Answer engine optimization for businesses that want to show up in ChatGPT

AEO, AIO, and GEO in plain English

Answer engine optimization (AEO), AI optimization (AIO), and generative engine optimization (GEO) are three names for roughly the same goal: making your business the one AI tools name when someone asks a question you can answer. The labels are new. Most of the work is not.

AI assistants with web search, such as ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews, look up sources, read them, and summarize. If your website is vague, your listings disagree with each other, and nobody else online mentions you, there is little for them to work with.

What the platforms actually say

We try to be honest about this. Google's own documentation says there are no additional requirements or special optimizations needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. No special schema and no AI text files are required. Standard SEO best practices are what count, which is why AEO works best on top of solid local SEO.

OpenAI's documentation says ChatGPT search uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot, and sites that block it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. That makes robots.txt access a real, checkable item. You may also see llms.txt recommended. It is an emerging proposal, not an adopted standard, so we treat it as optional and low-risk rather than a ranking factor.

For a deeper walkthrough, read /guides/how-to-show-up-in-chatgpt.

What's included each month

• Entity and listing consistency checks, with corrections at the source.
• 2 answer-focused posts or pages, such as an FAQ hub, a comparison page, or a detailed service page.
• Schema markup updates for new and existing pages.
• Outreach and cleanup for third-party mentions: directories, associations, local media, and partners.
• Review request workflows through GoHighLevel, if you use it.
• Robots.txt and crawler-access review.
• A monthly AI visibility log and a short review call.

How we measure it

Measurement is where we differ. At the start, we agree on a fixed set of buyer questions, such as "Who is the best HVAC company near Strongsville?" Each month we run them by hand across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews and log whether you are mentioned, how you are described, and which named competitors appear. Over time that gives you a share-of-mention trend you can read, not a vague score.

We also set up GA4 to separate AI referral traffic. ChatGPT search typically adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links it cites, and Perplexity and Gemini visits usually show up as referrals from their own domains, though some AI visits arrive without referrer data and land in direct traffic. We report what can be measured and are clear about what cannot. AI answers vary by user, location, and day, so the log is a trend, not a promise.

Bundle and save

AI search and local SEO share the same foundation: accurate listings, reviews, and clear pages. The SEO + AI Search bundle combines this plan with /services/local-seo for $797 per month instead of $994, with no setup fee and no contract. Plan on about three months to see results; cancel any time. Want a baseline first? Start with the free /free-audit or the full /services/seo-ai-visibility-audit.