What is AI search?
AI search is when someone asks an AI assistant a question and gets a written answer instead of a list of links. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot all work this way. Ask one "who's the best roofer in Tampa," and the answer often names two or three businesses and explains why.
That raises the stakes for local and specialty businesses. In a list of ten links, the sixth result still gets some clicks. In a written answer, the businesses the assistant names get the attention, and everyone else is invisible for that question.
What are AEO and GEO?
AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) are two names for the same work: making your business the one AI assistants understand, trust, and recommend. You'll also hear it called AI search optimization or LLM SEO. The label matters far less than the work. Our post What is AEO? goes deeper.
How do AI assistants decide who to recommend?
They recommend businesses they can verify. When an assistant searches the web to answer a question, it favors businesses whose facts line up across many sources, that other sites vouch for, and whose own pages answer the question clearly. Four signals do most of the work:
- Consistent facts. Your name, address, phone, services, and hours match on your website, Google Business Profile, directories, and social profiles. Conflicting details make an assistant less sure about you.
- Proof from other sites. Reviews, press, directory listings, and mentions on industry sites. Assistants lean heavily on what others say about you.
- Clear, quotable pages. Service pages and FAQs that answer real questions in the first sentence or two, so an assistant can lift the answer directly.
- Structured data. Schema markup that labels your business type, location, services, and FAQs in a format machines read reliably.
More on each signal in How AI assistants decide which businesses to recommend.
Does SEO still matter?
Yes. When ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google build an answer, they often pull from pages that already rank well in search, so a strong SEO foundation makes AI visibility easier to earn. Think of AEO as a layer built on top of SEO.
For most small businesses, local SEO still earns the first dollar, and AEO builds on the same foundation. We broke down where to spend first by business type.
What can you do this month?
Start with the basics that help search and AI at the same time. Most of this list takes an afternoon or two.
- Check what the assistants say today. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google the questions your customers ask, in a logged-out or private window.
- Make your facts match everywhere: name, address, phone, hours, and services on your site, your Google Business Profile, and the major directories.
- Finish your Google Business Profile, including services, photos, and a plain-language description. Here's a 30-minute walkthrough.
- Answer real customer questions on your site, with the answer in the first sentence.
- Add structured data for your business, services, and FAQs.
- Make sure your robots.txt file isn't blocking AI crawlers.
- Ask happy customers for reviews, and get listed on the directories your industry relies on.
- Publish an llms.txt file, a short plain-text summary of your business for AI tools. It's new and optional, but quick. Here's ours.
The full version, with how to check each item, is in How to show up in ChatGPT: an AEO checklist.
How do you measure AI visibility?
With a fixed set of questions, asked the same way every month. Write 15 to 30 questions a real buyer would ask, run them across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews in fresh sessions, and score each answer: were you mentioned, were you recommended, and were the details right?
Track which competitors come up and which websites the assistants cite. Those sources show you where to earn mentions next. Here's how we track AI search visibility for clients.
Can you pay to show up in AI answers?
You can pay to appear next to them, not in them. ChatGPT shows labeled ads below its answers, Google places ads inside AI Overviews and is testing them in AI Mode, and Microsoft shows ads in Copilot. None of these change what the assistant actually says. Perplexity currently runs no ads at all.
The answer itself is earned through the work in this guide. Ads are a separate, paid layer on top, covered in our AI search ads overview and on our ChatGPT ads page.
Where should you start?
See where you stand. Our free AI visibility check runs your buyers' questions through the major assistants and sends back what they say about you, who they name instead, and your top three fixes. If you'd rather hand the whole job off, that's our AI search optimization work.