AXO (AI Experience Optimization) is TPG's proprietary framework for measuring and improving how a B2B brand is represented across AI-powered buyer research tools. It extends AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) by measuring the full buyer experience across platforms, personas, and stages, not just individual content pieces.
The core insight behind AXO: AI tools do not just cite your content. They synthesize a representation of your brand. That representation, shaped by what AI models have learned about your company from thousands of sources, is what buyers encounter when they research you. If that representation is inaccurate, incomplete, or unfavorable, no amount of great sales execution can fully compensate for it.
What AXO Measures
The AXO diagnostic assesses a brand's AI presence across six dimensions.
Content Breadth: How many of the buyer questions relevant to your category, product, and persona set does your content answer? A company with strong content breadth shows up in AI responses across a wide range of queries. A company with weak breadth shows up only for branded queries.
Persona Relevance: How accurately do AI tools represent your brand to different buyer personas? In a typical enterprise B2B buying committee, the CFO, CMO, CTO, and VP of Sales all research independently. AXO measures whether AI tools give accurate, favorable representations for each persona's specific questions.
Question Coverage: How comprehensively do AI tools cover the questions buyers ask about your product category? This dimension measures topical completeness: are all the major buyer questions answered accurately in AI responses, or are there gaps where buyers are getting inaccurate information or information about competitors?
Competitive Standing: How does your brand compare to primary competitors in AI responses to the same queries? AXO benchmarks your AI visibility against 3-5 direct competitors, revealing whether competitors have a structural advantage in AI representation.
Citation Quality: When AI tools do cite your content, are the citations accurate and representative? A citation that misrepresents your product positioning is worse than no citation. This dimension measures the accuracy and completeness of AI references to your brand.
Answer Coherence: When a buyer assembles AI-generated information about your brand across multiple queries and platforms, does it produce a consistent, accurate, compelling picture? Or is it fragmented, inconsistent, or contradictory?
The Scoring Model
Each dimension is scored on a 0-100 scale based on structured query testing across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. The six dimension scores are combined into a composite AXO score.
Benchmark: The average AXO score across 200+ B2B companies assessed by TPG is 28 out of 100. A score of 28 means roughly 28% of the AI buyer experience is being executed at a quality level that supports deal consideration. 72% is either missing or working against the brand.
Score bands: 0-30 is Low (largely absent or misrepresented in AI buyer research), 31-60 is Developing (present in some query areas, significant gaps remain), 61-80 is Strong (competitive AI presence across most query types), 81-100 is Leading (consistent, accurate, comprehensive AI representation with active monitoring and optimization).
How AXO Differs from AEO
AEO is the content practice: structuring individual pieces of content to be cited by AI tools. AXO is the measurement and strategy framework: assessing the full AI buyer experience across platforms, personas, stages, and competitive context.
A company can implement AEO practices on its content library without ever running an AXO diagnostic. A company that runs an AXO diagnostic knows exactly which content gaps to prioritize, which personas are underserved, which competitors have AI advantages, and which of its existing content is being accurately cited vs. miscited or ignored.
AEO is the tool. AXO is the blueprint.
Who Uses AXO
AXO diagnostics are used by B2B marketing teams who want to understand and improve their brand's AI visibility. Primary users: CMOs and VPs of Marketing at B2B technology, financial services, professional services, and manufacturing companies, typically with revenue of $50M-$5B and enterprise or mid-market sales motions.
The AXO diagnostic is available through TPG. Contact pedowitzgroup.com to request an assessment.
FAQ
Q: What is AXO? A: AXO (AI Experience Optimization) is TPG's proprietary framework for measuring and improving how a B2B brand is represented across AI-powered buyer research tools. It assesses six dimensions of AI presence: content breadth, persona relevance, question coverage, competitive standing, citation quality, and answer coherence.
Q: How is AXO different from AEO? A: AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the practice of structuring content to be cited by AI tools. AXO is the diagnostic framework that measures the full AI buyer experience: how accurately and favorably a brand is represented across AI platforms, personas, and buyer stages. AEO is the execution. AXO is the measurement and strategy.
Q: What is a good AXO score? A: Based on TPG's assessments of 200+ B2B companies, the average score is 28 out of 100. A score of 61-80 is considered strong and represents a competitive AI presence. Leading organizations score above 80. Most companies are working to close the gap from their current score, which typically falls between 20-40.
Q: How long does an AXO assessment take? A: The standard TPG AXO diagnostic takes 2-3 weeks to complete. It involves structured query testing across 100+ buyer queries, 4 AI platforms, and 5-6 buyer personas. The output is a scored report across all six dimensions with specific content and strategy recommendations.
Q: What is the ROI of improving an AXO score? A: The direct ROI is AI-influenced pipeline: deals where AI research played a role in the buyer's consideration of your brand. TPG's data shows that AI-cited brands are 3.2x more likely to make the initial shortlist than brands absent from AI responses. For a company with $10M in annual pipeline, a 3x improvement in shortlist inclusion from AI research represents a significant pipeline upside.
Q: Is AXO only relevant for large companies? A: No. AXO is relevant for any B2B company selling to buyers who use AI tools in their research process, which in 2026 is most mid-market and enterprise B2B buyers. Smaller companies often have an opportunity to out-perform larger, better-known competitors in AI visibility if they invest in AEO-compliant content earlier.
Jeff Pedowitz | President and CEO, The Pedowitz Group | AXO Diagnostic | AEO Complete Guide