AthenaHQ is a cutting-edge platform for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), designed to help brands visualize and optimize their visibility and performance across AI-driven search platforms and AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Google’s AI Overviews, and more. With AthenaHQ, brands can pinpoint content gaps, track competitor presence, and optimize their AI visibility, securing growth and a dominant share of voice in the evolving world of generative AI search. Watch a full demo of AthenaHQ brought to you by SourceForge.
In this SourceForge Product Demo Showcase, we speak with Andrew Yan, Co-Founder & CEO of AthenaHQ, about the evolving landscape of AI-driven search and the importance of generative engine optimization (GEO). Andrew shares insights from his background at Google and DeepMind, explaining how AI is changing search behavior and the need for brands to adapt their strategies. The conversation includes a live demo of AthenaHQ’s platform, showcasing its features for analyzing brand performance in AI search, competitor analysis, sentiment tracking, and actionable recommendations for content optimization. Andrew emphasizes the significance of understanding the new dynamics of search and how AthenaHQ positions itself as a comprehensive solution for businesses navigating this shift.
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Show Notes
Takeaways
- AI search is becoming the default for many users.
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) differs from traditional SEO.
- AthenaHQ aims to be a comprehensive tool for AI search.
- The platform provides insights into brand performance across AI search engines.
- Key metrics include share of voice and overall GEO score.
- Sentiment analysis helps brands understand public perception.
- Content gap identification is essential for effective strategy.
- AthenaHQ’s Action Center offers actionable recommendations.
- The future of search will involve multiple platforms and models.
- Companies must adapt to the shift from SEO to GEO to succeed.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction to AI Search and AthenaHQ
01:06 – Andrew Yan’s Background and Insights on AI Search
04:02 – Understanding Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
05:38 – AthenaHQ’s Mission and Features Overview
07:15 – Live Demo of AthenaHQ’s Olympus Platform
11:08 – Key Metrics for Brands in AI Search
14:12 – Competitor and Sentiment Analysis in AI Search
16:16 – Content Gap Identification and Action Center Overview
20:06 – Future Features and Industry Trends
22:14 – Success Stories and Industry Evolution
24:21 – The Future of Google and AI Search
26:02 – Common Misconceptions about GEO
28:50 – AthenaHQ’s Value Proposition
Transcript
Beau Hamilton (00:05)
Thank you for joining us today. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton, Senior Editor and Multimedia Producer here at SourceForge, the world’s most visited software comparison site where B2B software buyers compare and find business software solutions.
Now, have you ever wondered how your company shows up in AI search? Well, in today’s SourceForge Product Demo Showcase, we’re answering that question with AthenaHQ, a powerful platform designed to help brands understand and improve how they appear in AI driven search engines, like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude.ai, and others. They’re sort of leading the charge in Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO. It’s essentially the next evolution of SEO designed to help brands optimize their visibility and performance across AI-driven search platforms.
Joining us to share the story behind the platform and give us a live demo of how AthenaHQ is helping brands take control in the age of AI is Andrew Yan, Co-Founder & CEO of AthenaHQ. Andrew, welcome to the show. Glad you could join us.
Andrew Yan (00:59)
Yeah, really glad to be here.
Beau Hamilton (01:01)
It is great to have you. I want to kind of set the stage a little bit before we kind of share the screen and get into some of the nitty gritty details of your platform. You have quite the extensive background working directly on the next generation of AI search with Google’s information acquisition team. I know you’ve worked with DeepMind and on their generative media team. Can you just talk a little bit about your background, introduce yourself, and just maybe also kind of relate how this work experience has inspired you to build AthenaHQ.
Andrew Yan (01:33)
Yeah, I mean, working in the belly of the beast itself is really incredible to see how much complexity there is behind both traditional search and also where search is headed tomorrow and already is heading today. The big takeaway here from my experiences working on Google search and also doing work for DeepMind’s generative media team is that the way how we search is fundamentally changing. For younger generations, it has already changed.
I’ll give you an anecdote. For me, I use AI Search as my default mode of search, whether it’s ChatGPT or on Gemini. It’s my first go-to style of search that I prefer. And not just that, we’re going to see multimodal search, people searching through videos or images and that’s one of my big understandings from the Google days is that, back at Google, I was able to see all these different ways how people could search. And Google is innovating along many different axes simultaneously on how can we incorporate different modalities of search that were not possible before, given GenAI.
Beau Hamilton (02:42)
Yeah, I think it’s really interesting the work that you’re doing and your past work experience. I think the AI is really giving Google kind of a run for their money and challenging kind of their dominance in the search area. I know I use ChatGPT a lot of times for just about anything if I have a question or want to know the, summarize the end of the TV show or something. I’ll just go right to ChatGPT.
And I’ve got questions for you about where you think things are going. And is Google search dead or whatever. So get some of those controversial questions. But I want to continue to set the stage here because we’re going to jump into your platform and see visually exactly how everything is broken down. But you are at the forefront of generative engine optimization. Most of us know what search engine optimization is. Basically, it’s the strategic use of keywords and topics to position your website higher up the list of search engines or search results so more people can see it essentially. Can you just explain what generative engine optimization is and why it’s so important?
Andrew Yan (03:50)
This is a common question we get a lot is how is generative engine optimization different than traditional SEO? And at Athena, we’re pioneering this field of generative engine optimization, which is different in many ways. One big way it is different is that GEO is probabilistic. As in you ask AI search the same 10 questions, the same question 10 times, you get 10 different answers.
ANd what that requires you to do as an expert in SEO or as SEO lead is to think about how you’re showing up in a different way. To think a little bit more probabilistically and less of a deterministic view of how you’re showing up. This also impacts how you optimize your content as in optimizing content to be interpreted by not just picked up, but also interpreted by AI and recommended as opposed to just showing up on the Google server.
Beau Hamilton (04:50)
Now, how would you relate it to AthenaHQ’s core mission and how it empowers brands to enhance their visibility and perception across AI-driven search engines?
Andrew Yan (05:01)
Our core mission at AthenaHQ is to be the one stop shop for everything AI Search. Whether you are an SCL team member or if you are on the marketing team, a marketing leader, or even in PR, you want to make sure that you have the tools that you need to adapt your company and your role to AI Search.
Beau Hamilton (05:26)
Gotcha. All right. Well, with that all said, I mean, the foundation laid for us here, Andrew, I think now would be a good time to dive into the software and get a visual hands-on overview of the features AthenaHQ offers.
So all right, I will let you take it away. Maybe you can just actually first talk about which platform or product we’re seeing here. And you go from there.
Andrew Yan (05:45)
What you’re seeing here is Athena’s Olympus platform. Here, see Canva is a company we’ve run analysis for and running this across all of the top AI search models of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini and more.
On Olympus, you can see a lot of very high level overview of how your brand is doing on AI search. This includes responses analyzed, the sources that we’re tracking on your behalf, and also citations that we’ve tracked for you. Here you can see your best performing content as well as your worst performing content and top sources that AI is pulling from, along with brand mentions and how often your brand is being mentioned across time.
You can also see your comparative mentions and a lot of other metrics that are useful to help your brand improve in the age of AI search. And based on this data, you can use our Action Center to actually draft outlines of your content.
And our AI goes through a multi-step process to help you. Let’s take this title, for example, to help you create targeted content tailored towards the prompts that matter for AI Search. And for our customers, where they use our Action Center is they use Action Center to help them brainstorm what to write about, how to write about it, and also gives them a skeleton for how to structure their content to be optimized to get picked up by AI Search.
After you have…
Beau Hamilton (07:36)
Very cool.
Andrew Yan (07:38)
Yeah, it is pretty exciting. And after you are able to produce this content using Athena, we’re able to track how well this content is doing on AI search. And using this as a demo, we can already see that we can rewrite content or you can create net new content. And there is a lot of functionality that is included within Athena.
Beau Hamilton (08:04)
Okay, so the dashboard, and first of all, I always love me a good dashboard. Has a lot of well, good UI, lots of information here. I think the top sources is gonna be huge. I remember when top sources, or just sources in general, were introduced to like ChatGPT, for example, and that was a big moment because for a long time it was kind of closed doors. You didn’t know where the information was being sourced from. But now that we’ve got sources, you’re able to track different sources. This is super helpful for brands trying to get their message out and rank their content higher up on the search results, so to speak. What are some of the key metrics here that you would say brands should be aware of?
Andrew Yan (08:51)
Yeah, I’ll say key one is Share Of Voice (SOV). Is how often is your brand being mentioned compared to your competitors. So if I was the CMO of Canva, I would be pretty happy right now, but I would also be worried that my competitors aren’t catching up to our early lead in AI search. Another key metric to look at is overall GEO score. And this is how often your brand is being mentioned on AI Search across all the AI Search engines.
Beau Hamilton (09:27)
Interesting. Now, what about these AI traffic sources? I see ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini. Are those the five you have listed there? Are those the five you’re mostly concerned with? Are you adding more over time?
Andrew Yan (09:40)
So these are the five that we’re focusing on. And we’re obviously adding more as more models become more and more relevant. For example, we’re building out support for Grok right now and with even more to come.
Beau Hamilton (09:54)
Gotcha. Maybe Ll ama or Meta’s AI, I imagine.
Andrew Yan (10:01)
Yeah, we’re seeing some usage of Llama, but in the broader sense of using it for AI search, we aren’t seeing it as strongly as these models here.
Beau Hamilton (10:13)
Gotcha. Yeah, I know they’re just coming out with an app. I don’t want to date this podcast, but I think it’s launching here pretty shortly. So maybe that’ll increase some traffic and kind of help it get some prominence. But that’s very interesting. So now the competitor analysis, is this what you’re talking about here with the AI search share of voice or is that a different section of your product?
Andrew Yan (10:35)
Yeah, competitive analysis. We have competitive analysis across multiple dimensions, not just your share of voice and how often you’re being mentioned across your different competitors, but also being able to see for each competitor, what is their, what is their performance on AI search and how we can track, how our customers can track specific competitors that they care about and want to be monitoring.
Beau Hamilton (11:06)
Gotcha. And then along with the competitor analysis, I know there’s a feature of yours called sentiment analysis. Can you talk about that?
Andrew Yan (11:15)
Yeah. So for Canva, you go to our prompt section and you’d be able to see not just how often you’re being mentioned, but what is the brand sentiment when AI is mentioning your brand. And for this, this is particularly valuable because then you can actually try to influence and improve your sentiment and not just how often you mentioned, but how your brand is being mentioned and in what, what, what sort of sentiment AI associates with your brand.
Beau Hamilton (11:48)
Interesting, okay, so a lot of information here. So you have volume, levels of volume, the different types, percentage of mentions. Now, what about the content gap identification? I know this is an area that, generally speaking, it’s a highlight tool that identifies areas where the brand lacks presence in AI-generated content. Where can I focus in on this in your dashboard here?
Andrew Yan (12:13)
Yeah, you can see it here in the outline section of being able to see which topic clusters you’re the weakest in. And then we help you prioritize which ones you should be producing content for.
Beau Hamilton (12:26)
Now, it would be cool if, I don’t know if you’re able to, put you on the spot here, but would it be an option to look at SourceForge and get some kind of general ideas, maybe some of the traffic that’s mentioning SourceForge or maybe even your product as well AthenaHQ?
Andrew Yan (12:45)
Of course. So here you can see how, if you’re Canva, these are the websites that are influencing the response that you care about. And of course, you have your own website, and you have your competitors’ websites. But you also have third-party websites like SaaSworthy and Slashdot.org.
Beau Hamilton (13:06)
Okay, there’s our sister website, yep.
Andrew Yan (13:08)
Yeah. Which if you expand down, you can see exactly the prompts that they’re influencing.
Beau Hamilton (13:17)
Very cool.
Andrew Yan (13:18)
So these are all opportunities for you to influence the responses of AI by making sure that what your PR efforts are directed towards are towards the sites that really matter.
Beau Hamilton (13:32)
Gotcha. And so, okay, so you have all this different information and you have the AI visibility, you have competitor analysis, sentiment analysis. You get information about the content gap where you kind of need to maybe start, you know, paying attention where your brand lacks presence.
Now, I think what’s really neat is the Action Center, right? Because Action Center kind of takes some of that information and gives you actionable recommendations to how you can improve your GEO strategy. Can you give us a kind of an overview of that section?
Andrew Yan (14:01)
Yeah. So actions can include content refreshes such as here. If you have a piece of content that’s not doing so well, we can optimize that piece of content.
And then that will be added to our content, to our action center, where we can help you improve your existing content and level up your existing content for AI Search. Among many other actions such as net new content, making sure that your website has the right configuration files to be able to show up on AI Search, such as this is the configuration file for Canva.
Beau Hamilton (14:47)
Interesting. Ok.
Andrew Yan (14:48)
and more.
Beau Hamilton (14:51)
Very cool. Now, is there any other area you’d like to focus in on before we kind of get back to some of the questions I have for you?
Andrew Yan (14:58)
I’m good to get back.
Beau Hamilton (15:00)
Well, thank you for walking us through that demo. As a visual learner, I think this is super helpful for me to understand what your company and your product is really all about and how it all works. So I appreciate you walking us through that.
I’ve got a number of, I got a few more questions for you. But just walking us through your product, it just made me think of a few more other questions to hit you with, put you on the spot. I imagine you’re constantly incorporating new features. I mean, you’re a relatively new company. What other features and things do you have on the product roadmap coming out on maybe the short term to the next, I don’t know, six to 12 months or longer?
Andrew Yan (15:46)
Yeah, lot of features that I can’t talk about, but one that I can talk about is AI search volume, which is a question a lot of our customers have is how often are people searching for this particular term on ChatGPT? And we are integrating that into our platform. have built out a way to acquire this information and provide that to our customers to help them better inform their AI search strategy.
Beau Hamilton (16:16)
Now, do you see your platform maybe working with brands to produce ads inside of these chat engines? I know that’s kind of the next big thing. Google’s been testing ads in Gemini. Do you see you working with that in that kind of area as well?
Andrew Yan (16:32)
It’s still the early days. Right now we are very focused on AI search and organic search to be specific. We’ll see where the wind takes us.
Beau Hamilton (16:42)
All right, well, this is very exciting. Again, you’re on the forefront. I think this is something that brands need to be paying attention to because we all know the importance of SEO and so seeing the wave of AI chatbots coming down the pipeline, I mean, already being used by 400 million people, I mean, brands need to get on this GEO train sooner than later.
So I’ve got a few more questions. I just, you know, I want to reiterate some of the information you talked about. So yeah, I know Action Center is a great resource to visit to see actionable recommendations, to improve one’s GEO strategy. But I’m curious if you have any specific examples or maybe success stories where you’ve worked with particular brands to help them improve their visibility in AI-generated search results. Are there any success stories that might come to mind?
Andrew Yan (17:35)
Yeah, I was just talking with a customer this morning about how, it’s a company called Verito. They do sales and tax software and they’re, they have big competitors in their space and they’re not a big company. But after using Athena, they’ve been able to compete head to head against companies that are 20 to 30 times their size on a search and show up just as much as a company that is 20 to 30 times their size. What this means is that smart companies, smart people at smart companies that are forward looking, that are using the right tools like Athena for generative search are able to unseat and challenge incumbents on AI search. And we’re very much in this wild west mode where, world where, if you’re an incumbent, you should be worried about how your brand mode is being protected on AI search. And if you’re a young upstart, this is your opportunity to grow. This is a high upside growth channel that you can unlock using Athena.
Beau Hamilton (18:47)
I love that. So yeah, I think that is such a big point is, a lot of the established players in this area, this sort of arena are being challenged with all these newcomers. mean, not only from a brand position looking to promote a product and kind of capitalize on GEO and SEO, the new SEO, but also more fundamentally like ChatGPT, you know, coming for Google’s lunch, so to speak, with the AI leaps there.
I’m curious, I don’t want to get you in trouble. I know you worked with Google in the past in DeepMind, but where do you see this industry going? Is Google search dead? Do you see Gemini replacing it or them kind of integrating closer than it is currently? What are your thoughts on this?
Andrew Yan (19:42)
So Google is definitely not dead. I think what we’ll see is that Google is evolved. And to think about it this way, kind of like how Facebook evolved from web to mobile in the early 2010s, Google is making a similar transition from traditional 10 blue links version of Google search to AI overviews and then AI mode, which was announced two months ago in early March, and AI mode essentially being ChatGPT style search.
So I see this as an evolution, where the future of search is going to be more fragmented than before. There won’t be one entry point to search that people are using like Google, but rather multiple across ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews, AI Mode. And for brands, this can be a lot to handle. And that’s where we come in and help them have everything under one roof.
Beau Hamilton (20:43)
Yeah, I like what you did there. Circle back in on Athena because it’s true. There’s a lot of moving pieces right now, a lot of things happening. It’s hard to keep track of just, I mean, from my perspective, trying to keep track of the current events, it’s tough. Every day there’s something new going on. I know Google has kind of taken more of a cautious, I’d say cautious, slower approach to some of these AI moves. But yeah, that’s interesting to hear your take on things. I appreciate that.
Now what’s a common misconception maybe about your industry that you wish more people understood? Is there anything that stands out, comes to mind?
Andrew Yan (21:21)
I would say a common misconception is that, there’s rumor spreading around that GEO, genitive engine optimization, is just like SEO. But this is a dangerous assumption to be operating under because companies that are continuing to be using the old SEO strategies won’t be working as well in the new GEO world. And being able to adapt is, to the shift, is something that will determine who the winners are and who the losers are. Similar to how companies needed to adapt in the shift from web to mobile, we’re seeing a shift in search itself, which there are going to be companies who take advantage of this and use this as a growth channel and try new tools, implement new workflows, or implement new tools into the existing workflows to adapt their company strategy to AI search, and then there could be companies who treat it as normal SEO and hope for the best after using old SEO techniques and won’t do as well.
Beau Hamilton (22:32)
Yeah, no, I think that’s, I think that’s very true. Now do you, would you say like, if you have, I imagine if you have the SEO background, you have a lot of the, the skills required to maximize SEO reach, you’re to be probably better positioned to capitalize on the GEO or is it kind of, or is it a fundamentally different, you know, platform or skill or thing to keep in mind.
Andrew Yan (22:56)
I would say the analogy I like to use is like basketball and football where both of them involve balls. And on the surface, it seems like if you’re a great basketball athlete, you’d be a great football athlete, but there’s not exactly that one-to-one correlation, right? And if you train your whole life to be a great basketball player, how do you think you compete in football against someone who’s trained their entire life to be a NFL player? It’s a different, you know, different arena, which requires different tools.
Beau Hamilton (23:26)
Yeah, different specialized areas like, you know, you might be used to hitting the gym every morning at a certain time and working out generally, but you don’t have the specific skills necessary for that specific sport, right? I like that analogy. I think that makes sense for me.
All right, now we’re coming down to the last couple of questions I have for you, Andrew. The last one is just kind of encapsulates a little bit of everything that you mentioned today. So the question is, yeah, if you could just encapsulate AthenaHQ’s value proposition for businesses listening, and just in one sentence, maybe two sentences, what would that be?
Andrew Yan (24:04)
AthenaHQ is the one stop shop for AI Search for your company.
Beau Hamilton (24:10)
Love it. One stop shop. Perfect. Well, that is great. Thank you again for answering all my questions and giving us a demo of this product. I’m really excited to keep testing it out myself. And hopefully listeners can go give it a try as well. Along those lines, before we sign off, where can viewers go and learn more about AthenaHQ and get in touch with your team and maybe even schedule their own personal demo?
Andrew Yan (24:34)
Yeah. So you can go to our website, athenahq.ai, and once you navigate to the website, you can choose to sign up, on our self-serve motion. Or if your company requires a little bit more custom solutions, you can click on the contact sales button and then we’ll get in touch and chat about how Athena can help your company grow on a search.
Beau Hamilton (24:58)
Awesome. All right, athenahq.ai. All right, thank you, Andrew, again, for taking the time out of your day to sit down and talk with us about AthenaHQ. I really appreciate it.
Andrew Yan (25:09)
All right.
Beau Hamilton (25:11)
Thank you all for watching this product demo showcase. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of our upcoming B2B software related podcasts and product demos. I will talk to you in the next one.