What AI search optimization actually is
SEO got you ranked. AI search optimization gets you quoted. They are not the same job.
When someone asks an AI engine a question, it writes one answer and names a handful of sources. If your brand is not one of them, you are invisible for that question, even when you sit at the top of the blue links nobody scrolled to.
The behaviour shift is already here. Roughly a third of US searchers used generative AI search in 2026, and that share climbs every quarter (EMARKETER). Every month, more of your buyers ask a model instead of a search box.
AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) are two names for one discipline: structuring your site and its facts so language models can read them, trust them, and cite them. The work is half engineering and half editorial. That seam is exactly where we sit.
What we change on your site
Three layers, in order of leverage.
Machine readability. Structured data that defines your brand as an entity, not just a bag of keywords. An llms.txt and llms-full.txt summary AI crawlers actually read. Server-rendered content so engines that do not run JavaScript still see your pages. Clean canonicals, hreflang, and AI-crawler access in robots.txt. If the model cannot parse you, nothing else matters.
Citation engineering. We restructure the pages that matter into the fact-dense, question-led format models extract from, build the topical authority that makes an engine trust your domain on a subject, and surface the first-hand expertise signals AI weights as trustworthy.
Measurement. We track whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews cite you across the prompts your buyers actually use, and report the trend so you can see the work landing.
Typical deliverables:
- An entity and schema layer that makes your brand legible to language models
- llms.txt + llms-full.txt written for how AI engines consume a site
- Page restructures that turn your best content into citable answers
- AI-crawler access and technical hygiene (canonicals, hreflang, prerender)
- Citation tracking across the major AI engines, reported monthly
Who this is for
- SaaS founders watching demo requests leak into AI answers they never appear in
- E-commerce and SMB operators whose category is increasingly answered by an AI before the buyer ever reaches a website
- Anyone who ranks fine in Google but never shows up when a buyer asks an AI the same question
If your traffic is flat but your category is hot, this is usually why.