Being the answer when a customer asks an assistant.

What is AI search optimisation?

It is the work of making a business easy for an answer engine to understand, trust and quote. Search engines send a visitor to a page and let them decide. Answer engines write the answer themselves and name a handful of sources, so the question is no longer whether you rank on page one. It is whether you are in the answer at all, and whether the details it gives about you are right.

Why can an assistant find my competitor and not me?

Usually one of four reasons, and all four are fixable. The assistant cannot read the site, because the content only appears after JavaScript runs or the crawlers are blocked. The site carries no structured data, so nothing states plainly what the business is, where it is, or what it sells. The name, address and phone number disagree between the website, Google and the directories, so the tool hedges rather than risk being wrong. Or nobody else on the web has written about the business, and an assistant leans heavily on what other people say.

• The AI crawlers can reach the site: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended
• Structured data states what the business is, where it works and what it offers
• Answers are written where they can be lifted, near the top and in plain words
• The name, address and phone match on the site, on Google and on the directories

How do you know whether it worked?

We ask. Every engagement starts with the questions a real customer would type, in their words rather than ours, and we run those questions at the assistants and record what comes back: whether you were named, what was quoted, and which competitor appeared instead. We repeat it as the work lands, so the report shows movement rather than asserting it. It is the same method behind the free audit, which is where most people start.

Is this different from SEO?

It shares foundations and separates quickly. Both want a fast site, clean structure and consistent details. After that they diverge. Search engines reward pages that earn links and rank. Answer engines reward passages that answer a question directly and can be quoted without ambiguity, and they draw on reviews, forums and editorial coverage far more heavily than a ranking page would. A business can be quoted by an assistant while sitting well down the Google results, and the reverse happens too.

What does it cost?

It is included in every monthly plan rather than sold as an extra, because the foundations it needs are the same ones local search needs. Plans start at £850 a month. The visibility audit that shows you where you stand is free, and comes back within two working days.