locked set of your buyers' real questions through each AI engine's official API, tracks which brands the engines name in the answers, and works backwards from there. Sightline fixes your site (structured data, page copy, FAQs, which AI tools may read it), the sources engines cite (listings, reviews, your Google Business Profile), and re-scans on a schedule to show which fixes raised your score.

Question 3

What AI engines does Sightline track?

Accepted Answer

Sightline checks a business on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, and Practitioner and Agency plans add Grok. Personal plans check you on 4 engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Grok are asked through their official APIs, and Google AI Overviews is read from Google's own results page, so what you see is what the engine actually said.

Question 4

How is Sightline different from an SEO tool?

Accepted Answer

SEO tools optimize you for search-result pages people click through. Sightline optimizes you for AI answers people never click — 60% of searches now end without a click (Bain, 2025) and half of consumers use AI-powered search (McKinsey, 2025). Different battlefield: an engine's answer is the whole conversion event, so Sightline works the answer, not the link.

Question 5

Does Sightline actually ship the fixes for me?

Accepted Answer

Yes — Sightline is done-for-you at every price tier. Our Coach writes and publishes every fix (page copy, FAQ pages, structured data, listings) through the apps you connect, keeps a log of what it changed, and lets you undo any change. You never open a CMS or write a line of code. Business plans add off-site work (listings, reviews, Google Business Profile).

Question 6

How much does Sightline cost?

Accepted Answer

Sightline starts free — the Starter plan runs one first scan (four AI engines for a person, ChatGPT and Perplexity for a business), no card required. People choose between two plans: Free (Starter) and Personal Pro ($19/mo, a new scan every week and the Coach fixing what it finds). Businesses choose Professional ($190/mo, 3 businesses, weekly scans, fixes shipped to your site and listings) or Practitioner ($279/mo, up to 10 clients for consultants and agencies).

Question 7

Who uses Sightline?

Accepted Answer

Sightline is used by solo practitioners, small businesses, and consultants whose customers now ask AI who to hire before they call anyone. That includes law firms, technical consultancies, roofing and trades, agencies, and independent content creators. The Practitioner tier is specifically designed for consultants and coaches who manage AI visibility across multiple client accounts under their own brand.

Question 8

How long until Sightline makes a difference?

Accepted Answer

Sightline's first scan takes about 15–20 minutes. Fixes ship within days. Because every paid plan re-scans weekly (Starter is one scan), you can see which fixes changed what an engine said within one to four weeks. Each scan reports projected versus actual change, so a fix that didn't move anything gets flagged instead of buried.

Question 9

Is my data safe with Sightline?

Accepted Answer

Sightline reads your public site and the facts you confirm during onboarding, and never sells that data. Your questions and the names being checked go to the AI engines we measure and to our AI-call tracing vendor; the full list of who receives what is in our Data Processing Addendum. Sign-in runs through Clerk (SOC 2 Type II), integration secrets are encrypted at rest, and every change the Coach makes is logged and can be undone. You can disconnect an app or delete your account at any time.

Question 10

Can I try Sightline for free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Sightline's Starter plan is free forever with no credit card. It runs your first scan — on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews for a person, ChatGPT and Perplexity for a business — and hands you a short list of the fixes we'd make first, so you can decide whether the paid work is worth it before you pay for anything.

Question 11

Why isn't my business showing up when people ask ChatGPT for a recommendation?

Accepted Answer

Sightline finds three usual reasons ChatGPT never names you: your site isn't structured enough for the engine to extract you as an entity (missing structured data, thin content, no named author), the third-party sources ChatGPT actually cites (listings, review sites, industry directories) don't mention you either, or your name is being confused with a bigger brand and gets dropped. Your first Sightline scan tells you which of the three is happening.

Question 12

How do AI answer engines decide which businesses to name?

Accepted Answer

AI answer engines score candidates on citability (is there a well-formed source they can quote?), authority (does the source look trustworthy — structured data, author, links from named sites), and match quality (does the entity actually answer the buyer's specific question?). Sightline measures all three per engine per buyer question, so instead of guessing what ChatGPT wants you get the exact citability + authority + match delta between you and the brands it does name.

Question 13

How are my competitors getting mentioned in AI answers while I'm being ignored?

Accepted Answer

Sightline's Share of Voice view runs the exact same buyer questions through the same engines against you and your tracked competitors, then shows which sources the engines are pulling from when they cite the competitor. Nine times out of ten it's a fixable gap: they have FAQ structured data and you don't, they're in the industry directory the engine trusts and you're not, or their homepage answers the buyer question in a self-contained paragraph and yours buries the answer three scrolls down.

Question 14

What's the ROI of AI visibility versus traditional SEO?

Accepted Answer

Adobe Analytics measured 42% better conversion from AI-referred shoppers than other traffic on US retail sites in Q1 2026. G2 reported 69% of B2B buyers picked a different vendor than they'd planned because of what an AI chatbot told them (March 2026). AI visibility isn't a hedge against SEO — it's where the buying decision now happens. Sightline's Personal Pro plan re-checks a person every week for $19/mo, versus $190+/mo for legacy SEO tools that don't cover ChatGPT / Perplexity / Claude at all.

Question 15

How much should I budget for improving my visibility in AI answers?

Accepted Answer

Sightline's plans cover most budgets: Free (Starter) runs one first scan; Personal Pro ($19/mo) scans a person every week and fixes what it finds; Professional ($190/mo) does the same for a business, on your site and your listings. If you're staffing this internally, plan for roughly 5-8 hours per week of copy and structured-data work — that's what the done-for-you Professional plan compresses into a monthly bill.

Question 16

Our organic traffic dropped — is that connected to AI answer engines?

Accepted Answer

Probably, yes. 60% of searches now end without a click to any website (Bain, 2025), and Pew found people click a regular result 15% of the time versus 8% when Google shows an AI summary. That traffic didn't vanish — it's landing inside an AI answer instead of on your page. Sightline measures whether your brand is the name inside that answer, since that's the only version of 'ranking' left once the click disappears.

Question 17

What are red flags when hiring someone for AI answer engine optimization?

Accepted Answer

Walk away from anyone promising a '#1 ranking' — AEO has no ranked list, only whether an engine names you or a competitor. Other red flags: no per-engine breakdown (ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude cite differently and need separate evidence), no before/after re-scan to verify a fix actually moved anything, and no access to the exact questions and answers they tested. Sightline shows you the exact question, engine, and answer behind every score.

Question 18

What metrics prove AI answer engine optimization is actually working?

Accepted Answer

Citation frequency per engine (how often each engine on your plan names you across your tracked buyer questions) is the core one. Sightline also tracks share of voice against named competitors, the mix shift across the five findings (absent, misrepresented, unstable, displaced, unanswered), and projected versus verified score impact per fix — so a change that didn't help gets flagged, not buried in a vanity dashboard.