For AEO, sentiment is what separates a useful citation from a damaging one. A model that mentions your brand in the context of "great pricing" is doing different work than one that mentions you with "common complaints". Tools like Bluefish surface this through favorability scoring; lighter tools like Otterly.AI offer it as an add-on classifier.
AEO glossary
Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis classifies how positively, neutrally, or negatively a brand is described inside an AI-generated answer or other piece of text.