AI search · AI SEO, AEO and GEO

AI search optimization for stores, done as real SEO, not snake oil.

Shoppers now ask ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity what to buy. AI search optimization is the work that makes your store a source those answers can find, trust and cite. That means pages crawlers can reach, product data that’s complete everywhere, content that answers buyer questions and mentions on the sites AI tools already rely on. We do that work (some call it LLM SEO services), measure it per engine and never sell placement.

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Free AI search audit

We’ll check your brand in ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews and send a PDF report within 2 workdays.

Three fields and you’re done. The PDF report shows what we found on your own pages and accounts, and the order we’d fix it in. It covers the problems we see most often:

  • Crawlers blocked by accident
  • Pages that can’t be quoted
  • Thin, inconsistent product data
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Your PDF report comes by email. If you want to discuss going ahead after reading it, we’ll set up a video meeting. We use your details only for this audit.

Fit

Who it’s for

  • Online stores that want to show up when buyers ask AI tools for recommendations, comparisons or “best X for Y”
  • Brands whose organic clicks changed as AI answers appeared above the results
  • Shopify stores already syndicated to AI channels that want their products described accurately
  • Teams that want one plan across Google, ChatGPT, Copilot and Perplexity instead of five separate “AI SEO” offers

Not the right fit if you want a promised position inside an AI answer. Nobody controls what a language model says, and answers change per person and per run. We work on the inputs and report what moves.

Problems we fix

Why stores are missing from AI answers.

  • 01

    Crawlers blocked by accident

    A firewall rule, a bot-protection setting or an old robots.txt line can shut out OAI-SearchBot, Bingbot or Googlebot, and with them whole AI products.

  • 02

    Pages that can’t be quoted

    Noindex tags, snippet restrictions or content hidden in scripts keep pages out of the answers that link to sources.

  • 03

    Thin, inconsistent product data

    A title and a price give an AI system nothing to compare. Different facts on the site, the feed and marketplaces make the store look unreliable.

  • 04

    No answers to buyer questions

    Sizing, materials, care, shipping and “which one should I buy” are what people ask. Stores that never answer them aren’t used as sources.

  • 05

    Invisible off your own site

    AI answers lean on reviews, forums, comparison articles and press. A brand nobody else mentions is hard for a model to recommend.

  • 06

    No measurement

    Without AI referrals in GA4 and a fixed set of buyer questions checked per engine, nobody can tell whether the work changes anything.

In 1:10 · animated

Before we change anything, we check five things.

A short animated walk-through of the first checks in our audit. No sound needed: everything is on screen, and the transcript is below.

What we check first for AI search, an animated explainer of 1:10 with on-screen captions and controls to pause.

Read the transcript
  1. What we check first for AI search Five checks, starting with whether AI engines can read the store at all.
  2. 1. Can the AI crawlers get in? OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search) and GPTBot (training) as separate controls. We check robots.txt, the firewall and bot protection for each crawler. (Example store.)
  3. 2. Can the pages be quoted? Google says its AI features follow normal Search rules, so noindex and nosnippet keep a page out of them. Content that only appears after scripts run is often missed. (Example store.)
  4. 3. Do the facts agree everywhere? Price, materials and sizes should match on the site, the product feed and marketplaces. Mismatches make the store look unreliable to an engine comparing sources. (Example store: 37 of 120 products differ between site and feed.)
  5. 4. Are buyer questions answered? Sizing, care, shipping and “which one should I buy” are what people ask AI assistants. Pages that answer them in plain words get quoted.
  6. 5. Where does the store show up today? We run a fixed set of buyer prompts across five engines and count how often the store is named or linked, then re-check monthly. (Example baseline from a 40-prompt set.)
  7. Then we fix them, in that order. Want this checked on your store? The free growth audit covers all five, in writing.

Our approach

AI search optimization as one method, five engines.

AI SEO, answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) are three names for overlapping work. We treat them as one method with different emphases, and give each its own page so you can see exactly what we do: AEO is about being the direct answer to a question, GEO is about being cited and recommended inside generated answers, and the engine pages cover ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews one by one.

Step one is access. Each engine reads the web through its own crawlers. Google says its AI features follow normal Search rules, OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot as separate controls for search and for training, and Copilot relies on Bing’s index. We check robots.txt, your CDN and bot protection against that list and agree with you which crawlers to allow.

Step two is the store’s own data. Complete product pages, product structured data that matches the visible text, and feeds that carry the same facts: materials, sizes, care, shipping and returns. Shopify now syndicates catalogs to AI channels through agentic storefronts, so the product data that feeds Google Shopping is also what ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini read.

Step three is content that answers questions. We build a prompt set of 50 to 150 real buyer questions per store from search data, customer emails, reviews and support tickets, then write or rewrite the pages that should answer them: buying guides, comparisons, size and care pages, collection intros that answer in the first two sentences. Our research stack is the one our founder uses on client work every week: Screaming Frog for crawls, Ahrefs and Semrush for queries and competitors, Surfer and NeuronWriter for content gaps.

Step four is the rest of the web. Generated answers summarize what other sites say about a brand. We map which domains the AI tools cite in your category and work on being mentioned there honestly: reviews you’ve earned, accurate listings, expert quotes, useful original data. No fake reviews: the FTC rule on reviews and testimonials bans fake and AI-generated ones.

Step five is measurement, done honestly. AI referrals get their own channel group in GA4; the prompt set is checked in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Copilot, Perplexity and Gemini every month and logged as mentioned, cited or absent; and Search Console shows AI Overviews traffic inside the normal Web results. It isn’t perfect data, and the report says so, but it shows direction per engine.

Two things we won’t sell. A paid llms.txt file: Google says no special AI text files are needed, so we add one free if you want it and never bill for it. And mass-produced AI pages: Google treats scaled, low-value content as spam, and it would put the rest of your rankings at risk.

AI search optimization across five engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Copilot, Perplexity and Gemini, and what each reads
Five engines, one method: what each one reads.

How we use AI here

Where AI helps (and where it doesn’t).

We use AI tools inside this work where they make it faster or more thorough, and keep people on the parts that need judgment.

  • Prompt set research

    AI helps cluster thousands of search queries, reviews and support emails into the buyer questions that matter. A person picks the final list.

  • Answer checks at scale

    Running the same 100 questions across five engines every month is repetitive; scripts collect the answers, and we read and grade them.

  • Draft structure for content

    AI suggests outlines and missing questions; the facts, examples and final text come from your team and ours, and are checked against sources.

Where it doesn’t help: AI can’t tell you whether a claim about your product is true, and it can’t earn a mention on a site people trust. Those stay human jobs.

What’s included

Deliverables, not promises.

  • Prompt set and baseline

    50 to 150 buyer questions, checked across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, Copilot, Perplexity and Gemini before any work starts.

  • Crawler access review

    Robots.txt, CDN and bot-protection settings checked, with an agreed allow list for search and training crawlers.

  • Product data and schema

    Pages, structured data and feeds made complete and consistent, validated after every change.

  • Answer-first content

    Guides, comparisons and question-led page sections written from real expertise and linked to products.

  • Citation source map

    The sites each engine cites in your category, and a plan for earning honest mentions there.

  • AI traffic measurement

    An AI channel group in GA4, AI-channel orders tracked and the prompt set logged monthly.

  • Monthly report

    Mentions and citations per engine, AI referrals and revenue, what we changed and what’s next.

The four inputs of AI search optimization a store controls: crawler access, product data, answer-first content and off-site mentions
The inputs a store can actually influence.

How we run it

Four steps, in this order.

Fix access first, then data, then content and mentions. Typical timing: the baseline within 2 workdays, the first fixes in about a week, new and rewritten pages from week 2, and the first monthly report after 30 days.

  1. Step 1

    Baseline

    Prompt set built and checked across five engines; crawler access, indexing and product data audited.

  2. Step 2

    Unblock

    Crawler, indexing and snippet problems fixed; the allow list set as agreed.

  3. Step 3

    Strengthen

    Product data, schema and answer-first content improved, page by page, in priority order.

  4. Step 4

    Measure

    Prompt set re-checked monthly, AI referrals reported, the plan adjusted.

Four steps of our AI search optimization process, from baseline to monthly measurement
Baseline, unblock, strengthen, then measure.

Pricing

Starting prices, in US dollars.

The audit is free. Paid work starts at these prices, and your exact cost is fixed in writing before any work begins.

  • Free AI search audit

    Free no obligation

    We’ll check your brand in ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews and send a PDF report within 2 workdays.

    Get my free audit

  • After the audit

    AI search setup

    From $400 one-off

    Crawler access, entity data and the pages AI answers quote, fixed.

    • Prompt set and baseline
    • Crawler access review
    • Product data and schema
    • Answer-first content
    Start with the free audit

  • Monthly AI search optimization

    From $350 monthly

    Prompt tracking and new answer-ready content each month.

    • New and improved pages answering buyer questions, linked to products
    • Prompt set checked in five AI engines, logged as mentioned, cited or absent
    • Crawler access, schema and feed checks after site or app changes
    Ask about this option

All prices are starting prices in US dollars. Custom work beyond these options is quoted after the audit.

Every month

What you get each month

  • New and improved pages answering buyer questions, linked to products
  • Prompt set checked in five AI engines, logged as mentioned, cited or absent
  • Crawler access, schema and feed checks after site or app changes
  • A plain-English report with AI referrals and revenue, sent by email and WhatsApp

The work runs every week, and your report arrives in the first week of each month. Worked example, with illustrative figures for a hypothetical store (not a client result): a cookware store tracks the same 40 buying prompts every month. AI search optimization reports how many answers name the store, for example 4 of 40 at the start and 11 of 40 after three months, beside the AI referral sessions GA4 records.

Pricing

How pricing works

We quote after a short audit, once we’ve seen the account or the store, so the number is based on the real work. Ongoing work is one flat monthly amount, starting at $350. There’s no minimum term: plans run month to month.

Start with the free audit to get a quote for your store.

By industry

What changes for your category.

  • Jewelry

    Buyers ask AI tools about metals, stones, ring sizes and care. Clear answers and accurate product data are what get a jewelry store cited.

  • Fashion & apparel

    Fit, fabric and “what to wear with” questions dominate. Size guides and styling content, linked to products, carry most of the work.

  • Luxury & high-ticket

    For antiques and luxury pieces, provenance, authenticity and condition are the questions. Detailed item pages and expert guides answer them.

Sources

The documentation we work from.

Platform rules change. These are the official pages we check the work against, so you can check it too.

FAQ

Straight answers.

Can’t find yours? Ask on WhatsApp or by email and we’ll answer it.

What is AI search optimization?

The work that makes a website a source AI tools can find, trust and cite when people ask them questions: crawler access, complete and consistent data, content that answers real questions and mentions on other trusted sites, measured per engine.

Is AI SEO different from normal SEO?

Mostly not. Google says its AI features need no special optimization beyond normal SEO. The differences are emphasis: crawler access for several companies, product data in feeds, answer-first content and off-site mentions, measured per AI engine.

What’s the difference between AEO and GEO?

AEO (answer engine optimization) aims to be the direct answer to a question. GEO (generative engine optimization) aims to be cited or recommended inside a generated answer. In practice they share most of the work, which is why we run them as one plan.

Can you promise we’ll appear in ChatGPT or AI Overviews?

No, and nobody honestly can. Answers vary per user and per run. We improve the inputs these systems use and measure how often you’re mentioned or cited, month by month.

Do we need an llms.txt file?

Not for Google, which says no special AI text files are needed. Other engines haven’t shown that they rely on it. If you want one, we add it at no charge.

Should we block AI crawlers?

It’s a business decision with two parts. Blocking search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot keeps you out of those answers; blocking training crawlers such as GPTBot doesn’t. We explain each one, then set what you choose.

How do you measure AI search visibility?

Three ways: AI referral sessions and revenue in GA4, a fixed prompt set checked monthly in five engines and logged as mentioned, cited or absent, and Search Console data for Google’s AI features.

How long does it take to see changes?

Crawler and indexing fixes can show within weeks, as engines recrawl. Content and mentions take longer, usually months. We report per engine so you can see what moves first.

Where should we start?

With the AI visibility audit: a fixed-price baseline of your prompt set, crawler access, product data and AI traffic tracking, with a ranked fix list.

Related guides

Read before you decide.

All E-commerce SEO guides

Free growth audit

Find out what’s holding your store back.

Tell us about your store. We’ll review your tracking, campaigns and SEO and send you a written audit with the top fixes, ranked by impact.

  • Written audit as a PDF, delivered within 2 workdays (see a sample)
  • A video meeting to go through it, if you want to discuss next steps
  • Free and no obligation
  • Read-only access or screenshots are enough
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