AI search optimization
Structuring your site so AI answer engines can find, trust and quote it. Also called generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO). The goal is being named inside the answer, not ranked beneath it.
What changed, and why it matters to you
For twenty years search returned a list and the user chose. Answer engines read across sources, write one response, and name a short list of citations. If you are not in that short list you are invisible, no matter where you sit in the classic rankings.
This is not a replacement for SEO. The pages that get cited are usually pages that already rank, and the technical foundations are the same. It is an additional discipline layered on top, and right now the competition for it is thin, which is exactly why it is worth doing early.
I wrote a full guide to this if you want the detail before you talk to anyone about it.
What actually earns a citation
Answering the question in the first forty to sixty words of the page, in plain declarative language, before any preamble. Models extract from the top of a document far more often than from the middle.
Sections that stand alone. If a paragraph only makes sense after reading the three before it, a model cannot lift it with confidence, so it lifts somebody else's instead.
Structured data that removes ambiguity: FAQPage, Article with author and dates, Organization with sameAs links, Service with areaServed. This is how a model knows what your business is rather than inferring it.
Verifiable specifics. Numbers, dates, named examples and cited sources. Vague promotional language is the single most reliable way to get skipped.
The part nobody wants to hear
Off site validation matters more here than in classic SEO. When a model has your claim from one source it hedges. When the same claim appears across several independent domains it states it as fact.
That means review platforms, industry directories, association listings, genuine guest articles and real participation in the communities your buyers read. It is slower than on page work and it is the difference between being mentioned occasionally and being the default answer.
I will map which sources carry weight in your specific category, and tell you which ones are a waste of money. In most industries, more than half of them are.
How progress is measured
By running your real buyer questions through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews on a schedule, recording whether you are named, which competitors are, and what source the model reached for.
That baseline is the first deliverable, before any work happens, so there is something to compare against. Anyone selling AI visibility work without a baseline is selling you a feeling.
Deliverables
Baseline audit as a fixed price piece, then monthly if you want the tracking maintained.
- 01
AI visibility baseline
Your key buyer questions run through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, recording current citations and which competitors hold them.
- 02
Answer first content restructuring
Existing pages rewritten so the direct answer sits in the opening lines and every section can be extracted on its own.
- 03
Entity and schema layer
Organization, Service, FAQPage, Article and sameAs markup so models can identify your business without inference.
- 04
Comparison and definitional content
The formats that draw the highest citation rates, built for the questions your buyers actually ask.
- 05
Off site validation plan
A mapped list of the review sites, directories, associations and publications that carry weight in your category, and the ones that do not.
- 06
Scheduled re-testing
The same question set re-run each quarter so citation share is tracked over time rather than assumed.
Common questions
What is the difference between AEO, GEO and SEO?
SEO earns a position in a list of links. Answer engine optimization (AEO) earns a citation inside a single generated answer to a specific question. Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the broader job of shaping what models say about your brand across every prompt. In practice the work overlaps heavily: give AI systems clean, credible, well structured information they can quote with confidence.
Can you guarantee ChatGPT will recommend my business?
No, and neither can anyone else. Model outputs vary by prompt, by user, by session and by model version. What can be done is to make your site the most extractable and best corroborated source in your category, then measure citation frequency over time. Any guarantee here is a lie.
Is this worth doing if my SEO is not sorted yet?
Usually not as a first move. The pages that get cited are generally pages that already rank, so a site with technical problems and no relevant pages should fix those first. The exception is a business whose category is already dominated by AI answers, where getting in early is worth more than incremental ranking gains.
How do you measure whether it is working?
A recorded baseline of your buyer questions across four systems, re-run on a schedule. The metric is citation share: how often you are named, versus how often each competitor is. It is not a metric any tool reports automatically, which is why most agencies do not offer it.
Does blocking AI crawlers protect my content?
It stops you being cited. That is a real trade off and for some publishers it is the right call, but for a service business it removes you from the answers your buyers are reading. Your robots.txt currently allows GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and the rest, which is the right setting for a business that wants to be found.
Want a straight answer about your site?
Send me the URL. I will tell you what is holding it back and what I would do about it, before you commit to anything.