AI search optimization, measured.
AI search visibility audits for service businesses, on five named engines
Find out who AI recommends when customers need what you offer.
AI search optimization is the work of improving how AI answers your customers’ buying questions. It starts with knowing what the engines say about you today, question by question.
Vector Index examines the answers across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. You get a written report showing where your business appears, how it's described, and which changes deserve your attention. This work is called answer engine optimization (AEO) or generative engine optimization (GEO). You may also have seen it called AI search optimization, AI search visibility, LLM optimization, or an AI SEO audit. The measurement is what we sell.
Not ready to buy? Ask for a free sample for your own business first.
About three minutes. See whether the audit fits your business and which start dates are open. No commitment.
No subscription and no retainer.
from your reserved start date.
any time before you submit intake.
AI search is not one place, and the engines do not agree.
When we put 16 buying questions about Cincinnati businesses to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity through their APIs on 24 and 25 August 2026, their answers cited 63, 98 and 181 different domains.
Of the 246 domains cited in total, 18 appeared in answers from all three engines.
That is the practical problem with optimizing for "AI". A business can be named confidently by one engine and left out entirely by another on the same question, so a claim to have optimized for AI search means little until someone says which engines were measured, how often, and under what conditions.
Source. Vector Index baseline sampling · 16 buying questions, Cincinnati · ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity through their APIs · 24 and 25 August 2026 · stored answers and their cited URLs.
Understand the gaps. Know what to work on next.
Your report turns the findings into practical priorities for your website and business information.
See where your business appears.
Find out which questions bring up your business, where it's absent, and which competitors get named.
Check how AI describes you.
Identify incorrect details, missing information, or confusion with another business.
Get clear recommendations.
Receive prioritized changes with supporting evidence, suggested wording, and instructions you can hand to your web provider.
Each recommendation explains the finding behind it and distinguishes a supported correction from a change worth testing.
Looking up your company by name tells you very little.
In one audit, the business's main site was cited 411 times. On the questions that describe a buyer's need without naming anyone, the same site was cited 8 times across 292 answers.
An engine can build its answer out of your pages and still recommend someone else. Both matter, and they are different findings, so a report that covers only one of them is answering half the question.
That's the level of detail you can expect: what was found, why it matters, and what to do next.
Source. Anonymized finding from a practice audit delivered at no charge in September 2026. The counts are the report's own. Why the difference matters.
What AI search optimization services can and cannot promise
AI search optimization is the work of improving how ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews answer the questions your customers ask before they choose a provider. It starts with finding out what those engines say about you today, question by question.
Nobody controls a model's output. Answers change between runs and between model versions, so a guarantee of citations, rankings or a date is describing something no provider can see. What can be promised is the measurement, the conditions it was taken under, and a specific list of changes to make.
The changes themselves are ordinary and checkable: the facts on your own pages, the profiles and directories the answers draw on, and the third-party pages that already describe you. What actually moves.
Google says the same thing about its own AI features: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." Google's documentation.
Choosing an AI search optimization agency
- Which engines, by name? ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews are separate products. "AI" is not one channel.
- The API or the app? Answers collected through an API under recorded conditions are not the consumer apps, and a report should say which it measured.
- How many times is each question asked? Answers change between runs. A single run of each question is an anecdote, and failed attempts belong in the report too.
- Who picks the questions? A question set built around searches a business already wins flatters the result.
- What is actually delivered? A scope you can check is worth more than a list of tactics.
The same questions apply whether the seller calls itself an AI search agency or an AI search optimization company, sells AI search optimization services, trades as an answer engine optimization agency, a generative engine optimization engagement or LLM optimization. The label matters less than the scope behind it. AEO vs SEO vs GEO.
What an audit should contain · How we measure · How to rank in ChatGPT
Built around how your customers choose.
- You provide the business context. Tell us about your services, customers, and market.
- We build the question set around your market. We write the questions your buyers actually bring to AI about your trade, your services and the firms you come up against, and we select them independently so the set can't be steered toward the ones you already win. Each is asked repeatedly across five named engines, then we read every answer against your site and the sources it cited.
- You receive your findings and priorities. Your written report arrives within five business days of your reserved start date, once intake is complete. You or your web provider carry out the recommended website changes.
After 90 days, we recheck five of the original questions and report what changed.
About three minutes. No commitment.
What the audit buys
Written for your market and chosen independently, so the set can't be steered toward the ones you already win.
Every question asked repeatedly across five named engines, with the engine, model, settings, date and every failed attempt recorded.
Read closely, along with every source the answers cited, so each finding points at something you can open yourself.
What the engines state about you, where you were named and where you weren't, which competitors hold the answers you want, and prioritized changes with the wording you'd need to act on them.
Your questions answered after delivery, so you are not left alone with the report.
We re-run your questions on the same engines after the work is done and report what actually moved.
What people are saying.
Every review here comes from a business we have actually delivered an audit to. We publish them in the reviewer's own words, and we say plainly what the reviewer was given.
Vector Index was extremely helpful because it showed us that while our company does come up in AI searches when we are mentioned specifically (we thought our GEO presence was a lot stronger), once you deviated from a direct search by name and started asking more indirect questions about the services we provide, we were virtually nonexistent. They also provided us with clear insight into gaps in our GEO and how to fix them. I cannot recommend Vector Index highly enough.
Questions we get asked about this.
What is AI search optimization?
Improving how AI systems answer the questions your customers ask when choosing a provider. In practice that means two kinds of work: measuring what ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews currently say, and changing the pages, profiles and facts those answers are built from.
How much do AI search optimization services cost?
Our AI Visibility Audit is $750, paid upfront, with no subscription and no retainer. Implementation is not for sale yet; the audit ends with change specifications you can act on yourself or hand to your existing web provider.
Is AI search optimization the same as SEO?
The foundations overlap, and Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. The difference is what gets measured. SEO reporting measures positions on a results page. This measures the answers themselves, engine by engine.
Can you guarantee my business appears in ChatGPT?
No. Nobody controls a model's output, and answers change between runs. We report what the engines said under recorded conditions, and we name what we did not measure.
Is this different from an AI search optimization agency on retainer?
We sell a fixed-scope measurement for a flat fee rather than a monthly retainer. You get the findings, the conditions they were taken under, and the changes worth making, and you are free to have anyone carry them out.
What is the difference between AI search optimization and LLM optimization?
They describe the same aim. LLM optimization usually emphasises the models themselves, while AI search optimization emphasises the answers people see. LLM SEO and LLM optimization.
Know where your business stands before deciding what to change.
See your website through AI's eyes. Get documented findings and practical recommendations, delivered in writing.
About three minutes. No commitment.
One payment. Five business days.
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