Visibility & AEO

When they ask an assistant, be the answer.

Search is splitting in two: the results page you know, and the single answer an assistant gives. Ranking fourth used to mean some clicks. In an answer engine, fourth means invisible. This page explains what changed, what makes a business citable, and what it costs to find out where you stand.

Audit my visibility — £250 What it actually checks
three acronyms, one job

SEO, AEO, GEO.

They are not competing schools. They are three answers to the same question — how does a machine decide who to name — asked at three different moments.

SEO Search engine optimisation

Was Getting a page ranked in a list of ten blue links.

Now Still real, still worth doing, and no longer the whole job. A list has ten places on it. An answer has one.

AEO Answer engine optimisation

Was Did not need a name while search returned a list.

Now Being the business the single synthesised answer names. It rewards clear entity data, structured markup, and pages that answer the question in the first forty words rather than the fifteen hundredth.

GEO Generative engine optimisation

Was Did not exist.

Now Being citable by a model that is generating prose rather than ranking documents. Overlaps heavily with AEO; the practical difference is that it cares about being quotable, not just findable.

The practical consequence is the same in all three cases: a machine has to be able to identify you, read you, and trust what it read. That is four pieces of work, and they are below.

What makes a business citable.

Not opinions. Four properties a machine can check, in the order they have to be true.

  1. Be one business, not several half-ones

    Assistants resolve businesses to entities, not to pages. If your name, address and category disagree across the web, you are several partial records and none of them is confident enough to be the answer. Everything else depends on this being true first.

  2. Say what you are in a format built for saying it

    Structured data is how a page tells a machine what it is looking at instead of hoping it infers correctly. A page that reads clearly to a person can read as nothing in particular to a parser.

  3. Be readable at all

    Crawler access, render-blocking scripts, content that only exists after JavaScript runs. A page an assistant cannot read is a page it cannot cite, however good the copy is.

  4. Answer the question that was actually asked

    People ask assistants questions in their own words. Pages that circle the answer for fifteen hundred words do not get quoted. Pages that answer immediately, then explain, do.

45% of consumers now use ChatGPT or another generative AI tool for local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier — BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, n=1,002. AI Overviews appear on 68% of local business-type queries against 39% for the local pack — Whitespark, 2026.

Find out which of the four you fail
audit · foundation · retainer

How the work runs.

  1. 01

    Audit

    Where you show up today and where you do not, with the specific reasons. £250, five working days. Credited against your first month if you continue.

  2. 02

    Foundation

    Entity data, structure and schema fixed once, properly. This is the part that stops being a problem rather than becoming a subscription.

  3. 03

    Retainer

    Monthly authority work that compounds — content that answers real questions, and the maintenance that keeps you in the reply as answers move. Partner packages from £250 a month, no minimum term.

Start with the audit
  • 3 live products
  • 2 trading companies run on our software
  • 78 room hotel platform in build

We are the first customer for this work. The Lighthouse figures published on this site are measured in CI on every change, not asserted — which is the same standard we hold your visibility reporting to.

Common questions.

Is AEO just SEO with a new name?
No, though they overlap. SEO optimises for position in a ranked list. AEO targets the single synthesised response, which rewards unambiguous entity data, structured markup and content that answers directly. Ranking fourth used to mean some clicks; in an answer engine, fourth means invisible.
How would I know if I have a visibility problem?
Ask an assistant for what you sell in your area and see who it names. If it is not you, or it describes you wrongly, that is the problem stated in one sentence. The audit tells you why.
How long does this take to work?
Structural fixes — entity consistency, schema, crawlability — land as soon as the pages are re-read. Authority work compounds and is measured in months, not days. We will say which of the two your situation needs.
Do I need a new website for this?
Often not. If your current site can be read, structured and corrected, we do that. We will tell you when a rebuild is genuinely the cheaper answer rather than assuming it.
What does it cost to start?
The AI Visibility Audit is £250 and takes five working days. If you go on to a Partner package the fee comes off your first month.
What if the audit says I do not need you?
Then that is what it says. We would rather you spent the audit fee finding out than spent a retainer on work that was not the problem.

Find out what the assistants say about you.

The AI Visibility Audit is £250 and takes five working days. If you go on to a Partner package, the fee comes off your first month.

Buy the audit Tell us what is wrong first