AI search optimization (AEO and GEO) from a New York City agency

This page is built only from what Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and Perplexity state in their own documentation, with a link to each. The short version: every one of them builds its answers on a search of the web. A page is cited when it can be crawled, indexed and quoted, and when it answers the question better than the page beside it. There is no separate trick, and nobody can sell you a place in an answer.

AEO, GEO and AI SEO: three names for one job

• Answer engine optimization (AEO) is writing and structuring pages so that a system which answers questions, instead of listing links, can lift the answer from them and name the source.
• Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the same aim for answers written by a language model. Microsoft defines it in its Bing Webmaster Guidelines: GEO focuses on content eligibility for grounding and reference in AI responses.
• AI SEO is the plain-English name for both. It does not mean SEO done by a machine.

An agency that sells these as three services is selling one job three times. We treat them as one.

How AI answers choose and cite sources

Each company documents how its product finds the pages it quotes. None of them publishes a formula for which page wins, and none of them claims that one exists outside ordinary search ranking. What they do publish is below.

Google: AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google says its AI features sit on top of Search and need nothing special. Its page AI features and your website states that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary. To be shown as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet.

The same page describes how the answer is put together. Both features may use what Google calls query fan-out: issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources to build a response. One question from a searcher becomes several searches, and a page can be picked up for any of them. That is a reason to give each narrow subject its own clear page: any one of those searches can pick it up.

Google also says what you do not need: new machine readable files, AI text files or special markup. The best practices it lists are the familiar ones: let its crawler in, link your pages to each other, keep important content in text, make structured data match what is visible, and keep your Business Profile current.

OpenAI: ChatGPT search

ChatGPT searches the web when a question would benefit from current information, and responses that use web search may include citations. OpenAI’s help page on search explains the mechanics: ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers, and when it does it typically rewrites the question into one or more targeted queries that it sends to them. Microsoft is one of the providers the page names. It can also use an approximate location to find local results.

For site owners the control is a crawler. OpenAI’s crawler documentation says OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT’s search features, and that a site which opts out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link. A different crawler, GPTBot, collects content that may be used to train OpenAI’s models. The two are set separately, so a business can be findable in ChatGPT search without offering its pages for training.

Microsoft: Copilot and Bing

Microsoft is the most explicit of the four. Its Bing Webmaster Guidelines say that Bing and Copilot search experiences rely on the same core crawling, indexing and ranking foundation as traditional search, and that the practices which support indexing and content clarity also support eligibility for AI-generated answers and citations. The guidelines then describe the content that gets chosen: easy to understand without external context, with facts and definitions stated explicitly, focused on a single topic, with the essential information near the top, and with people, organizations and locations named clearly and consistently.

They also list the switches that keep a page out. NOINDEX removes a URL from Bing search and from Copilot. NOARCHIVE prevents content from being used in Copilot responses. NOCACHE limits Copilot to the URL, the title and the snippet. Any of the three can be left on a site by mistake, and it is the first thing we look for.

Perplexity

Perplexity describes itself as searching the internet in real time when you ask a question, and each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources. Its crawler page says PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity and is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models, and it recommends allowing PerplexityBot in a site’s robots.txt file.

Product	What its maker says it is built on	Crawler that has to be let in	Where you can see results
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode	Google Search. A cited page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet	Googlebot	Search Console, counted within ordinary web search
ChatGPT search	Web search, partly through partner search providers	OAI-SearchBot	Your own analytics and manual checks
Microsoft Copilot	Bing’s crawling, indexing and ranking	Bingbot	The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools
Perplexity	A real-time search of the internet	PerplexityBot	Your own analytics and manual checks

What can honestly be done

Everything above points to the same work, and it is work we can do and show.

• Open the door. We check that robots.txt, the hosting company and any firewall in front of the site let in Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, and that no page carries a noindex, nosnippet or noarchive instruction by accident. You decide separately whether to allow the training crawlers.
• Get indexed in both. Google’s AI features draw on Google’s index and Copilot draws on Bing’s, so the site is submitted and checked in Search Console and in Bing Webmaster Tools, with a sitemap of the pages that matter.
• Give every question its own page. One topic to a page, with the address, the title and the heading saying the same thing.
• Put the answer first. Under each heading the first sentence answers the question the heading raises, in words that still make sense when they are quoted alone.
• State the facts the same way everywhere. Your name, address, phone number, founding year, prices and service areas read identically on every page, in the markup and on your Google Business Profile.
• Keep the markup honest. Structured data describes what a visitor can see on the page, nothing more.
• Say it in text. A price list that exists only as a picture cannot be quoted. Pictures and video support the text and carry descriptions.
• Keep it current. Pages are corrected when the facts change, and Bing is notified of the change.
• Measure what can be measured, which is the next section.

If that reads like a description of careful SEO, it is. The pages on this site are written this way, including this one.

How AI visibility is measured

Measurement is partial, and an agency that shows you an exact AI ranking is showing you an estimate. These are the sources that exist.

• Google counts visits from its AI features inside the ordinary Performance report in Search Console, under the Web search type. It does not report them separately.
• Microsoft has an AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools. It shows which of your pages were cited in Copilot and in Bing’s AI summaries, how often, and the grounding queries, which are the key phrases the AI used when it retrieved your content. Microsoft adds that the report does not measure rankings, authority or importance. It simply shows which content was cited.
• For ChatGPT and Perplexity there is no owner’s report. We keep a list of the real questions your customers ask, put them to each product on a schedule, and record whether you are named, whether you are linked and what is said.
• Your own analytics show the visits that arrive from these products, and your phone and forms show whether they became customers.

Google makes one more point worth repeating. It has seen that people who click through from a results page with an AI Overview are more likely to spend more time on the site, and it advises looking at conversions, such as sales and sign-ups, instead of at clicks alone. Microsoft says the same thing from the other side: a decline in clicks does not always indicate a loss of visibility.

What cannot be promised

• A citation. Microsoft’s guidelines say it in one sentence: SEO does not guarantee rankings or traffic, and GEO does not guarantee grounding or citations in AI experiences. OpenAI says of ChatGPT search that placement is not guaranteed.
• What the answer says about you. OpenAI warns its own users that search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated or incorrect. We can correct the sources an answer draws on. We cannot edit the answer.
• A shortcut. Google says no new machine readable files, AI text files or markup are needed to appear in its AI features. A file added to your server is not a strategy.
• A trick that lasts. Microsoft lists text engineered to trigger citations, and content written to manipulate the language models behind Bing or Copilot, among the practices that can get a site demoted or removed.
• A fixed result. Microsoft notes that citation volume moves with the questions people ask, with updates to your content and with system or model updates on its side. That is why we track a list of questions over time and not a single position.

AI search optimization and SEO compared

	SEO	AI search optimization
The goal	A high position in the list of results	To be the source named in the answer
What it rests on	Crawling, indexing, content, links and reviews	The same, as each of the four companies states
What is added	Nothing	Letting in the AI search crawlers, answer-first writing, consistent facts, and testing real questions
What you can see	Positions, clicks, calls and forms	Citations where they are reported, manual checks, and the calls and forms that follow
What can be promised	The work, and an honest report	The work, and an honest report

What we do, month by month

The first month

• An access and index check: crawlers, directives, sitemaps, Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• A facts check: every statement of your name, address, phone, hours, prices and history across the site and your listings, and a list of the ones that disagree.
• A question list: what your customers actually ask before they buy, gathered from you, from your calls and from search data.
• A baseline: each question put to Google’s AI features, ChatGPT, Copilot and Perplexity, with what came back written down.

Every month after

• Pages are rewritten or added so that each question on the list has one clear answer on one page.
• Contradictions are corrected at the source, on the site and off it.
• The questions are asked again and the answers compared with the baseline.
• You get the report: what was cited, what was said, what we changed and what we will change next.

What AI search optimization costs

Most of this work is SEO done to a stricter standard, so we would rather fold it into an SEO plan than sell it as a separate product with its own invoice. There are no contracts, and the price is given up front. The other prices we publish are on the pricing page.

We quote AI search optimization, alone and as part of an SEO plan after the free audit, with no contract. Get a quote.

How long it takes

Access problems are fixed quickly and content takes longer. OpenAI says it can take about 24 hours after a robots.txt change for its systems to adjust. Google’s starter guide says some changes take effect in a few hours and others take several months. A page that could not be crawled last week becomes eligible once it is opened up, and eligible is all it becomes. A site that has nothing worth quoting needs the pages written first. We do not give a date by which you will be cited.

What we need from you

• Access to the website and to whatever sits in front of it: the hosting account and any firewall or content delivery network.
• Access to Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, or permission to set them up.
• The facts of the business as they stand today, including the ones the website has wrong.
• The questions customers ask you on the phone. They are better than any keyword tool.

AI search for a New York business

For a local business the AI answer is a local answer. OpenAI says ChatGPT can use location information to find local results, and Google lists an up-to-date Business Profile among the things that matter for its AI features. So the local facts have to be on the page in plain words: the borough and the neighborhoods you serve, your hours, your licenses and what you charge. A site that says only that it serves the New York area gives an answer engine nothing to quote when someone asks for an electrician in Astoria.

Advernation was started on New Year’s Eve 2007 in Flushing, Queens, by Christopher Maddaloni, a former electrician, and has been in Manhattan since 2016, at 1115 Broadway. We have no client case study for AI search yet, and we will not invent one. What we can show is the method above and the SEO results on our case studies page. The groundwork is on our New York SEO and local SEO pages, and a site that is fast and cleanly built, as described under web design, is easier for every crawler to read.

Questions people ask