Search & visibility
People are asking an assistant instead of a search engine.
When someone asks an AI assistant who can help them, it answers from sources it can read and trust. Being one of those sources is a structural problem, not a keyword one.
What is AI search optimization, AIO and GEO?
AI search optimization — also called AIO (AI optimization) or GEO (generative engine optimization) — is the practice of making a business understandable and citable by AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. It depends on clear entity information, content that answers questions directly in crawlable text, and consistency across every place the business appears. There is no ranking dial to turn.
What the work involves
- Make the entity unambiguous: who the company is, what it does, who it serves, where it operates, and what it owns — stated plainly in text and in structured data.
- Write answer-first content, so a direct question has a direct answer a model can quote without inferring it.
- Ensure nothing important is locked inside an image, a video, an animation or JavaScript a crawler will not execute.
- Make the facts agree everywhere — the website, the business profiles, the directories, the social accounts.
- Establish whether the business is currently being cited, and by which systems.
What you hold afterward
- An entity foundation: consistent facts, structured data, and a clear about page that resolves who you are.
- Answer-first content on the questions your customers actually ask.
- A baseline of how AI systems currently describe your business — including where they get it wrong.
When this is the wrong thing to buy
Be skeptical of anyone selling "AI SEO" as a distinct product with its own dial. Most of what works is the same discipline that has always worked — be clear, be consistent, be worth citing — applied to a reader that cannot infer as generously as a person. If someone offers to get you ranked inside ChatGPT, ask exactly how.
Questions
AI search optimization, in practice.
Is AIO different from SEO?
It overlaps heavily. The differences that matter: answer engines reward directly answerable content, they rely more on entity clarity and consistency across sources, and they do not execute JavaScript as generously as Google does. A site that is genuinely clear tends to do well at both.
Does llms.txt help?
It is an emerging convention and support for it is not universal. We will implement it where it is useful, but the canonical website remains the source of truth and no file changes whether your content deserves to be cited.
How do we know if AI systems mention us?
By asking them, systematically and repeatedly, and recording what comes back. That baseline is the first deliverable — it is frequently the moment a business discovers an assistant is confidently giving out an old address.
Where this usually leads
This rarely arrives on its own.
You rank for your own name and nothing else anyone would search for.
If the outcome is what you are after
Usually done alongside
- SEOSearch engine optimization built on technical structure, real content and measurable outcomes — not a monthly report showing rankings for terms nobody searches.
- Local SEOLocal search visibility: Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, citation consistency, reviews and location pages that are worth indexing.
- Website design & developmentWebsites built to be found, to load fast, and to turn a visitor into a booked job — with hosting, analytics and search structure included.
Not sure this is your problem?That is usually the most useful thing to find out first.
Answer thirteen questions about how your company actually runs and get a reading on each area — brand, website, search, reviews, software, automation, payments, operations, people, data and continuity.
Typically owner-led companies from first idea to around 500 people.