What is AI search optimisation?
AI search optimisation (sometimes called LLM SEO, GEO, AEO, or AI SEO, same thing, different names) is the work of making sure your business shows up when people ask AI tools for recommendations.
Instead of Googling "best plumber near me", people are increasingly asking ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini things like "who's the best plumber in Manchester?" or "what's a good agency for Shopify SEO in the UK?". The AI gives them 2 or 3 specific business recommendations. If your business isn't one of them, you don't exist to that customer.
This is a completely different game from traditional SEO. Different ranking factors, different content style, different technical setup, different reporting. And it's growing fast, AI search traffic is up around 40-60% year on year while Google search traffic is flat. Businesses that get ahead of this now will have a massive head start on ones that wait.
Why AI search matters now
A few numbers worth knowing:
- ChatGPT now has over 600 million weekly users globally, roughly 10% are in the UK and using it for product and service research.
- Perplexity is doing over 400 million queries a month and growing fast, specifically marketed as a Google replacement.
- Google's AI Overviews now appear on 15-20% of all UK searches, pulling answers from specific sources (which means some sites are getting cited and others are being skipped entirely).
- Apple Intelligence and Gemini are being baked into phones, so AI search is becoming the default way people look for stuff.
The businesses getting cited in AI answers right now are getting free, high-intent traffic while their competitors disappear. And the gap's only going to widen.
How much does AI search optimisation cost?
We start at £400/month, same entry point as traditional SEO. Fair warning though, this work is genuinely more technical than standard SEO. You're not just writing blog posts and building links, you're restructuring content, building advanced schema, setting up AI crawler access, publishing entity manifests, and monitoring citation data across four different AI engines.
For most UK agencies, this is work they can't do at all yet. We can do it because we've been running our own AI search optimisation, signal.marketing itself is cited across ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, and we've built systems around that work for clients.
What you get at £400/month:
- Full technical setup (AI crawlers, robots.txt, schema, llms.txt)
- Entity clarity work across the web (Wikipedia, Companies House, industry directories)
- Content restructuring so your existing pages are citation-friendly
- Monthly citation tracking across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini
- Live dashboard showing where you're being mentioned and by which engine
Scale up from there if you need more content production, active prompt-response testing, or bigger entity campaigns.
How long does it take to show up in AI search?
Faster than traditional SEO, usually. Most clients start getting cited in 4-12 weeks. Here's roughly how it plays out:
- Weeks 1-2: Full audit, technical setup, schema deployment, llms.txt, AI crawler access. By the end of week 2, the AI engines can actually read your site properly for the first time.
- Weeks 3-6: Content restructuring and entity work. Pages get rewritten to be citation-friendly, entity data cleaned across the web.
- Weeks 6-12: First citations start appearing. We track and adjust based on which pages are getting pulled and for which queries.
- Month 3 and beyond: Citation frequency compounds. Your business starts being recommended for broader queries as the AI engines develop trust in your content.
Worth knowing, AI search moves faster than Google because the models update their training and retrieval layers constantly. A page Google would take 3 months to rank can get cited by ChatGPT in 3 weeks if it's structured properly.
How we do AI search optimisation
Technical setup
First thing is making sure AI engines can actually access your content. Most sites accidentally block AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended) or serve them broken content. We fix robots.txt, publish a proper llms.txt manifest, and make sure the HTML structure is parseable.
Schema and structured data
AI engines lean on structured data much harder than Google does. If your site doesn't have proper Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ, Review, and Breadcrumb schema, the AI doesn't know what you are. We build out the full schema graph, with special attention to entity identifiers (Companies House number, social profiles, official addresses) so the AI can confirm you're real.
Entity clarity across the web
AI models pull data from everywhere, your site, Wikipedia, Crunchbase, Companies House, Trustpilot, LinkedIn, industry directories. If those sources have inconsistent information about your business, the AI gets confused and won't recommend you confidently. We clean up your entity data across the key sources so every AI pulling information about you gets the same story.
Citation-worthy content
AI search isn't about ranking, it's about getting cited. That means content needs to be written differently. Clear factual statements. Structured answers to specific questions. Quotable phrases. Numbered lists. Definition blocks. We restructure existing pages and write new ones specifically to be pulled into AI answers.
Citation tracking and reporting
Every month we run systematic queries against ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini, asking questions your ideal customers would ask. We track when you get mentioned, what you get cited for, and how your position compares to competitors. The dashboard shows all of this month on month so you can see AI visibility growing.
How to rank in ChatGPT
Specific answer to a specific question people are now searching. Getting cited in ChatGPT comes down to five things:
- GPTBot must be allowed in your robots.txt. Most UK sites still have it blocked.
- Your content must be parseable, clean HTML, no heavy JavaScript rendering that AI crawlers can't handle.
- You need entity clarity, proper schema, consistent information across the web, recognisable identifiers.
- Your content must directly answer questions, not just contain keywords, but clearly phrased factual statements ChatGPT can quote.
- You need to be mentioned in places ChatGPT trusts, Wikipedia, major publications, Trustpilot, industry directories.
We do all five. Same approach for Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini, with small tweaks for each engine's specific quirks.
Do I still need regular SEO if I'm doing this?
Yes. Think of AI search optimisation as a separate channel, not a replacement. The overlap with traditional SEO is around 40%, most of the content and authority work helps both, but the deep technical side (schema depth, llms.txt, AI crawler setup, entity clarity, citation-optimised content structure) is specific to AI search.
Most clients run both, regular SEO for Google rankings, AI search optimisation for everything else. You can hire us for either individually or both as a combined package.
Who should actually do this?
Honestly, not everyone needs this yet. It makes most sense for:
- Service businesses where people ask AI for recommendations (agencies, consultants, clinics, tradespeople)
- Ecom brands in research-heavy categories (health, tech, home goods, anything people compare before buying)
- B2B companies, buyers are using AI for vendor shortlisting way more than anyone realises
- Businesses with genuine authority (real case studies, real expertise, real differentiation), AI is better than Google at spotting thin content
It's less useful for pure-play local service businesses where 90% of leads come from Google Business Profile (start with our GBP management instead), or very small brands with minimal online presence (traditional SEO first, then layer this on later).
Common questions about AI search optimisation
How is this different from regular SEO?
Regular SEO is about ranking in Google's 10 blue links. AI search optimisation is about being mentioned or cited when an AI engine generates an answer to a user's question. Completely different ranking factors, content style, technical setup, and reporting. There's overlap, but the work is genuinely distinct.
Can you guarantee I'll show up in ChatGPT?
No. Like Google, we don't control the AI engines, they do. But we can guarantee the technical and content work gets done properly, and the vast majority of clients see regular AI citations within 2-3 months.
Which AI engines do you optimise for?
The big four right now: ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Perplexity, and Gemini (Google). We also cover Google AI Overviews as part of the work since they pull from similar signals. As new engines launch (Apple Intelligence fully, Meta's AI, etc.), we'll expand coverage.
Does this mess with my existing Google rankings?
No, if anything it helps. Better schema, clearer entity data, stronger content structure, all of that helps Google too. AI search optimisation is additive to your SEO, not in conflict with it.
Do I need to change my whole website?
No. Most of the work happens in existing pages, technical tweaks, content restructuring, schema deployment. Full rebuilds are rare and only if the site is genuinely broken for AI crawling.
How do I know it's actually working?
Monthly citation reports show exactly where you're being mentioned across all four AI engines. We run the same set of queries every month and track your presence, your competitors' presence, and what specific pages or phrases are being pulled. No vanity metrics, just actual citations.
Ready to get ahead of AI search?
Most UK businesses are still thinking about this as "something to do later". That's exactly why now is the right time, there's way less competition for AI visibility right now than there will be in 12 months. Drop us a message and we'll run an AI visibility audit, we'll tell you where you're being mentioned now (probably not many places), what your competitors are doing, and what it'd take to get ahead.
