Customer Question Research
Build a useful prompt set around the questions, comparisons, recommendations, and follow-up turns real customers are likely to use.
AI Search for Businesses
Make your business easier to find in AI search.
Customers are starting to ask ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, and Perplexity who to hire, where to go, and what to buy. I help businesses understand how they show up, where competitors are winning, and what can realistically improve.
Based in Bend, Oregon · Working with local and growing businesses
WHAT I LOOK ATAre you mentioned? Are you described accurately? Who gets recommended instead? What sources are shaping the answer?
ChatGPTmentions, recommendations, and sources
Google AIAI Overviews and AI Mode
Competitorswho appears and why
Source signalsthe pages shaping answers
Why it matters
People are already asking AI tools to narrow down their options.
That can be a homeowner asking who to call, a traveler asking where to go, or a buyer comparing a short list of businesses. The question is no longer only “where do you rank?” It is also “does the system know enough about you to include you?”
A mention is not the finish line.
It matters whether your business is described accurately, appears for the right needs, survives follow-up questions, and is supported by sources a customer can use to keep researching.
AI Search Services
First figure out what is happening. Then fix the right things.
Visibility Benchmark
Compare your brand mentions, competitors, recommendation context, linked sources, accuracy, and gaps across relevant AI experiences.
Source & Citation Analysis
Identify the owned and third-party pages that shape answers and where stronger or more accurate information may be needed.
Business & Brand Clarity
Make it clearer who you are, what you offer, where you operate, and which facts should be represented consistently across the web.
Content Opportunity Plan
Improve pages and create resources that answer useful questions better than generic, interchangeable content.
Technical & Access Review
Check crawlability, indexability, rendering, internal linking, structured data accuracy, and other foundations that affect discovery.
Measurement
AI answers change. The reporting should be honest about that.
Results can vary by model, date, location, personalization, wording, and conversation history. A useful benchmark uses a defined methodology instead of pretending a small sample is universal truth.
What I may track
- Brand mention rate and competitive share of voice
- Recommendation context, accuracy, and sentiment
- Linked or cited domains and pages
- Visibility by question theme and customer stage
- First-answer visibility and multi-turn persistence
- AI referral traffic and conversions when identifiable
SEO + AI Search
New search experiences still depend on strong fundamentals.
Useful content, technically accessible pages, clear business information, credible third-party signals, and a site that is easy to understand still matter. AI search adds new questions to measure—it does not erase the basics.
Still foundational
Indexable pages, useful original content, clear site structure, internal links, accurate facts, and credible brand signals.
New research questions
Which questions trigger recommendations, which sources influence answers, how competitors appear, and what happens across follow-up turns.
No universal hack
No special file, schema type, or content formula guarantees inclusion. Tactics should be tested against the platform and business—not repeated as folklore.
See Google Search Central’s current guide tooptimizing for generative AI features.
A Good Fit
This is useful when better visibility can affect a real customer decision.
- Your customers use AI tools to research, compare, plan, or ask for recommendations
- You want to understand why competitors appear and which sources shape the answers
- Important facts about the business are missing, inconsistent, or described inaccurately
- You can improve your website, content, listings, PR, or broader web presence based on the findings
- You want AI visibility connected to the broader SEO and customer-acquisition strategy
AI Visibility Process
Define, benchmark, diagnose, improve, repeat.
Questions
Define the audiences, needs, and decisions worth researching.
Baseline
Run a documented prompt set across relevant platforms.
Sources
Study competitors, citations, gaps, inaccuracies, and patterns.
Changes
Prioritize content, technical, entity, and authority improvements.
Learning
Repeat the benchmark and connect visibility to business data.
Frequently Asked Questions
AI search optimization FAQs
What is AI search optimization?
It is the work of making a brand and its information easier to discover, understand, verify, and accurately represent in AI-assisted search experiences. It includes research and measurement specific to AI answers, while building on technical SEO, useful content, clear entity information, and trusted web signals.
Is GEO different from SEO?
There are new interfaces, behaviors, and measurement challenges, but much of the foundation is shared. Google explicitly says its established SEO best practices remain relevant to its generative AI features. Other platforms have different systems, so I evaluate them directly rather than assuming one tactic works everywhere.
Can you guarantee that ChatGPT or another AI tool will mention my brand?
No. AI answers are variable, personalized, and controlled by the platforms producing them. The responsible goal is to improve the information and signals we can influence, measure visibility across a defined prompt set, and learn which sources and gaps appear to matter.
How do you measure AI search visibility?
Measurement can include brand mention rate, competitive share of voice, linked or cited sources, answer accuracy, sentiment, recommendation context, prompt categories, and whether the brand persists as a conversation becomes more specific. These metrics should be paired with website, search, referral, and conversion data where available.
Do I need special AI schema or an llms.txt file?
There is no universal special markup that guarantees AI visibility. Google states that no special schema or AI text file is required for its generative search features. Valid structured data and clear machine-readable information can still support normal search understanding when they accurately match visible page content.
What businesses are a good fit for this work?
It is most useful when people are already using AI tools to compare, research, plan, or ask for recommendations in your category—and when the business has the ability to improve its website, content, brand information, or broader web presence based on what the research finds.
AI Search Visibility
Want to see how your business actually appears in AI search?
We can start with the questions your customers ask, establish a useful baseline, and turn the findings into a practical plan.
Talk About Your Business