Get named
in the answer.

AI search optimization is the work of making your business easy for AI tools to find, understand and quote. That covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. In practice it means three things: the tools can read your site, your pages answer the questions buyers ask, and the facts about you are consistent on the profiles and listings those tools can check. Some people call it ChatGPT SEO or AI SEO. It is the same job.

SEO (search engine optimization) earns your pages a place in the regular list of search results. AEO (answer engine optimization) shapes your content so a search engine or assistant can lift a direct answer from it, like a featured snippet, a voice answer or an AI Overview. GEO (generative engine optimization) is about being named or cited when a generative AI tool like ChatGPT or Perplexity writes its own answer. They overlap heavily, and we run all three as one program. In our program, SEO is the foundation, AEO shapes how your answers are written, and the GEO work keeps the facts about your business accurate on the sites these tools check.

It depends on whether it runs alongside an SEO program or on its own, how competitive your category is, and how much profile and listing cleanup your business needs. We scope it against your market and give you the number before you commit. If it is not the right spend for you yet, we will tell you.

No, and be wary of anyone who does. AI answers are not stable. In one SE Ranking test, three runs of the same Google AI Mode query on the same day agreed on the exact cited URLs only 9.2% of the time. What we can do is remove the reasons you get skipped, keep the facts about you consistent where these tools check, and report what actually changes in your leads.

Access and rendering fixes can land within weeks. Answer-first page rewrites usually take the first two to three months, and profile and listing cleanup runs through month six. Every month we report on what moved. Those are timelines for the work, not for results, because no one controls when an AI tool changes what it cites.

It fits businesses whose buyers research before they call: they compare options, ask for recommendations and read reviews. It is a weaker fit if you have no SEO foundation yet, if your site cannot be read by crawlers and a rebuild is not on the table, or if you need leads this month. Smaller brands also start further back: a June 2026 study found niche and small brands appeared in about 11% of relevant AI answers, against 73% for global brands. We will tell you where you stand before you spend.

Partly, and we will say so. Crawlable pages, clear answers and real authority help in both places. What is different is where the attention goes. AI tools cite many pages that are not your own site, so we also check that your profiles, listings and reviews say the right things about you. The reporting is different too, because AI answers change from one run to the next.

No. AI tools that search the web can only quote pages they can find and read, and the crawlable, well-linked, clearly written pages that SEO builds are the pages they have to work with. What has changed is that ranking is no longer the whole job. This program runs on top of SEO, and if you do not have an SEO program yet, we will usually recommend starting there.

Nobody outside these companies knows the full recipe, and anyone who claims to is guessing. What research can show is where citations go. A June 2026 study of nearly 150,000 AI citations found under 3% pointed to the brand's own domain, about three quarters went to other companies' pages, and list-style articles were the most cited content format. For local questions in Google AI Mode, Maps and Business Profile data took 79.8% of citations in a study revised in September 2026. So the tools have to be able to read your site, your pages have to answer clearly, and the facts about you elsewhere have to agree.

The work is the same across all of them, because every AI tool depends on the same basics: pages it can read, clear answers and consistent facts about your business. That includes ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Gemini. Our monthly visibility read covers the AI tools we track, and we tell you up front which ones those are.

Probably not. A 2026 controlled study by Ahrefs compared 1,885 pages that added structured data against 4,000 matched pages that did not, and the effect on AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT citations was indistinguishable from zero. We still use schema where Google rewards it with rich results. We just do not sell it as an AI lever.

That is a business call, and we lay out the trade before you make it. OpenAI runs separate crawlers: GPTBot collects content that may be used to train its models, while OAI-SearchBot is used to show sites in ChatGPT search. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Many businesses allow the search crawlers and decide separately on training. We also check what your robots.txt and firewall actually allow, because firewall and CDN settings can block AI crawlers too. Cloudflare, for one, has asked every new site since July 2025 whether to allow them.

Not much, as far as anyone can show. llms.txt is a proposed file that summarizes a site for AI tools. Google's John Mueller said in June 2026 that because sites write it about themselves, it cannot be trusted to tell one site from another. We set one up when it is cheap to do and keep it accurate, but we do not sell it as a lever.

For some searches, yes. Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025 and found people clicked a regular search result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when one did not. That is why we report on leads and AI referrals, not just clicks, and why being named inside the answer is worth working toward.

Yes, and the work looks different. Steady Demand studied close to 4,000 Google AI Mode local queries and found 79.8% of citations went to Google Maps and Business Profiles, not to business websites (September 2026 revision of the study). If you serve a defined area, your Business Profile, reviews and citations are a big part of this work.

Two ways, and we keep them separate. First, real traffic and leads: AI assistant referrals tracked in GA4 and tied to the conversions you care about. Second, a monthly visibility read on the AI tools we track, for the questions your buyers ask. That read is directional. We show the variance with it and never present it as a ranking.

Both parts exist. The access audit and the first rewrites are a defined piece of work. After that it is ongoing, because AI answers shift from run to run, competitors change their pages, and your own services, hours and offers change. Most of the value comes from keeping the facts accurate over time.

Paid placements on lists, sponsored mentions and PR outreach are not part of this program. Ads inside ChatGPT are a separate service. If the baseline shows your category is decided mostly by third-party lists, we will tell you, so you can make that call with the facts.

Ask what they will actually change on your site and off it. Ask how they measure results, and whether they show the variance in their visibility numbers. Ask whether they promise citations or placements, because nobody controls those. Ask whether schema is their main lever. And ask to see leads, not just a visibility score.