Your customers are asking a model before they ask Google
Being cited in an AI answer is a different job from ranking, with different mechanics. Here is the honest version of how it works and what we can actually influence.
The short answer
AI search optimisation means making your content easy for a model to lift cleanly, and making sure the places models retrieve from mention you. Roughly half the work happens off your own website.
What is included
Answer-capsule restructuring across key pages
Entity consistency across every profile you own
Schema and llms.txt implementation
Off-site presence where models actually retrieve
Monthly prompt tracking across four AI surfaces
Thirty to fifty real buyer questions, checked across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and AI Overviews. Mentioned, cited, or absent.
The honest version
There is a lot of confident nonsense being sold in this category right now. What follows is what we can demonstrate.
On your site
Models quote what they can lift cleanly. That means a direct answer in plain prose under every heading, correct heading order, real table markup for comparisons, and schema that resolves your business to one consistent entity. We also publish an llms.txt — an emerging convention rather than a ranking factor, but cheap to ship and a clear signal to a buyer evaluating you.
Off your site
This is the part most agencies skip. Retrieval-augmented answers lean heavily on Reddit, forums, review aggregators and listicles. If those sources never mention you, on-site work alone will not get you cited. A programme that never leaves your domain is half a programme.
Measurement
We fix a set of 30 to 50 real buyer questions and check them monthly across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google’s AI Overviews. Each one comes back mentioned, cited, or absent. That scorecard is the deliverable.
One thing worth knowing
Blocking Google-Extended does not remove you from AI Overviews — those draw on standard Googlebot access. It only costs you Gemini grounding. Plenty of businesses have blocked it thinking they opted out of something they did not.
How the first 90 days go Before you ask Send us a URL. You'll get back the technical issues, your AI-search readiness score, what competitors are doing that you aren't, and what we'd fix in the first ninety days.How the first 90 days go
Start with the audit. It's free and it's specific.