Answers
Is AEO only for developer tools and APIs, or does it work for any company?
Short answer
Is AEO only for developer tools and APIs, or does it work for any company?
The method itself is not specific to developer tools, but we only sell it there, and that is a deliberate scope decision rather than a technical limit. We work with companies building AI infrastructure, developer tools, APIs, CLIs and MCP servers, and explicitly not general B2B SaaS, because the reason to hire a specialist here is that we already know where developers evaluate a tool and which third-party pages assistants pull those recommendations from. A citation map for a new category, a different set of retrieved sources and a different buyer research pattern, takes weeks to rebuild from scratch, and that advantage disappears the moment we spread across every category instead of staying inside the one we have already mapped.
The short version
The method is not niche-specific. The advantage we sell is, and it resets outside this category.
01
Who this scope covers, exactly
Our client scope is companies building AI infrastructure, developer tools, APIs, CLIs and MCP servers: teams whose buyer is typically a developer, DevRel lead, head of growth or founder evaluating a technical integration rather than a line-of-business purchase. That buyer researches inside documentation, package registries, GitHub and technical community threads, not review sites and not the general web search results a consumer-facing purchase decision runs through.
That is a narrower buyer-research pattern than general B2B SaaS, and it is the pattern our own citation measurement, 901 citations across 82 hosts, was built against. A company outside this scope is not a bad fit because the method fails, it is a bad fit because the map we already hold does not apply to where their buyer actually looks.
In scope
The boundary is the buyer's research pattern: docs, registries and technical threads, not review sites.
02
Why staying narrow is the advantage, not a limitation
The specific value we sell is already knowing which off-site pages a developer-tool buyer's assistant retrieves for a recommendation question: which comparison posts, which GitHub awesome-lists, which Stack Overflow threads and Reddit communities already carry weight for this exact buyer. That knowledge compounds within the category and resets to close to zero outside it.
Spreading across every industry would trade a real, compounding advantage in one category for a shallow, generic capability everywhere, which is the opposite of the reason a specialist gets hired over an in-house team or a generalist agency in the first place.
What the map is worth
The value is already knowing which off-site pages get retrieved for this buyer. That resets outside the category.
03
What a general SaaS or ecommerce buyer needs instead
A general SaaS or ecommerce company asking an assistant for a recommendation is answered from a different retrieval set entirely, review platforms, comparison marketplaces and consumer-facing publications rather than developer documentation and technical forums. The tactics for AEO transfer conceptually, capsule-first pages, off-site placement, held-out control measurement, but the specific map of which sources to target does not, and building that map for a new vertical is real, uncredited work rather than something our existing research shortcuts.
If your buyer is not a developer evaluating a technical integration, the honest answer is to look for a specialist mapped to your actual category rather than to stretch a developer-tools-mapped engagement over a buyer it was never measured against.
Different buyer, different retrieval set
The first two are what a developer-tools map is built against. The last two need their own map, built from zero.
Asked next
The questions that follow this one
Do you work with companies outside developer tools?
Not today. The method is not niche-specific and a citation map for a new category rebuilds in weeks, but the reason to hire us is that we already know where developers evaluate. That advantage disappears the moment we spread across every category.
What if my product is a developer tool with a non-technical buyer?
Yes, still inside scope. The boundary is the research pattern of the buyer, documentation, package registries and technical community threads, rather than the org chart title of whoever signs the contract.
Could the same method work for, say, a fintech or healthcare SaaS?
The underlying method, answer capsules, off-site placement, held-out control measurement, would transfer conceptually. The specific source map, which sites and threads an assistant retrieves for that buyer, would need to be built from zero, which is exactly the work we are not positioned to shortcut outside developer tools.
Why not expand into a second category now, while the method is proven?
Because the proof so far is method-level, not category-level, and CANON's claim discipline holds until a completed engagement runs. Expanding before that would trade a real advantage in one mapped category for an unproven claim in a second, unmapped one.
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Queries we run
Cited instead of you
reddit.com38%
g2.com26%
news.ycombinator.com21%91.5% of citations point off-site