IndexContact
05AI SEARCH

AI search optimization

More and more people ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini what to buy instead of searching. I make your site something those assistants can find, quote and recommend.

Covers
  • ChatGPT
  • Claude
  • Gemini
  • Grok
  • Perplexity
  • Super Intelligence
  • llms.txt

How assistants pick a store

For anything current, an assistant runs a live web search, reads the top results and recommends whatever it can quote with confidence. ChatGPT leans on Bing’s index, while Perplexity and Google’s AI results use their own. Classic SEO is the qualifying round. AI search optimization, or AEO, is what gets you chosen once you’re in the running.

What I add

  • Structured data in schema.org, so an assistant knows your prices and availability instead of guessing them from prose
  • Clean, semantic HTML
  • An llms.txt file, a plain-text summary of the site for AI tools (this site has one)
  • Copy that answers the buying questions directly: who it’s for, what it costs, how fast it ships
  • One set of brand facts, identical across your site and your profiles

Find out where you stand

Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI mode what they’d recommend in your category, and note which sources they cite. When I run this for store owners, the most common result is total absence: the assistant names three competitors and has never heard of the store. That’s solvable. The full test is in this guide.

Keeping it current

Assistants drop sources that burned them with a stale price or a dead product, and nobody tells you when it happens. Summit and Peak care plans include AI-search upkeep: the schema checked and llms.txt kept current.

Common questions

What is AI search optimization?
More and more people ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini what to buy instead of searching. I add schema.org markup, clean semantic HTML, an llms.txt file and copy that answers questions directly, so Google and AI assistants can find what you sell, quote it and recommend it.
What’s the difference between SEO and AEO?
SEO gets your pages retrieved: indexed and surfaced by the search systems assistants query. AEO gets you chosen and quoted once retrieved. SEO comes first. AEO without SEO optimizes pages no assistant ever sees.
Can I pay to appear in AI answers?
Mostly no. Organic recommendations, the ones people trust, come from information an assistant can retrieve, parse and check elsewhere. No ad budget shortcuts that.
What does it cost?
The SEO & AI-search launch package adds US$1,000–1,500 to a build. Ongoing technical SEO and AI-search upkeep comes with the Summit care plan, from US$1,190 a month, and with Peak. Keyword SEO is an add-on, priced on request.

From the blog