AI Engine Optimization
Get found in
ChatGPT. Claude. Perplexity. Gemini.
Search still matters, but more of your customers now ask an AI tool first. AEO is the work of making sure those AI engines can find, understand, and cite your business — accurately — when they do.
Why it matters
Search is being rebuilt in real time.
More people are asking AI tools which business to call. Clear, consistent facts about your business make you easier for those tools to find and describe correctly.
~16%
of tracked Google keywords showed an AI Overview by late 2025
Semrush AI Overviews study, 2025. When the answer appears above the results, being the source it cites matters.
800M
weekly ChatGPT users, as reported by OpenAI in October 2025
Some of them ask it which local business to call. If AI tools can’t read your site clearly, they may name someone else.
llms.txt
a plain-language guide to your site, written for AI tools
It’s a proposal, not a standard. Google says its Search ignores it, and other AI companies haven’t said, so we pair it with structured data and clear page copy.
Sources: Semrush AI Overviews study (2025) · TechCrunch: ChatGPT hits 800M weekly users (Oct 2025)
What we deliver
Every AEO engagement includes:
→ llms.txt
A short, plain-text summary of your business and your key pages, published at your domain root for the AI tools that read it. It's a proposal, not a standard, and Google says its Search ignores it, so we treat it as a small extra, never the main job.
→ llms-full.txt
The full-content companion file. Structured markdown of every important page — services, locations, FAQs, about — generated from your live site, so it never drifts out of date.
→ Answer-oriented content
Existing pages restructured so an AI can extract clean answers. FAQ blocks, direct definitions, comparison tables: answers that are easy to find and quote.
→ Structured data (JSON-LD)
Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ, and Breadcrumb schemas so both traditional search and AI models can parse the facts of your business.
→ Cross-model presence audit
Baseline scan of how ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini currently describe you (or don't). Repeated after work is deployed so you can see what changed.
→ Honest content, not hype
We deliberately exclude "24/7 guaranteed response," fabricated pricing, and unverifiable claims. Clear, checkable facts give AI tools something to cite. Vague claims give them nothing.
How we work
Grounded in your real business.
Every AEO file we ship — llms.txt, llms-full.txt, structured content — is generated from your live site's real data. Not template copy. Not made-up guarantees. Not phrases you never actually promised.
We deliberately exclude the stuff most AEO shops load up on: fake pricing, made-up response times, unverifiable “#1 rated” claims. AI models learn to ignore that content because it's not citable. The businesses they cite are the ones with clean, verifiable, well-structured facts.
That's the whole approach: make you the citable one.
Common questions
AEO FAQ
Is AEO different from SEO?
Yes. SEO optimizes for how Google's crawler indexes and ranks pages. AEO optimizes for how AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini) extract and cite content in generated answers. The two are complementary: good SEO is most of the work, and AEO adds what traditional SEO often skips, like answer-first content, consistent business details across the web, and an llms.txt file.
How do you measure whether it worked?
Before we start, we record what ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini say about your business: whether you're mentioned, whether the details are right, and which sources they cite. After the work is live, we ask the same questions again and show you both side by side. AI answers vary from one try to the next and nobody controls them, so we don't promise mentions or positions. We show you what changed.
Do I need to rebuild my website?
Usually no. AEO layers on top of an existing site. We can ship llms.txt, structured data, and content restructuring without touching your CMS or theme. If your site has fundamental issues (broken pages, no content, dead links) we'll flag them first — sometimes a small SEO cleanup is a better use of the budget than AEO on a shaky foundation.
How is AEO priced?
It's usually bundled into a website + SEO project as an included deliverable (part of the "Web + SEO + AEO" package). Standalone AEO for an existing well-built site is available as an add-on. We scope it flat — no ongoing retainer required.
Will AI engines actually respect llms.txt?
Not all of them. It's a proposed convention, not a standard. Google says its Search, including AI Overviews, ignores it, and the other AI companies haven't said whether their tools read it. That's why it's never the whole job: the structured data and answer-first content we ship work on their own, whether or not a tool reads your llms.txt.
What you own
It's yours. All of it.
Your domain, hosting, code, data and every account we set up are in your name. We work inside them with our own logins, and you can remove our access at any time. No proprietary platform, no lock-in.
Related services
- SEO & Local SEO →Google Business Profile, reviews, service pages and technical fixes, in that order.
- Website Design & Development →Custom websites with service pages, tracking and SEO built in.
- Conversion Tracking & Attribution →Know which marketing produced each call, form and booked job.
- SEO in Tampa →
Industries
Curious how AI describes your business right now?
We can run a free cross-model presence scan — see how ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity describe you today, and what a proper AEO deployment would change.