AI search visibility

Who this is for

Buyers now ask questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, as well as in the ordinary search results. For some kinds of business this changes how they get found:

• Science and B2B firms whose buyers ask AI tools to compare technologies, suppliers or methods.
• Professional firms whose prospects ask "how do I..." questions before choosing an adviser.
• Hotels, attractions and tour operators, as visitors ask AI tools to plan trips to Oxford and the Cotswolds.
• Any business that has noticed traffic falling for informational searches as AI Overviews answer them directly.

What is included, step by step

1. Access check. We check robots.txt, firewall and CDN settings to see which AI crawlers can reach your site. Some security settings block them without anyone deciding to.
2. Accuracy check. We ask the main AI tools about your business, products and sector and record what they say, including errors and out-of-date information.
3. Question set. We agree 20 to 50 questions your buyers ask, from "what is the best way to..." to "who supplies... in Oxfordshire".
4. Baseline. We run the question set across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Google, recording mentions, citations and competitors.
5. Content and structure fixes. Clear answers early in pages, well-structured headings, tables, FAQs, structured data and consistent facts about your business.
6. Off-site consistency. Your name, description and key facts on directories, profiles, partner sites and publications, because AI tools draw on many sources.
7. Tracking. We rerun the question set monthly or quarterly and report the change.

AI surface	Where answers come from	What helps
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode	Google's index, mostly well-ranking pages	Strong SEO, clear answers, structured data
ChatGPT search	Web search results plus its own crawler	Crawl access, clear pages, being cited elsewhere
Perplexity	Its own crawler and search results	Crawl access, citable facts, fresh content
Microsoft Copilot	Bing's index	Bing Webmaster Tools, sound technical SEO

How long it takes

The access and accuracy checks and baseline take two to three weeks. Content changes follow the usual SEO timescales. AI answers can change quickly, so we report trends over several months rather than week-to-week movements.

What drives the cost

• Size of the question set and how many tools we track.
• How much content needs restructuring.
• Off-site work, such as correcting directory and profile information.
• Whether it runs alongside ongoing SEO, which is usually the most efficient approach.

What we change on the page

Most of the on-page work is good practice that also helps ordinary rankings:

• Answer first. Put a direct, one or two sentence answer to the main question near the top of the page, then the detail.
• Use clear headings that match the questions people ask.
• Present facts in tables and lists, which are easy for both people and AI tools to extract accurately.
• State key facts consistently: what you do, where you are, who you serve, prices or price ranges where you publish them.
• Show who wrote it, with author pages for expert content.
• Add structured data for your organisation, services, products, articles and FAQs.
• Keep content current, especially prices, dates and product details that AI tools may repeat.

For an Oxford tour operator, that might mean a page that answers "how long do you need to see Oxford" plainly, with a table of itineraries. For a spin-out, it might mean a method page that names the technique, its advantages and its limits in the first paragraph.

Common mistakes

• Treating AI search as separate from SEO. Most of the work is the same.
• Writing for machines. Pages stuffed with question phrases read badly and rarely get cited.
• Inconsistent facts about the business across the web.
• Burying answers below long introductions.
• Expecting precise tracking. AI answers vary between users and sessions, so measurement shows trends, not exact positions.

How we measure it

• Mentions and citations across the question set, by tool, over time.
• Accuracy of what is said about your business.
• Referral traffic from AI tools in analytics.
• Rankings and clicks in Google for the same topics, from Search Console.

Related services

AI visibility rests on technical SEO and well-structured SEO content. For science firms it pairs naturally with SEO for science and B2B. Tourism businesses may find our post on Oxford tourism seasonality useful, and companies in Headington and the research campuses often have expert content that AI tools are glad to cite once it is easy to find.

Frequently asked questions

Is AI search replacing Google?

Not in the way headlines suggest. Google remains the main source of search traffic for most businesses, and Google's own AI Overviews draw on pages that rank well. AI tools are another place buyers ask questions, and the foundations of being visible in them overlap heavily with good SEO.

Can you get us mentioned by ChatGPT?

Nobody can guarantee what an AI system says. We can make sure your site is accessible to the crawlers these tools use, that your information is clear, consistent and well cited across the web, and that your pages answer the questions buyers ask. That improves your chances and lets us track the results.

Should we block AI crawlers?

It is a business decision. Blocking training crawlers protects content from being used in training; blocking search and retrieval crawlers can remove you from AI answers. We explain the differences and the trade-offs, then you decide.

How do you measure AI visibility?

We track an agreed set of questions across the main AI tools, recording whether you are mentioned or cited and what is said, alongside referral traffic from those tools in analytics.

Is there anything like a special file we can add for AI?

Proposals such as llms.txt exist, but there is no evidence the main AI search products rely on them. Clear content, structured data and normal crawl access matter far more.