HubSpot AEO Grader Review: Is It Useful for an Initial AI Visibility Audit?
HubSpot's AI Search Grader, often called the AEO Grader, is useful as a free first look, not as an audit. It asks ChatGPT (through GPT-5.4 mini), Perplexity and Gemini how they characterise your brand from their training data. It then scores sentiment, presence quality, brand recognition, share of voice and market position, for a total out of 100. That shows how the models perceive you, and lets you compare yourself with competitors, since it accepts any brand name. It does not test the questions buyers actually ask with live search, show which pages are cited, or find technical blockers. Use it as step zero. Then run a question-based check, or HubSpot's paid AEO tool at $50 a month for 25 tracked prompts.
What does the grader do?
HubSpot describes a four-step process:
- You enter your company name, location, industry and product or service.
- The tool sends that information to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, asking each how it characterises your brand based on its training data. HubSpot names the models as GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity and Gemini.
- It calculates a composite score out of 100 across five dimensions, using what HubSpot calls deterministic scoring with schema validation and retry logic.
- You complete a form to see the full report: the score, a breakdown and a written interpretation. All fields are required.
It is a one-time check, free, with no account needed. The form means your details go to HubSpot's marketing team.
How is the score made up?
| Dimension | Weight | What it measures | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | Up to 40 points | Overall, contextual and source-based tone of how models describe you | The largest weight, so a well-liked but little-known brand can score well |
| Presence quality | Up to 20 points | Depth of discussion, authority of sources behind it, richness of information | Judged from model knowledge, not from cited pages |
| Brand recognition | Up to 20 points | How widely models recognise the brand | Favours older, larger brands |
| Share of voice | Up to 10 points | Your standing against competitors at the time of analysis | A single snapshot |
| Market competition | Up to 10 points | Your position in the competitive landscape | Depends on which competitors the models name |
Because sentiment carries 40% of the score, the total says more about how kindly models describe you than about how often they recommend you. Read the breakdown, not the headline number.
What can it tell you, and what can it not?
It can tell you:
- Whether the models know you exist, and what they think you do.
- Wrong or outdated descriptions, such as an old product line, a former name or confusion with a similarly named company.
- Tone, including complaints the models associate with you.
- How competitors compare, if you run the grader on them too.
It cannot tell you:
- Whether you appear for real buyer questions, such as "best payroll software for a 10-person company". The grader asks about your brand, not about your category.
- What live search-based answers say. Many answers in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI features are built from web search at the moment of asking, and can differ from what a model says from memory.
- Which pages or sources are cited, so you cannot see what to fix or whom to approach.
- Whether crawlers can reach your site, or whether your pages are indexed.
- How results vary. It is one run, and answers change between runs.
HubSpot AI Search Grader review for optimizing search strategy
Use the grader to shape a strategy, not to measure it. Three results are worth acting on:
- Misdescription. If models describe an old product, wrong audience or wrong category, fix the source of truth. Update your homepage, about page and main product pages, and correct your listings on the directories and review sites that describe you.
- Low recognition. If models barely know you, the long-term fix is independent coverage: reviews, press, comparison articles and expert mentions that later feed both training data and live search.
- Negative sentiment themes. If models associate you with a specific complaint, check whether it is current. Either fix the problem, or publish clear, current information that addresses it.
Then move to questions. Write 10 to 20 questions buyers ask, run them in the assistants with search on, and note whether you appear and which sources are cited. That is what shows where to spend effort. A full do-it-yourself method, plus the free Google and Bing AI reports, is in how to get a free GEO or AEO visibility audit.
How should you run an initial audit with it?
- Run the grader for your brand and save the full report.
- Run it for two or three competitors you lose deals to.
- Compare the breakdowns, looking for dimensions where the gap is largest.
- List every factual error in how models describe you.
- Run ten category questions yourself in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google, with search on, and record sources.
- Check technical access: robots.txt rules for AI crawlers, CDN bot settings, and whether key pages show content without JavaScript.
- Decide the first three fixes from all of the above, not from the grader alone.
An audit that starts from your URL rather than your brand name is covered in how to audit a website for AI visibility gaps using its URL.
What does HubSpot AEO add?
HubSpot's paid AEO tool is the ongoing version. As listed on its product page:
- Price: $50 a month, or $45 a month billed annually, with 25 prompts and more available to buy. It is also included in Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise, where CRM data makes recommendations more specific.
- Engines: ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
- Features: brand visibility score, sentiment, competitor share of voice, prompt tracking with suggested prompts, and citation analysis of domains, pages and content types in answers. It also gives prioritised recommendations, such as creating a page, fixing a technical gap, publishing a video or contacting third-party sites.
- Trial: a free trial is offered.
At $2 a prompt a month on monthly billing, it is priced in the lower-middle of the market. It is a natural choice for teams already on HubSpot. It does not list Google AI Overviews, AI Mode or Claude, so check coverage if those matter to you. How source-level and brand-level visibility differ is covered in source visibility vs AI visibility.
Is it worth using?
Yes, as a free ten-minute baseline. It is especially useful for catching misdescriptions and for a quick competitor comparison. It is not worth treating as an audit, reporting its score to leadership as "our AI visibility", or re-running it to measure progress, since one training-data snapshot says little about live answers. Similar free scores from other vendors have the same limits. One example is covered in the Cloudflare Agent Readiness Score review.
What do people ask about HubSpot's grader?
Is the AI Search Grader really free?
Yes. It is a free one-time check, but the full report requires a form with your contact details.
Does it check Google AI Overviews?
No. It uses ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini.
Why is my score high when AI never recommends us?
The score is weighted towards sentiment. A brand models describe kindly can score well without appearing for category questions.
Can I track changes with it?
Not meaningfully. Use tracked prompts in a monitoring tool, or repeat the same manual questions monthly.
Published by The Kovmere Team · updated Sep 29, 2026 · More resources