AI visibility baseline
Where you appear today in AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, and which competitors get recommended instead of you.
AI Services · Optimisation
AI is changing how people find businesses. Your customers ask ChatGPT for recommendations, get answers from Google's AI Overviews, and increasingly never see a traditional list of blue links. AI search optimisation makes sure that when those answers are written, your business is in them.
I am an independent UK SEO consultant, not an AI SEO agency with a sales team. The work is practical, measured, and built on 15+ years of search experience, and I am Google Cloud certified in generative AI, so the advice comes from someone who understands how these models actually work.
The what
AI search optimisation is the practice of improving how visible, quotable and recommendable your website is in AI-driven search. That covers the AI features inside Google Search, meaning AI Overviews and AI Mode, plus the AI search engines and assistants people use directly: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude.
The industry has produced a pile of names for it. Generative engine optimization, or GEO. Answer engine optimization. AI SEO. Optimising for AI, LLMO, search everywhere optimisation. Underneath the jargon it is one discipline: understanding how generative AI systems choose their sources, and making your website the source they choose.
The reassuring part is that Google's own guidance, published on the Search Central blog, is blunt about it: there is no secret new checklist, and the fundamentals of SEO still apply. What changes is the emphasis. AI models reward clear structure, genuine expertise, consistent entity signals and brands that the wider web talks about. That is exactly the work I do.
The shift
Traditional search engines retrieve and rank: you search, Google returns search results, you click one. AI search retrieves, reads and synthesises: the model pulls from multiple sources, writes a single answer, and cites a handful of pages. In Google's case, AI Overviews now appear above the organic results for a growing share of queries, and AI Mode goes further still, answering conversationally with generative AI.
That changes the economics of visibility. Being result number four on a page people never scroll past is worth little. Being one of three citations inside the answer is worth a lot. And because AI models are trained and grounded on crawled web content, the same source can be recommended across every search experience at once, from Google AI Mode to ChatGPT.
The businesses losing traffic to AI search results are mostly the ones publishing thin, generic content that an AI can answer without them. The ones gaining are those whose expertise is impossible to summarise away. My job is to move you firmly into the second group, with SEO strategies that serve both worlds.
The pillars
AI systems lift answers from pages that are clearly structured and directly useful. I rework your content so it answers real questions, matches search intent, and gives AI models something worth citing. Creating content for AI search is less about keywords and more about being the clearest source available.
If crawlers cannot reach or parse your site, nothing else matters. I make sure AI bots are allowed in, your structured data spells out who you are, and your pages meet the technical requirements Google sets out in its Search Central guidance for AI features.
AI models recommend brands they keep encountering. Reviews, citations, digital PR and consistent entity signals across the web all feed the answer. This is where traditional SEO and generative engine optimisation overlap most, and where most sites are weakest.
The proof
Optimisation without measurement is guesswork, so every engagement starts with a baseline. I test how you appear in AI-generated search results across the emerging AI platforms: prompt-level checks in ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Perplexity, plus whether the Google AI Overview for each of your key queries cites you, a competitor, or nobody.
From there the loop is simple. We optimize your website where the technical checks say, optimize your content where the citation data says, and re-measure. Google Search Console shows impressions from AI-powered search features inside Google, and dedicated tracking covers the rest. Visibility in AI-driven search becomes a number that moves, not a feeling.
The industry has renamed itself twice since the Search Generative Experience days and will doubtless do it again. Ignore the labels. The measurement, and the work it points to, stays the same. AI agents that browse and buy on people's behalf are next, and the same clean, trusted, well-structured websites will win those recommendations too.
The service
Every engagement is tailored, but this is the usual shape of the work. It runs alongside classic SEO, not instead of it.
Where you appear today in AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, and which competitors get recommended instead of you.
Crawler access, structured data, page structure and speed, fixed so AI systems can read and reuse your content.
Rewriting and restructuring key pages so they answer questions directly and earn citations in AI search results.
Reviews, mentions and links from sources the AI models trust, built steadily rather than bought cheaply.
Visibility tracked across AI platforms and Google Search Console, reported in plain English every month.
Questions
Honest answers, including the ones agencies avoid. Anything else, just ask.
AI search optimisation is the work of making your website visible and citable in AI-driven search: Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and the rest. It combines the fundamentals of SEO with newer work on structured data, entities and content that AI models can quote. You may also see it called generative engine optimization (GEO) or answer engine optimization (AEO). Different names, same goal: when someone asks AI about what you sell, your business is the answer.
They overlap heavily, which is good news if you already rank well. The difference is the output. Traditional search returns a list of links to climb; AI search returns one synthesised answer with a handful of citations. Ranking well in traditional search engines helps, but AI systems also weigh clarity, structure and how often your brand is mentioned across the web. Foundational SEO best practices still carry most of the load.
For most UK businesses it works like my SEO consultancy: from a few hundred pounds for a one-off review to a monthly retainer for ongoing work. It usually makes sense as an extension of an existing SEO strategy rather than a separate service, so you are not paying twice for the same fundamentals.
Two ways. Google Search Console now reflects impressions from AI features in Google Search, and dedicated tracking shows how often you are mentioned or cited across ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI platforms. I set both up as standard, because visibility you cannot measure is visibility you cannot improve. See my AI visibility tracking service for the detail.
No, but it is changing shape. AI answers are built from crawled web content, so the websites that feed them still win the customers. What is dying is lazy SEO: thin pages and keyword stuffing get no citations. Businesses that invest in genuinely useful content are finding AI search is additive to classic search, not a replacement for it.
No, and nobody honestly can. AI responses vary by user, phrasing and model version. What I can do is stack the odds: make your site technically ready, your content quotable and your brand widely mentioned, then track the results. That is what moves the numbers over time.
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Tell me about your business and I will check where you stand in AI search today, free, before you spend a penny.