AI search optimization: get mentioned and cited by AI assistants

When people ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews who to hire, the answer names a few businesses and cites a few pages. Our generative engine optimization (GEO) services work on what decides whether yours is one of them: pages AI can read, clear facts about your business, and mentions on other trusted sites.

How AI search chooses its sources

AI assistants don't keep one fixed ranking. When someone asks a question, the assistant searches the web or its own index, reads a handful of pages and writes an answer from them. The sources it leans on tend to share a few traits:

What our AI search optimization services include

  1. AI visibility audit. We list the questions your customers actually ask, such as 'which cleaning service near me handles Airbnb turnovers?', and test them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. We record who gets mentioned, which pages get cited and what the assistants get wrong about you.
  2. Technical access. robots.txt rules that let AI search crawlers in, fast server-rendered HTML, clean sitemaps and no stray noindex tags. Many AI crawlers don't run JavaScript, so text that only appears after scripts load can be invisible to them.
  3. Entity and schema markup. Organization, Service, FAQPage and BreadcrumbList structured data that describe your business the same way on every page.
  4. Answer-shaped content. Service pages, FAQs and comparison pages that each answer one question, clearly and early, written for people first.
  5. Citation and mention plan. The directories, review sites, partners and publications where your business should appear, with your facts kept consistent.
  6. llms.txt, optionally. A short plain-text summary of your site for AI tools. It's a proposed standard and support varies by engine, so we treat it as a small extra, not a lever.

We've shipped this groundwork on client sites. Tulip Landcare's rebuilt site carries LandscapingBusiness, Service and FAQPage markup plus an llms.txt summary, and Lena's Wreath Decor has a robots.txt that welcomes AI crawlers.

How we track AI visibility

We build AI-visibility tracking and SEO reporting dashboards, so you see the same evidence we do. AI answers change from day to day and from person to person, so we follow the trend across many prompts over time, not a single screenshot. For each tracked prompt, we record:

What nobody can promise

No one can guarantee that ChatGPT or Gemini will mention your business, or keep mentioning it. The models and their search sources change often, answers vary by person and wording, and the companies behind them don't publish how they choose. Anyone selling guaranteed AI rankings is guessing.

What you can control is real: whether AI crawlers can read your site, whether your facts are clear and consistent, whether your pages answer the questions people ask, and whether other trusted sites mention you. That's where we put the work.

GEO and SEO work together

Generative engine optimization doesn't replace SEO. Many AI assistants draw their sources from search indexes, and Google's AI Overviews use Google's own index, so pages that rank well and load fast start ahead. Our SEO services cover the technical and content foundation; GEO adds the AI-specific layer: prompt testing, entity markup, answer-first content and the mention plan. Most businesses need both.

Reviews matter here too. Assistants can draw on reviews when they recommend local businesses, which is why Google review management feeds into AI visibility. And if you want AI working inside your business rather than finding it, that's AI integration.

Spanish pages reach Spanish-speaking customers

People ask AI assistants questions in Spanish too, and the assistant answers from the sources it finds. With English-only pages, you give it less to work with when a Spanish speaker asks. We write Spanish pages natively, with their own URLs, hreflang tags and structured data, so an assistant has what it needs to answer that customer with your business. See how we build bilingual sites on our website design page.

Related work

Tulip Landcare

A landscaping company's WordPress site rebuilt in Next.js, plus a back office for leads, estimates, jobs and invoices.

What we built

  • Every page migrated from WordPress/Elementor, keeping the original URLs
  • 301 redirect map so legacy URLs resolve in a single hop
  • Service and city pages, a blog, structured data and llms.txt
  • Quote form that saves each lead first and merges repeat enquiries
  • Next.js
  • PostgreSQL
  • Fly.io

Rachelle's Cleaning Services

A house-cleaning website built to rank city by city, with a multi-step quote form and an installable owner dashboard.

What we built

  • City pages with distinct local content, plus service pages and an areas hub
  • Multi-step quote form with honeypot spam protection
  • Separate lead-intake API with transactional email
  • Owner dashboard installable as a PWA, with phone push notifications
  • Next.js
  • Mapbox GL
  • Node.js
  • Web Push
  • Netlify

Lena's Wreath Decor

An online store for handmade wreaths shipped across the US, with customer accounts, several payment options and an order back office.

What we built

  • Storefront with shop by season, product pages and search
  • Saved cart and abandoned-cart reminder emails
  • Customer accounts with email or Google sign-in; saved cards are stored by Stripe
  • Checkout with card, PayPal, Venmo and Zelle, with prices recomputed on the server
  • Next.js
  • PostgreSQL (Neon)
  • Stripe
  • PayPal
  • Netlify

Frequently asked questions

What is GEO or AEO?

Generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) are two names for the same goal: making your business easy for AI assistants and answer features to find, understand and cite. GEO usually refers to tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity; AEO started with featured snippets and voice answers. In practice the work overlaps almost entirely.

How do you measure AI visibility?

We track a fixed set of prompts your customers ask, across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, and record mentions, citations, competitors and errors over time. We add Search Console data and, when we host your site, AI crawler visits from the server logs.

How long until changes show up?

It depends on the assistant. Technical fixes can be picked up as soon as crawlers revisit your pages. Changes that depend on mentions on other sites, or on a model's training data, take longer, sometimes months. We don't promise a timeline; we report what changes as it happens.

Do I still need regular SEO?

Yes. Many assistants pull their sources from search indexes, and Google's AI Overviews use Google's own index. Solid regular SEO is the base that AI visibility is built on.

Which AI crawlers should I allow?

It's your decision, and the bots are split by purpose. Search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot fetch pages to answer questions, so blocking them can keep you out of answers. Training crawlers such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot collect content for future models. Google-Extended controls whether Google may use your content for Gemini, and it doesn't affect Google Search. We set your robots.txt to match your choice for each.

Can you guarantee AI will recommend my business?

No. Nobody can, because the companies behind these assistants decide what they show and change it often. We improve the parts you control and report honestly on what happens.

Related services

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