AI OverviewMake your organisation easier for AI tools to understand, mention, and explain properly.
AI SEO — also called AI search optimisation, GEO (generative engine optimisation) or AEO (answer engine optimisation) — is the work of making your business visible, and accurately described, in the answers AI tools give. Different sellers use different names; it's the same discipline, and it builds directly on ordinary SEO rather than replacing it. My AI SEO services sit on top of that SEO and analytics base, for small businesses in Melbourne and across Australia.
Without pretending anyone can guarantee what an AI tool will recommend, this is about giving ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Google's AI answers, and Perplexity the structured information they need to find your business, describe it accurately, and mention it in the kinds of conversations where it belongs — so when someone asks an AI tool for "the best [your category] in [your city]" or "who handles [your kind of work] for [your kind of client]", the tools can answer plainly rather than skipping past you.
45 minutes · Google Meet · free Health Check included
// How it's different
If AI search feels fuzzy, it really comes down to one shift. Here's the plain version — open each point to see it.
Ask Google a question and you get a page of ten blue links. You — the customer — do the work: click around, compare, and decide who to trust.
Ask ChatGPT or Gemini the same question and you get one written answer that names a few businesses directly. The tool has already done the shortlisting — and if it doesn't name you, you're not in the running.
On Google you want to rank near the top. AI search has no ranking — the tool either names your business in its answer, or it skips you. The job shifts from ranking higher to simply getting named.
These tools build their answers from clearly-structured facts they can trust — who you are, what you do, who you serve, and where that's confirmed. Make that easy to read, and you're far likelier to be the business they name.
// Recognition
Usually because something shifted on the buyer side without much warning — and it tends to look like one of these:
People are checking ChatGPT or Perplexity before they ever open Google — and forming a shortlist before they reach your website.
A few competitors have started appearing in AI answers about your industry, on the exact questions your buyers ask — and your business hasn't.
A customer mentioned they asked Gemini for a recommendation and your name simply wasn't in the answer — and now there's a quiet worry about how often that happens.
It shouldn't take a separate degree in AI to know what's worth doing here. Plain answers about which tools matter for your sector, what they can see about your business today, and what's actually worth fixing first — without overclaiming what the tools will do once it's fixed — is usually enough to make a confident decision.
// Before anything
Before any AI search visibility work begins, this is the kind of thing I'm looking at. The list is here so you can see the craft up front — not because you're expected to action any of it yourself.
Do you come up at all? When ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Claude is asked for a recommendation in your category and city, does your business get named — and if so, where, and worded how?
Where competitors beat you. Which competitors get cited where you don't — and on which specific questions.
Can Bing even see you? Bing is what ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot read from. If Bing isn't indexing the site, those tools can't see you either.
Can AI tell you apart? Whether the site's schema markup helps an AI tool distinguish your business from others with similar names — the right Person, Organisation, and LocalBusiness details, linked back to authoritative sources.
Is your content quotable? Whether the key pages carry structured, citable content — plain question-and-answer blocks, dated facts with named sources, author bylines — the patterns AI tools find easy to extract and quote.
The right directories. Whether the directories, professional bodies, and industry publications that actually feed AI recommendations in your sector point at the right business name, address, and details.
The free Basic Digital Health Check covers a public-side AI citation snapshot across all five engines. The deeper checks — the ones that need account access and a structured query plan — are part of the In-Depth version.
// The work itself
Search visibility and the measurement underneath it sit at the bottom of this work too — the schema markup, indexation, and content structure that AI tools read from come from the SEO and analytics foundation first, and the citation-pathway work here builds on top of that.
Manual prompt testing of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI answers, Gemini, and Claude on 10–20 of the kinds of questions a real buyer would ask. Records who gets cited, who doesn't, what wording the cited businesses share, and where the obvious gaps sit.
Person, Organisation, and LocalBusiness schema with linked references back to LinkedIn, professional registries, and other authoritative sources — so the tools can disambiguate your business cleanly when there's a name collision.
Taking the content already on the site and restructuring it so AI tools can extract clear answers — explicit question-and-answer blocks, named-source citations, dated facts, author attribution with credentials. The wording stays yours; the structure makes it findable.
Not the generic "top 100 directories" list. The 10–30 that genuinely matter for AI tool recommendations in your industry, with a sensible order to work through them.
Bing is the citation backbone for ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot — so being indexed by Bing is a precondition for citation in those tools. Set up via Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow so new pages get picked up promptly.
AI tool recommendation patterns shift slowly enough that monthly snapshots produce noise more than signal. Quarterly cadence is the honest one — re-running the baseline queries, tracking which competitors are gaining or losing visibility, naming what's worth doing next.
Citation rate change per tool, which competitors are gaining or losing AI visibility, what's planned next. No invented "AI search rank" scores — the tools cite or they don't.
Manual prompt testing across ChatGPT · Perplexity · Google AI Overviews · Gemini · Claude on 10–20 high-intent queries (no automated querying — provider terms forbid it, and the results aren't representative anyway) · entity clarity remediation (Person / Organisation / LocalBusiness schema with sameAs links) · GEO-specific schema (FAQPage with citation-friendly answer formatting · HowTo for procedural content · structured author bylines with credentials · dated facts with named sources) · citable structured-content packaging · third-party citation footprint (the 10–30 directories / registries / forums that genuinely feed AI tool recommendations per sector) · Bing Webmaster Tools + IndexNow · grounded in the Aggarwal et al. 2024 GEO: Generative Engine Optimization methodology framework (Princeton / KDD 2024 — first peer-reviewed paper that defined the visibility-in-generative-engines problem and tested which content techniques produce measurable improvements in AI-engine visibility).
// What I don't do
Honest scope. The work below isn't a refusal — it's a stay-in-lane discipline that keeps quality high on what I do build.
If a project sits outside the default scope and there's a real reason to do it — a notable executive whose Wikipedia presence genuinely needs structuring, a niche AI tool in your sector that isn't on the standard list, a content-heavy publisher that wants both content and citation work under one roof — ask anyway. The honest discipline applies on both sides: you have to agree to the scope, and I have to be confident I can deliver it to a standard worth my name. If I'm not, the honest answer is no — and I'll point you toward someone who can take it on if I know one.
// Honest take
A few things are worth saying plainly before any spend happens here.
AI tools are answering a growing share of the questions people used to type into Google, and the curve is steep — but it isn't evenly spread. Industries where buyers ask AI tools to recommend providers (professional services, healthcare, finance, B2B software) see far more AI citation activity than impulse retail or walk-in trade. If your sector isn't on the high-activity list yet, the honest answer is often: set the foundations cleanly so you're ready when it matters, but don't outspend the present-tense return.
Clean work can shift visibility within 30–60 days; it can also bounce around month-to-month as AI tools update their training data. Real signal needs two to three quarters of data, tracked on quarterly snapshots, not weekly dashboards. Anyone selling weekly "AI citation rank" reports is selling noise.
AI search visibility is a real, present-tense channel for some industries already, and a near-future one for most. Anyone selling an expensive "AI SEO retainer" as the first thing you should buy is also wrong — the SEO and analytics foundation comes first, and this builds on it rather than replacing it. The honest order matters.
Audit quality. Schema work. Structured-content packaging. Citation-footprint coordination. Plain reporting on what changed and what didn't. What I won't promise: that a specific AI tool will cite you for a specific query on a specific date. That's not a sustainable promise from anyone in this space.
// Fit
// Best for
// Skip if
// Recent AI search work
// Mobile wellness service
A mobile IV business working in Victoria and Western Australia. I built its new website, help people find it on Google and in AI tools like ChatGPT, and run its Google ads.
// My own software studio
My own small software studio. I designed and built its website, and I keep it running and easy to find on Google and in AI tools.
// Pricing
There are two shapes most AI search visibility work takes:
// Audit-only deep-dive
$300–$1,065Manual prompt testing across five AI tools on 10–20 high-intent queries, an entity-clarity assessment, a schema audit for the patterns AI tools read from, and a written recommendation set you can act on yourself or pass to another vendor. The lighter end is a single-channel audit; the top is a full-stack audit alongside the SEO & analytics base assessment.
// Setup + quarterly re-audit
QuotedAround two to three weeks of setup — audit, entity-clarity schema, structured-content packaging on the 5–15 highest-priority pages, an initial third-party citation push. Then a quarterly re-audit cadence under ongoing monthly care (the Looked After plan). Project-based, quoted after the intro call.
// ACNC-registered charities: 25% off — single ABN-lookup verification at intake
45 minutes · Google Meet · no obligation
// Pacing
AI search visibility moves on a different timescale to traditional SEO. The honest timing:
1–2 weeks from kickoff.
typically 2–3 weeks of setup, with citation patterns starting to respond within 30–60 days of the work going live.
usually 6–12 weeks for the meaningful citations to land and start being picked up by the tools.
two to three quarters of data, tracked quarterly.
Quarterly cadence is the honest one for this work. AI tools update their training data and recommendation logic on cycles that don't reward weekly checking — quarterly snapshots show you whether the trend is moving without the noise of day-to-day variation. Anyone selling faster certainty than that is either lucky or not telling the full story.
// Shipping
Before any AI search visibility engagement is called shipped, it has to pass the same four checks — no engagement is signed off until they do:
Baseline captured. The starting citation picture is recorded across all five AI tools.
Entity clarity in place. The schema can disambiguate your business cleanly from any name collisions.
Content made citable. Structured, quotable content is live on the priority pages.
Bing can read it. Bing is indexing the site, so ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot can read from it.
Ongoing quarterly reporting (when you stay on for ongoing monthly care): re-run the baseline 50–100 queries, citation rate change per tool, which competitors are gaining or losing visibility, plus a plain-language note on what changed, what's working, what's not, and what's planned next.
AI citation baseline across 5 engines × 10–20 queries = 50–100 manual prompt tests (cited / not-cited per query per engine, which competitors are cited where you're not, what content the cited competitors have that you don't) · entity-clarity audit (does each AI tool correctly disambiguate the business from any name collisions?) · GEO-specific schema audit (FAQPage, HowTo, Person with credentials, Article with author + date) · Bing indexation snapshot.
// Journey
A plain-English audit that includes a public-side AI citation snapshot across all five tools, plus the SEO and analytics picture underneath. The PDF is yours to keep, whether you work with me afterwards or not.
The schema, indexation, and content structure AI tools read from goes in first. When the broader digital direction needs clarity before anything is locked in, a Strategic Digital Roadmap sits in between.
Then the citation-pathway work itself — either a one-off deep-dive audit or a setup project on the priority pages.
Ongoing monthly care covers quarterly re-audits and iteration — re-running the baseline queries, tracking trends, adding any new AI tool that becomes relevant. The project stands on its own without it.
// FAQ
// Start
Wondering whether AI tools are mentioning your business yet — and what to do about it? Book a 45-minute call. I'll run a free Basic Digital Health Check on your existing site beforehand, including a public-side AI citation snapshot across all five engines, and walk you through it on the call.
45 minutes · Google Meet · no obligation
Every call ends with one — including a public-side AI citation snapshot across all five engines. Yours to keep.
The PDF is yours to keep regardless.
// Last updated: 1 October 2026
