Talk to us Run a free check
Reference

Questions people ask about AI visibility

Answers first, in plain English. If you are researching this for the first time, start at the top.

01

What is answer engine optimisation and how is it different from SEO?

Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the practice of making a website legible and credible to AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews, so they cite you when answering questions. SEO optimises for a ranked list of links that a person then chooses from. AEO optimises for a system that chooses first and names two or three sources. It relies more heavily on crawler access, structured data, server-rendered content and independent corroboration.

02

Why does my company not show up when I ask ChatGPT for recommendations?

Usually one of five reasons. AI crawlers are blocked by your robots.txt or your CDN. Your pages render in the browser, so crawlers receive an empty shell. You have no structured data, so a model cannot confirm what you sell. Your content does not answer questions directly. Or nothing independent of your own site corroborates your claims. All five are testable in a day, and most are fixable in weeks.

03

How do I check whether AI crawlers can access my website?

Request your robots.txt and look for rules naming GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended or CCBot. That is only half the answer. Also request live pages using each crawler’s user agent, because CDN and WAF bot protection frequently blocks them at the edge with no robots.txt rule involved. Check the actual HTTP status returned: a 403 from your CDN looks identical to a block you never chose.

04

Does blocking GPTBot stop my company appearing in ChatGPT?

It stops your site being crawled for training and, in most configurations, for live retrieval too. ChatGPT can still mention you using information from other sources, but it will be working from what third parties say rather than what you say. In practice, blocking means losing control of your own description. Many sites block by accident through default CDN bot rules rather than a deliberate decision.

05

What is llms.txt and does my website need one?

llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of your domain giving AI systems a clean, structured summary of your site and links to your most important pages. It is an emerging convention rather than a standard, and support varies between models. It takes about an hour to produce and carries no risk. Treat it as useful housekeeping, not a solution on its own — crawler access and structured data matter considerably more.

06

Does schema.org structured data help with AI search?

Yes, substantially. Structured data states facts explicitly rather than leaving a model to infer them from prose. For a travel company that means trips, prices, durations, departure dates, reviews, company details and accreditations become unambiguous. Models favour sources they can parse confidently, and ambiguity is a reason not to cite you. Organization, Product, Offer, Trip, Review and FAQPage markup do most of the work.

07

Can AI assistants read a JavaScript website?

Mostly not. Google’s crawler executes JavaScript, but most AI crawlers request the page and read whatever HTML the server returns. If your itineraries, prices, departure dates or descriptions are assembled in the browser after that initial response, those crawlers receive an effectively empty page. The fix is server-side rendering or static pre-rendering for critical content. You can test it yourself by disabling JavaScript and reloading a product page.

08

How much does an AI visibility audit cost in the UK?

It varies enormously. Specialist agencies typically sell answer engine optimisation as a monthly retainer running to several thousand pounds. Our automated report is £150 as a one-off, because the technical diagnostic is deterministic and does not need a consultant to run it. An expert audit with live model testing and analyst interpretation starts at £950. A basic check on your domain is free.

09

How long does it take to appear in AI answers after fixing a website?

Expect weeks rather than days. Systems with live retrieval, such as Perplexity and AI Overviews, can reflect changes within days of recrawling. Models drawing on training data update far more slowly, often only at the next release. Meaningful movement typically shows somewhere between four and twelve weeks after crawler access and structured data are corrected, provided the site is being recrawled.

10

Is AEO worth doing for a small business?

Often more so than for a large one. AI assistants favour specialists when a question is specific, and specific questions are where smaller companies compete best. A small firm with clean structured data and readable content can be named ahead of a much larger competitor running a JavaScript-heavy site with blocked crawlers. The technical work is cheaper on a smaller site too, because there are fewer templates to fix.

11

How do I find out what AI says about my company?

Ask the models directly. Open ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Copilot and ask who your company is, what you sell, and whether you are financially protected. Ask each question several times, because answers vary between runs. Then ask recommendation questions in your category without naming yourself, and note who is cited instead. Record everything verbatim. The exercise takes an hour and usually settles the internal debate.

12

Should we allow AI companies to crawl our website, or block them?

If you sell something, allow them. Blocking prevents your site being used for training, but it also removes your ability to describe yourself, and models will still discuss you using third-party sources you do not control. Publishers protecting paid content have a genuine reason to block. Travel companies competing for consideration generally do not. Make it a deliberate, documented decision either way.

13

What is the difference between AEO and GEO?

Very little. AEO (answer engine optimisation) and GEO (generative engine optimisation) describe the same practice: making a site legible and credible to AI systems that answer questions directly. GEO emerged from academic work on generative search, AEO from the marketing industry. Some practitioners reserve AEO for featured snippets and voice results and GEO for large language models. Treat them as interchangeable.

14

Why is AI visibility work so expensive, and does it have to be?

Most of the cost is human time. Agencies in this space sell it as a monthly retainer, which is fair for genuinely bespoke strategy but means a consultant is being paid for work a script does better. The technical diagnostic — crawler access, structured data validity, render comparison — is deterministic and automatable. Automate that and the price falls to a one-off report rather than a retainer, with people reserved for interpretation and building fixes.

15

How do you measure whether AI visibility work has succeeded?

By repeated observation rather than a single reading. We fix a question set, run it across five models on a schedule, and track two numbers over time: how often you appear, and your share of citations against named competitors. Because answers vary between runs, only a trend across repeated samples is meaningful. We also report the technical scores, which are deterministic and move immediately.

Still not sure where you stand?

Run the check. It answers most of these for your own domain.

Free. We email your report within one working day.