GEO · AI SEARCH CONSULTING
Generative Engine Optimization Services, Measured Honestly
My generative engine optimization services help brands get mentioned, cited and recommended accurately in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. I'm Ajay Padhy, a Mumbai-based GEO and SEO consultant with 14+ years in digital growth and nearly a decade leading international SEO. I measure your AI visibility against a fixed prompt set, then fix what AI systems misunderstand.
At a glance
- For: B2B, SaaS and considered-purchase brands whose buyers shortlist options by asking an AI assistant.
- Included: a TOFU-to-BOFU prompt set across brand, competitor and problem-solver themes; fixes under the three pillars of my Read–Know–Recommend framework (readable by AI, known and corroborated, recommended in the answer); monthly re-measurement.
- No guarantees: nobody controls what a model says. You get a documented baseline and a trend, not a promised placement.
- Timeline: foundation work lands in the first 4–6 weeks; judge movement in AI answers over two to three months, not one.
- Built on SEO: most AI answers are grounded in search results, so GEO sits on top of solid technical SEO rather than replacing it.
- Proof: 900+ keywords showing in Google AI Overviews for a general insurer; from zero to 150 US keywords in AI Overviews for a staffing firm.
OUTCOMES
What this engagement is measured on
Every client's goals are different, and most are a mix. In the first weeks we agree which of these matter to you, record a baseline, and report against it every month. Targets are set after the audit, never promised up front.
Visibility, AI search and brand reach
Raise how often AI assistants and Google AI Overviews mention, cite and recommend you.
- What we measure
- Keywords in the top positions, presence in Google AI Overviews, how often AI assistants mention and cite you, and branded search demand.
- What usually moves first
- Answer-ready pages appearing in AI Overviews and AI citations; more keywords entering the top 10.
- What follows
- More branded searches and more recommendations by AI assistants.
Authority: backlinks and topic authority
Earn the third-party mentions and corroboration AI systems rely on.
- What we measure
- Relevant referring domains, link quality, Domain Authority/Rating trend and how much of each topic your site covers and ranks for.
- What usually moves first
- New links from relevant sites and more of your topic pages indexed and ranking.
- What follows
- Rankings on the competitive head terms that need authority to move.
Traffic and engagement
Grow referrals from AI platforms and clicks from AI Overviews where they can be tracked.
- What we measure
- Non-branded organic clicks, organic sessions and users, engaged sessions and click-through rate.
- What usually moves first
- Impressions, rankings and click-through rate on pages that are fixed or rewritten.
- What follows
- Sustained growth in organic clicks and engaged sessions.
CLIENT RESULTS
Results from similar engagements
Anonymised client work I led, delivered with my team at the time. Client names are withheld; the numbers are real.
900+
Keywords appearing in Google AI Overviews (Semrush).
900+ Keywords in AI Overviews for a General Insurer
0 → 150
US keywords appearing in Google AI Overviews, from none before the work began (Semrush).
US keywords in Google AI Overviews
From Zero to 150 US Keywords in Google AI Overviews
Who this is for
A buyer who once searched "best CRM for a 20-person sales team" and opened five tabs now asks ChatGPT or Perplexity and gets three names. If yours isn't one of them, you never knew the shortlist existed. That is the gap generative engine optimization closes.
The work is less mysterious than the market suggests. AI systems repeat what they can find, parse and corroborate: your own pages, review sites, comparison articles, directories and community discussion. When those sources are thin, inconsistent or out of date, the model fills the gap with a competitor. I explain the mechanics in SEO vs AEO vs GEO and the practical levers in how to improve brand visibility in AI search. If ChatGPT is the assistant your buyers use most, start with how to rank in ChatGPT.
Every engagement starts with measurement, because "we feel invisible in ChatGPT" is not a baseline. The AI visibility audit is the usual entry point; the AI search visibility framework case study shows how that measurement is structured.
- B2B and SaaS companies competing for "best X for Y" and "X vs Y" prompts
- Brands that rank well on Google but rarely appear in AI-generated shortlists
- Businesses whose AI answers quote old pricing, discontinued products or a competitor's positioning
- Marketing leaders who have been pitched "guaranteed ChatGPT rankings" and want a straight assessment
- SEO teams that need to add AI search to their plan without doubling their workload
DIAGNOSIS
Problems I solve
Common constraints teams face before we begin working together.
"ChatGPT recommends our competitors, not us"
"The AI gets our facts wrong"
"Our traffic fell but rankings didn't"
"Someone promised us guaranteed AI placement"
My AI search strategy: the Read–Know–Recommend framework
Every recommendation I make sits under one of three pillars: Read, Know and Recommend.
1. Readable by AI
The test: can a crawler fetch your pages, parse them without running JavaScript, and understand what each one is about?
What I check and fix: whether AI crawlers are allowed (and not blocked by your host or CDN), pages whose content only appears after JavaScript runs, unclear page purpose, and missing or wrong structured data. I also add llms.txt and ai.txt by default; there's no proof either helps, but neither does harm (my llms.txt guide explains what the file can and can't do). You can run the first checks yourself with my free AI crawler checker, CSR vs SSR checker and llms.txt generator.
2. Known and corroborated
The test: does the model hold a confident, consistent picture of who you are, confirmed by sources it already trusts?
What I check and fix: the same facts about you on your site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, directories and review profiles, and your presence on the publications, lists and communities AI systems cite in your category.
3. Recommended in the answer
The test: when a buyer asks for the best option, does your name appear, and does it appear ahead of your competitors?
What I check and fix: answer-first commercial pages, fair comparison pages, and citations on the reviews and lists AI leans on for "best" and "vs" questions, measured against the named competitors you lose to today.
GEO, AEO, AI SEO, LLM SEO: one job, four names
You'll see this work sold as GEO (generative engine optimization), AEO (answer engine optimization), AI SEO, AI search optimization or LLM SEO. They describe the same goal: being mentioned, cited and recommended correctly when someone asks an AI system instead of scanning ten blue links.
The label matters less than one question: does the provider measure what the answers actually say about you? The differences between the terms are covered in SEO vs AEO vs GEO.
Is GEO just SEO rebranded?
Partly — and anyone who says "not at all" is selling something.
Most of good GEO is good SEO. Crawlable pages, clear information architecture, pages that answer the question directly, and authority from other sites all matter for both. Google says plainly that AI Overviews and AI Mode have no special optimisation requirements beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet.
The rest is genuinely different:
- The unit of success changes. SEO measures a URL's position. GEO measures whether your brand is named, cited and described correctly inside a generated answer.
- Off-site sources weigh more. A model assembling a shortlist leans on review sites, comparison articles and forums as much as your own pages.
- Consistency becomes a ranking factor in practice. Conflicting facts about you across the web lead to vague or wrong answers.
- Prompts are longer and more specific than keywords, so content has to handle context ("for a 20-person team", "in India", "under a tight budget").
What clients worry about (and straight answers)
"Can you guarantee we'll be recommended by ChatGPT?"
No. Nobody can. Answers change by model version, prompt wording, user location and whether the platform searched the web for that query. Anyone selling guaranteed AI placement is either redefining "guarantee" or hoping you won't check.
"So how do we know it's working?"
We fix the prompt set on day one and re-run it on a schedule. I report mention rate, citation rate, share of recommendations versus named competitors and factual accuracy — plus AI referral sessions in GA4 where they're identifiable. The method is in how to measure AI search visibility.
"How long before anything changes?"
On-site fixes can be live in weeks. Answers that rely on live web search can shift within a month or two; answers drawn from a model's training data move only when that model is updated. Plan on two to three months before judging the trend.
"Does this replace our SEO?"
No. If your pages aren't indexed or don't rank, most AI systems that ground answers in search won't find them either. If your SEO is weak, I'll tell you to fix that first — possibly with my SEO consulting work rather than GEO.
How I measure AI visibility
Which prompts you track decides what you learn, so prompt selection comes first.
I pick prompts at each stage of the buying journey, across three themes:
| Theme | Early research (TOFU) | Comparing options (MOFU) | Ready to choose (BOFU) |
|---|---|---|---|
| How AI sees your brand | "What is [brand]?" | "Is [brand] good for [use case]?" | "[brand] reviews and pricing" |
| How AI compares you | "Who are the main [category] providers?" | "[brand] vs [competitor]" | "Alternatives to [competitor]" |
| Whether AI recommends you | "How do I fix [problem]?" | "What kind of [solution] do I need for [situation]?" | "Best [category] for [use case] in [city]" |
The prompts come from your sales questions, Search Console queries, People Also Ask and buyer forums, written the way people actually type or speak them, including in Hindi, Hinglish or regional languages where your buyers use them.
How answers are captured. Each prompt is run several times per platform, logged out and set to the buyer's location, because a single run can mislead. The full set is re-run every month.
What I report. Four numbers per theme and platform: mention rate, citation rate, recommendation share against named competitors, and accuracy. Each priority prompt is also classified as absent, described wrongly, mentioned but not recommended, or cited but not named, because each problem has a different fix.
Two honest caveats. When a platform updates its model, I re-baseline rather than claim the change as a win or a loss. And GA4 undercounts AI referrals: people who copy a name from an answer, or use an assistant's app, often arrive as direct or branded-search visits. GA4's native "AI Assistant" channel in the Default Channel Group (announced in May 2026) helps, but it isn't retroactive and misses visits without a referrer, which still land in Direct. So I track AI referrals, branded search and "AI assistant" as a lead-source option together. The full method is in how to measure AI search visibility.
When GEO isn't worth paying for
- Impulse or low-consideration purchases, where nobody asks an assistant before buying.
- Categories where AI answers rarely appear. Check a handful of your buyers' prompts first.
- Sites with indexing or ranking problems. Fix the SEO first; most assistants retrieve from search indexes.
- Anyone who wants guaranteed placement. Nobody can deliver it honestly.
GEO vs SEO: what actually differs
| Dimension | SEO | GEO |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank a page for a query | Be named and cited correctly in an answer |
| Main metric | Position, clicks | Mention, citation, recommendation share, accuracy |
| Query shape | Short keywords | Long, conversational prompts |
| Key sources | Your pages + backlinks | Your pages + reviews, lists, forums, directories |
| Result stability | Fairly stable | Varies by model, prompt and session |
| Measurement tools | Mature (GSC, rank trackers) | Young; needs a fixed prompt set |
| Feedback loop | Weeks | Weeks to months, per model update |
The overlap is large enough that one plan should cover both. For Google's AI features specifically, see how to optimise for Google AI Overviews.
What a GEO engagement includes, month by month
A typical first quarter looks like this. The exact mix depends on what the baseline shows.
| Month | Focus | You get |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Baseline & diagnosis | Prompt set, scorecard vs competitors, cited-source map, list of factual errors |
| 1–2 | Foundations | Entity clean-up, schema, fixes to technical SEO blockers, rewrites of 5–10 key pages |
| 2–3 | Content & off-site | New comparison/explainer content, review and listing profile updates, outreach targets for my team or your PR team |
| 3 | First re-measurement | Same prompts re-run, what moved and why, next-quarter priorities |
After the first quarter, most clients either move to a lighter advisory rhythm with their own team executing, or keep my specialist team on content and off-site work while I lead strategy. Either way you own the prompt set and every report.
DELIVERABLES
What you get
Tangible assets, strategic roadmaps and documentation provided during the engagement.
Prompt-set baseline (all three pillars)
Entity consistency fixes (known and corroborated)
Answer-first content (recommended in the answer)
Structured data (readable by AI)
Off-site citation plan (known and corroborated)
Monthly visibility report
WORKFLOW
How an engagement works
A clear, four-phase delivery model ensuring accountability from kickoff to ongoing impact.
- 01Phase 1
Choose the prompts
Agree 40–100 TOFU, MOFU and BOFU prompts across the three themes, choose competitors, platforms, locations and languages, then capture every answer and cited source as the baseline. - 02Phase 2
Diagnose
Find why competitors win: which sources the models lean on, what facts they get wrong, and which of your pages are never retrieved. - 03Phase 3
Fix foundations
Entity clean-up, schema, answer-first page rewrites and technical SEO blockers — the work you control fully. - 04Phase 4
Earn & track
Build off-site presence where it matters (through my team or your PR team, depending on the engagement), re-run the prompt set monthly and adjust priorities on evidence.
Ways to work together
Every engagement is led by me personally. For execution, I work with a small team of specialists — technical SEO, content, development and automation — so you get senior thinking without agency layers, account managers or hand-offs.
Audit & roadmap
A fixed-scope diagnosis with a prioritised roadmap your team can act on. Typically 2–4 weeks.
Advisory retainer
Ongoing senior guidance: monthly strategy, reviews of your team's work, and a direct line to me when decisions come up.
Strategy + execution
I own the strategy and stay your single point of contact; my specialist team handles implementation — technical fixes, content, builds and reporting.
TOOLING
Tools I use
Industry-standard platforms and custom automation stacks used to audit, track, and execute.
FAQ
Generative engine optimization services: questions clients ask
Straight answers to what people usually want to know before a first call.
Generative engine optimization services improve how often and how accurately AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Overviews mention and recommend your brand. The work covers measuring a prompt baseline, fixing inconsistent entity information, structuring content so answers are easy to extract, and earning presence on the third-party sources those systems cite.
A GEO consultant measures and influences AI-generated answers, not just page rankings. In practice the best GEO consultants are strong SEOs, because most AI search experiences retrieve from search indexes. The difference is the extra layer: prompt-based measurement, off-site citation analysis and correcting what models get wrong about you.
Make accurate, consistent information about your business easy to find and corroborate. That means clear pages that answer buyer questions directly, consistent facts across your profiles, and genuine presence on the review sites, comparison articles and communities ChatGPT cites for your category. There is no submission form or paid placement for organic recommendations.
AI SEO services make sure AI answers in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Overviews mention, cite and recommend your business correctly. The term is sometimes also used for using AI tools to do SEO faster. I use those tools too, but that's a working method, not the service you're buying.
Prompts at each stage of the buying journey (early research, comparing options and ready to choose), across three questions: how AI describes your brand, how it compares you with competitors, and whether it recommends you as the answer to your buyers' problems. They're built from your sales questions, search data and buyer forums, and the prompt set is yours to keep.
Separate the two kinds. Blocking retrieval crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot removes you from those assistants' live answers. Blocking training crawlers such as GPTBot or Google-Extended is a business choice about your content; Google-Extended doesn't affect AI Overviews, which use the normal Googlebot. Also check that your host or CDN isn't blocking AI bots by default.
Both. Some visits arrive as identifiable AI referrals, but many arrive as direct or branded-search visits after someone reads an answer. That's why I track AI referrals, branded search volume and "AI assistant" as an option in your lead-source question together, rather than judging on referral sessions alone.
Yes. Answers vary with the user's location and language, so I test prompts with the locations your buyers are in and in the languages they use, including Hindi, Hinglish and regional languages where that's how they ask.
No, but I add it anyway. I add both llms.txt and ai.txt by default: llms.txt is a proposed file that points AI systems to your key pages, and ai.txt states your permissions for AI training use of your content and media. There is no proof either file helps visibility, but there's no harm in adding both. Google has said its Search doesn't need any special AI text files for AI Overviews or AI Mode, so neither file is ever a priority over content, entity consistency and off-site presence.
Cost depends on how many platforms and prompts you want tracked, the number of competitors, how much content needs rewriting and whether off-site work is included. A one-off audit costs far less than an ongoing programme. I scope after a short call so the proposal fits the problem, not a package.
It can reduce the damage, not reverse the trend. When AI Overviews answer a query, fewer people click. The response is to be the source that gets cited, shift effort toward queries where users still need to click, and measure conversions rather than raw traffic so you see the real business impact.
Yes, it can. The condition is clarity: you need to be precise about your positioning and about the topics and prompts you plan to win. Category leaders dominate broad questions, but AI answers to specific use-case, location, budget or comparison prompts are far more open. I pick those target prompts with you first, then build the content and third-party presence that support them.
Run three checks. First, they should record a prompt-level baseline before any work starts: the actual prompts, platforms and answers, so there is something to measure against. Second, their reports should show mentions, citations, recommendation share and the sources behind each answer, not just rankings, traffic and backlinks. Third, each change they make should come with a stated expected effect, written down in advance, so a citation that appears later can't be claimed as a win after the fact.
It can. People do ask AI assistants for local recommendations, such as a dentist, an accountant or a contractor in their area. For most local businesses the work is mostly local SEO done thoroughly: a complete Google Business Profile, genuine reviews, the same name, address and services everywhere you are listed, and clear service and area pages on your site. Before spending on it, run a quick check of what ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity say when asked about your category in your city.
Keep paying for content that earns citations in AI answers or meets buyers at a decision point: comparisons, pricing explainers, use-case guides and original data. Cut the volume content written to fill a calendar, because AI answers now cover generic questions without a click. I review what you already publish against your prompt baseline and conversion data before recommending what to stop.
Guides worth reading first
Free tools to check your site
Have a growth problem worth solving?
Tell me where you're stuck. On a 30-minute intro call I'll tell you where I think the constraint is and what I'd look at first — whether or not we end up working together.