Skip to content
MangoGrow

Search & AI Visibility

AI Search Optimization (GEO & AEO)

Be the business AI assistants recommend

Your customers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity who to hire and what to buy. We make sure your business is part of the answer.

Get a free AI Search Optimization audit Talk to a specialist

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

When someone asks an AI assistant “What’s the best CRM for a small real estate team?” or “Which dentist in Austin is good with nervous patients?”, the assistant writes an answer and often names specific businesses. Generative Engine Optimization is the discipline of earning a place in those answers.

AI assistants build answers in two ways. Some draw on what they learned during training. Others search the web in real time and summarize the pages they find, often with citations. GEO works on both: it strengthens how your brand is described across the web, and it makes your own pages easy for AI systems to retrieve, understand, and quote.

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is a closely related term. It focuses on structuring content so it directly answers questions, which helps with AI assistants, voice search, and Google’s featured snippets and AI Overviews. We treat GEO and AEO as one program, because the work overlaps almost completely.

Who is AI Search Optimization for?

AI search optimization matters most for businesses whose customers research before they buy:

  • B2B and SaaS companies that buyers compare and shortlist
  • Professional services such as legal, accounting, consulting, and healthcare
  • E-commerce brands in categories where people ask for recommendations
  • Local businesses that want to appear when people ask AI “who’s the best near me”
  • Brands already investing in SEO that want to protect traffic as AI answers grow
  • Companies that suspect AI tools are describing them inaccurately

What problems does AI Search Optimization solve?

AI recommends your competitors, not you

Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity about your category and your brand is missing. We find out why, and fix the gaps in content, entity data, and third-party mentions.

AI gets your facts wrong

Outdated prices, wrong locations, or services you no longer offer. We correct the sources AI systems rely on so answers about you are accurate.

Your content is hard for machines to quote

Long, vague pages without clear answers rarely get cited. We restructure key pages around direct answers, facts, and question-based headings.

Organic clicks are falling as AI answers grow

When AI Overviews answer the question, fewer people click. Being cited inside the answer is how you keep visibility and trust.

No way to measure AI visibility

Most analytics tools don’t show AI mentions. We run a repeatable prompt-tracking program so you can see progress month by month.

What’s included in our AI Search Optimization service?

  • AI visibility audit

    We test the prompts your customers use across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot, and record who gets mentioned and cited.

  • Entity and brand consistency

    Your name, description, services, and contact details aligned across your site, profiles, directories, and knowledge sources.

  • Answer-first content restructuring

    Key pages rewritten with summaries, direct answers, question-based headings, facts, and sources.

  • Structured data

    Organization, Service, FAQ, Article, Product, and Person schema that helps machines understand exactly who you are and what you offer.

  • llms.txt and crawler access

    An llms.txt summary of your site and robots.txt rules that let AI crawlers read your content.

  • Third-party citation building

    Mentions on the review sites, directories, industry publications, and comparison lists that AI assistants trust.

  • Original data and expert content

    Surveys, benchmarks, and expert commentary that give AI tools a reason to cite you as a source.

  • Monthly AI visibility report

    Share of voice across AI assistants, citation counts, accuracy issues found and fixed, and next steps.

How does our AI Search Optimization process work?

  1. 1

    Prompt research

    We build a list of 50–200 real questions your customers ask, from “what is…” to “best … for …” to “… vs …”.

  2. 2

    Baseline measurement

    We run those prompts across major AI assistants and record mentions, citations, sentiment, and accuracy for you and your competitors.

  3. 3

    Fix the foundation

    Entity consistency, schema, crawler access, and llms.txt come first, so AI systems can read and trust your site.

  4. 4

    Create and earn citations

    We publish answer-first content on your site and earn mentions on the third-party sources AI assistants rely on.

  5. 5

    Track and iterate

    We re-run the prompt set monthly, report changes, and focus effort where visibility is growing fastest.

How long does AI Search Optimization take to work?

  1. Weeks 1–3

    Prompt research, AI visibility baseline, and technical foundation (schema, llms.txt, crawler rules).

  2. Months 2–3

    Content restructuring and new answer-first pages. Early improvements in AI assistants that search the web live, such as Perplexity and AI Overviews.

  3. Months 4–6

    Third-party mentions accumulate. Brand visibility grows across more assistants and more prompts.

  4. Month 6+

    Expand to new topics, defend positions, and publish original data that keeps you cited.

What results can you expect?

AI search is new and changes quickly, so we focus on outcomes we can measure:

  • More mentions of your brand for high-value prompts in your category
  • More citations linking back to your website
  • Accurate, up-to-date descriptions of your business in AI answers
  • Referral traffic from AI assistants, tracked in your analytics
  • Stronger classic SEO, because the same work helps Google rankings

Note: Results vary by business, market, and budget. We set specific, realistic targets after your free audit.

How do AI assistants decide which businesses to recommend?

No AI company publishes a full ranking formula, but the patterns are consistent. Assistants tend to recommend brands that are mentioned often across trusted sources, described the same way everywhere, and associated with clear, factual content that directly answers the question.

For assistants that browse the web, traditional search visibility matters a lot: if your page ranks well and answers the question clearly, it is more likely to be retrieved and cited. For answers drawn from training data, your broader reputation across the web (reviews, press, directories, forums, and expert content) matters most.

Is GEO different from SEO?

They overlap heavily, but the goal is different. SEO aims to rank a page in a list of links. GEO aims to have your brand named, and ideally linked, inside a written answer. That puts more weight on brand mentions across the web, on the accuracy of your entity information, and on content that can be quoted in one or two sentences.

In practice, the strongest results come from doing both together. That’s why our AI Search Optimization clients often pair it with SEO and content writing, and why we build every page on our own site to be easy for AI assistants to read.

AI Search Optimization FAQs

Can you guarantee ChatGPT will recommend my business?

No one can guarantee that. AI answers vary by prompt, user, and model version. What we can do is measurably increase how often and how accurately you are mentioned, and we report those numbers every month.

Which AI assistants do you optimize for?

ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Claude, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. Priorities depend on where your customers are.

What is llms.txt?

llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that summarizes who you are and links to your most important pages, in a format that is easy for AI systems to read. It’s a small but useful signal, and we set it up for every client.

How do you measure AI visibility?

We maintain a fixed set of prompts that reflect how your customers ask questions, run them regularly across major assistants, and record mentions, citations, position, sentiment, and accuracy. You see the trend over time.

Do I need SEO as well?

Usually, yes. Assistants that search the web rely on pages that rank. If your site has technical or content problems, fixing them is part of GEO anyway.

Should I block AI crawlers?

For most businesses that want to be recommended, no. Blocking crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot makes it harder for those assistants to read and cite your content. We help you decide based on your goals.

Related services

Ready to grow with AI Search Optimization?

Get a free growth audit. We’ll show you exactly where you’re losing customers on Google, AI assistants, and social media, and how to win them back.

Get Your Free Growth Audit Contact us

Free, no obligation. Results vary by business, market, and budget.