Resources
Open documentation, tracked in the open.
The thinking behind AAEO is published openly — not gated. These documents explain how AI answer engines actually learn about companies, why analyst research behaves differently in this channel than anywhere else, and how AR teams should decide which collateral is worth investing in. They're the category education; the platform's scoring methodology stays proprietary.
The public repository
Why the documentation lives on a public Git repository
All of the category education is published in a public Git repository on GitHub. That is a deliberate choice. Analyst relations is a field where the ideas people need to make good decisions too often sit behind paywalls. Ours don't: anyone can read the documentation, and — under a Creative Commons BY-ND 4.0 license — quote it freely, with attribution.
Hosting it on Git also makes the work honest over time. Every revision is recorded in public version history, so anyone can see exactly what changed, when, and why — the same way an open reference work like Wikipedia keeps a visible edit log. When our view of a fast-moving topic (an analyst firm's AI-usage policy, a crawler's behavior) shifts, the change is visible rather than quietly overwritten. Open access and open change history are the point.
What is notin the repository: the platform's scoring methodology, query-design practice, signal weightings, and analyst-intelligence layer. Those are proprietary and are deliberately never published. See Licensing & Terms for how the platform itself is licensed.
The documents
Each answers one question an AR leader is actually asking. All are free to read.
Gated research and AI engines
Can paywalled, licensed, or gated analyst reports actually be seen by AI answer engines? (Short answer: essentially no — and what the engines read instead is the finding that should change your AR budget.)
AEO / GEO vs. SEO
How answer-engine optimization differs from search-engine optimization, with the published evidence — and why analyst-relations teams specifically need the distinction.
The artifact investment framework
Which AR collateral is worth resources in an answer-engine world, how to score any artifact across four dimensions, and the contract levers worth negotiating with analyst firms.
Quoting, reprints, and AI ingestion
What Gartner, Forrester, and IDC policies actually permit: external quoting rules, what a reprint license does and doesn't buy, and whether licensed research can feed an internal LLM.
Peer Insights and the review layer
Why the free review layer is a leading AI-citation channel in analyst relations, what vendors may cite at zero cost, and what the robots.txt evidence shows about feeding AI crawlers.
Documentation © 2026 Signal vs Noise Strategic Consulting, licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0. Share and quote freely with attribution to AAEO by Signal vs Noise Strategic Consulting. Gartner®, Magic Quadrant®, Peer Insights™, Forrester®, and Forrester Wave™ are trademarks of their respective owners; AAEO is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by any analyst firm or AI vendor.