AI Search Visibility (Answer Engine Optimisation)
AI Search Visibility
Answer Engine Optimization
AI Search
Entity Strategy
What AI search visibility is
AI search visibility, or answer engine optimisation, is the work of being recommended when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews for the best option in your category — rather than being absent from an answer that names five competitors.
It is related to SEO but not the same thing. Traditional search returns a list of pages and lets the user choose. An answer engine returns a single synthesised recommendation, usually naming a handful of options. Ranking tenth on Google means you are on page one; being tenth in an answer engine's consideration set usually means you are not mentioned at all.
Two things drive whether you appear. Whether the model can resolve "your brand" to a coherent entity with consistent facts attached, and whether the sources it retrieves from — community discussions, listicles, directories, review platforms — mention you in the right context.
How it works
1. Measure the baseline first
We run a fixed set of buyer-realistic prompts across multiple models and record, for each: whether you were mentioned, whether you were cited as a source, your position among named competitors, and which competitors appeared instead. Without this, every subsequent decision is guesswork, and the competitor set alone is usually informative — it is often not the one you see in Google.
2. Make the brand resolvable
Structured data that identifies the organisation, consistent facts across every place you appear, and explicit connections between your site and your other profiles. If your founding date, location or service list differs across sources, models treat the entity as uncertain and reach for a competitor they can describe confidently.
3. Make the site readable to machines
Answer engines strip styling and read text. Direct answers placed immediately under clear headings, questions phrased the way people ask them, and definitions stated plainly get extracted; the same information spread across an animated scroll section does not.
4. Get into the sources that get retrieved
Answer engines synthesise from what already exists — community threads, comparison articles, directories, review platforms. If your category's answers are assembled from listicles you do not appear in, on-site work alone will not fix it. This is where Reddit and Quora work becomes directly relevant.
5. Re-measure, on the same prompts
The same prompt set, run on a schedule, so change is attributable rather than anecdotal. Model behaviour shifts on its own, so a fixed baseline is the only way to distinguish your progress from the model's drift.
Who it's for
This is a fit if your buyers research before purchasing and have started asking AI tools for recommendations — which now covers most considered B2B and B2C categories. It is most valuable when you are a credible option that answer engines currently omit.
This is not a fit if you expect a fixed ranking you can buy or guarantee. There is no submission form, no paid placement, and no lever that forces a model to name you. Anyone selling guaranteed AI rankings is selling something that does not exist.
It is also premature if your brand has no independent presence anywhere. Answer engines synthesise from third-party sources; if nothing exists to synthesise, the first work is earning that presence, not optimising for retrieval.
An honest note on measurement
Answer engines are non-deterministic — the same prompt can return different answers on different days. We report mention rates across repeated runs and multiple models rather than single-run screenshots, because a screenshot proves nothing. We use this method on our own visibility too.
Related work
Read about how we work, or see Reddit marketing, which is often the fastest lever on AI answers for consumer categories.
Frequently asked questions
Why does ChatGPT recommend some brands and not others?
Largely because it can resolve them confidently and its sources mention them. Models favour entities with consistent, corroborated facts across independent places — a site that identifies itself clearly, plus directories, community discussion and coverage that agree with each other. Brands that are absent from those sources, or described inconsistently across them, tend not to be named even when they are a good fit.
How is AEO different from SEO?
SEO optimises for a ranked list of links, where being on page one has value at any position. AEO optimises for inclusion in a single synthesised answer that names only a few options — so it is closer to all-or-nothing. AEO also depends much more heavily on what third-party sources say about you, since the model is summarising them rather than ranking your pages.
Can you guarantee we will appear in AI answers?
No. There is no paid placement and no submission mechanism, and model behaviour changes without notice. What we can do is measure where you stand, address the specific reasons you are being omitted, and show the change over time on a consistent prompt set.
How do you measure something that changes every time you ask?
By running a fixed prompt set repeatedly across several models on a schedule and reporting mention and citation rates as percentages rather than single results. Individual answers vary; the rate across many runs is stable enough to show real movement.
Should we block AI crawlers from our site?
It is a genuine trade-off, and it depends on what you want. Allowing crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot is what makes it possible for your content to be retrieved and cited; blocking them protects your content from being used in training but also removes you from the pool answer engines draw on. We will lay out both sides for your situation rather than assume.
How much does AI search visibility work cost?
Quoted individually. The baseline measurement is a defined piece of work with a clear deliverable, and what follows depends on what the measurement finds — sometimes the fix is on-site and quick, sometimes it requires months of building presence in the sources that get retrieved.
AI Search Visibility (Answer Engine Optimisation)