Right now, customers are asking AI who to hire
When someone asks an AI who to hire, is your name in the answer?
Every day, people ask ChatGPT, Grok and Claude questions like "who is the best plumber near me". The AI names two to five businesses, and those names are the new first page of Google. Most owners have never heard the conversation.
We measure the engines your customers actually use: Grok, ChatGPT and Claude.
Names invented for the example. The pattern is real: if you fit the question and you are not in the answer, the customer never knew you existed.
of people who use AI tools now start their searches there instead of Google
The shift
Search stopped being ten blue links
The old way
Type a few words into Google, get a list of links, click around, decide.
The new way
Ask an assistant a full question and get a direct answer that names specific businesses. No list. No clicking around. The AI has already decided who to mention.
Google is not dying. The pie grew, and AI took the growth. The honest way to say it:
Your business now has a second front door, and right now nobody is staffing it.
"For that, most people recommend Harrison Joinery or Calder Build Co."
A real measurement, not a mockup
Same business. Three engines. Three different answers.
We ran our scan on a real accounting firm and asked each engine the same six customer questions on the same day. Grok recommended the firm in six out of six answers. ChatGPT named it in just two. Same firm, same day, a 49-point gap.
This is why guessing does not work. Each engine reads different sources before it answers. One leaned heavily on Google Business Profiles. Another read Reddit forty times. Different engine, different homework, and you cannot know yours until you measure it.
Score = how often and how prominently the engine names the business across real buyer questions. 0 means invisible, 100 means always recommended first.
The name for this work
It is called GEO, and it is simpler than it sounds
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization: making sure AI assistants understand, trust and recommend your business.
SEO · the work you have heard of
Gets you ranked in a list of links.
GEO · the new layer on top
Gets you named inside the answer itself.
You still need SEO. GEO sits on top of it, and almost nobody in your category is doing it yet.
Q1 Can the AI read you?
Most sites accidentally confuse AI crawlers. We open the right doors and add machine-readable labels that describe your business in the AI's native format.
Q2 Do trusted sources mention you?
Engines answer from sources they trust: directories, review sites, forums, comparison pages. Our scan shows exactly which ones they read for your category, and we get you present there. Buyers rank a review-site citation as the single most trust-building part of an AI answer (G2, 2026). A follower count is not a thing an answer can cite: what the engines read is content, which is why starting from zero matters far less than most owners fear.
Q3 Do you answer real questions?
People ask assistants full questions. Pages that pose and directly answer those questions are what gets quoted. We write them for you, in your voice.
The part you never see
Your website has two audiences now
The first audience is human. They see your design, your photos, your polish. The second is a machine: an AI assistant's crawler, reading your site as plain text in under a second and deciding whether it understands your business well enough to recommend it.
Nearly every website puts all of its effort into the first audience and none into the second. That is the gap GEO closes. Behind the page people admire, we build the layer machines trust: labels in the format engines parse, and a plain-text briefing written for AI assistants instead of people.
We practice this on our own site. The page you are reading carries a machine layer right now, and you are welcome to look at the briefing AI assistants get. It is not pretty, and it is not for you. It is why an engine can quote us with confidence, and it is what we build for clients.
What a person sees
Invented example business, same as the conversation above.
What the machine reads, behind that same page
# structured labels (JSON-LD) { "@type": "LocalBusiness", "name": "Harrison Joinery", "areaServed": "Leeds", "knowsAbout": ["kitchen fitting", "bespoke joinery"] } # llms.txt, a briefing for AI Harrison Joinery fits kitchens in Leeds. Trading since 2009. Typical project: 3 weeks, fixed quote.
Industry by industry
Your market is already in the answers
Different industries, same pattern: customers ask, engines answer, and most businesses are absent. Every number below links to the study it comes from.
Restaurants and hospitality
of restaurant locations never appear in AI recommendations, even though 86% keep a Google presence.
22% of US diners have already used AI to choose a restaurant. DoorDash, 2026 ↗
Local and consumer services
of US adults used AI to find a local business in the past month, and reviews fill five of the six factors they weigh next.
62% go straight to Google to verify what the AI told them. Your visibility has to hold up in both places.
B2B and professional services
of B2B software buyers bought from a vendor they had never heard of before an AI suggested it.
51% now start vendor research with AI more often than Google, and 85% view a vendor more favorably once AI cites it.
The free scan runs this same measurement for your business: your category, your city, your competitors, word for word.
How working with us goes
Three steps, no magic buttons
See where you stand
The free scan asks ChatGPT, Grok and Claude the questions your buyers ask, and shows you every answer word for word. Takes a couple of minutes, costs nothing.
We fix what machines read
Technical foundation, answer pages, citation-source presence. Every month you get the list of exactly what was done. No jargon, no mystery.
We re-measure, honestly
Every month we run the same scan again and show you the movement. When something has not moved yet, the report says so in plain words.
The part only you can do
This is not a magic button, and we will not pretend it is. A few actions genuinely need the owner, and they matter. Your report tells you which of these move the needle foryour category, based on what the engines actually read:
- Reviews where they count. Our scan shows which review platforms the engines cite for your category. Five reviews there beat fifty anywhere else. We give you the exact ask-your-customer script. Reviews also fill five of the six factors buyers weigh right after an AI recommendation (Yext, 2026).
- Your Google Business Profile. One engine leans on it heavily. Claiming and updating it takes an evening, and we walk you through it.
- An active account on X. Grok draws its answers from activity on X. A business profile that posts even occasionally is visible raw material. If writing posts is not your thing, the Ghostwriter drafts them in your voice and you post by hand.
What we work on
An engine reads three things about you before it answers
Very little of it is your own website. In one real scan we ran for a local firm, Grok consulted Reddit 40 times while deciding who to recommend. On the product side it has been measured: a Cloro's May 2026 analysis of 3,312 shopping promptsfound YouTube and Reddit each cited in 19% of answers, with brand-owned websites absent from the top of the cited-source list entirely. Different categories lean on different sources, which is exactly what the scan measures for yours. What does not change is that the volume of pages on your own domain is the lever with the least leverage, which is why it is one part of the work here and not the whole of it.
Presence What can be read about you
Your pages made machine-readable, your listings and profiles complete and consistent, and your business present in the specific sources the engines quote for your category.
Voice What you say in public
Steady posting on the channels the engines draw from, because silence gives them nothing with your name on it. Grok reads activity on X directly. Reddit is among the most cited sources of all and the hardest to write for, since anything that reads as marketing backfires there. The Ghostwriter drafts both, in your voice.
Proof What your customers say
Reviews on the platforms the engines cite for your category, asked for properly and answered when they land. This is the Review Desk.
Presence is the $299 monthly plan. Voice and Proof both live on the Ghostwriter desk: $99 a month on its own or alongside any plan, and included in Complete along with the SEO layer. A writing tool works on part of one of these three, which is the whole difference between a subscription and a service.
Pricing
A fraction of an agency invoice, and you see every deliverable
An SEO agency retainer runs as high as $3,209 a month (Ahrefs survey of 439 providers), and that is before anyone even mentions AI visibility. Self-serve tools are cheaper but leave the doing to you. We built the third option: done for you, at a price a small business can say yes to.
Visibility Report
50+ real customer questions asked across ChatGPT, Grok and Claude. Who gets recommended, who does not, which sources the engines read, and a prioritized fix list. PDF within 48 hours of your intake.
Credited toward any monthly plan if you upgrade within 30 days.
See a sample report (PDF)
Invented business, the real format.
The Review Desk
The reviews problem, handled properly: ready-to-send review asks written in your voice, a printable QR code from your Google review link, and a drafted public reply to every review that lands, good or bad. Drafts only, you send everything, and the asks never offer incentives, which keeps your profile safe. Cancel anytime.
Included free in the Ghostwriter ($99) and in Complete. Reviews are among the sources AI engines read when they decide who to recommend.
Get startedPresence
Done for you: technical foundation, answer-shaped pages, and your business present in the sources the engines actually cite for your category. Plus a monthly re-scan that shows your movement honestly. Cancel anytime.
Founding rate: join by September 15 and pay $199 a month for as long as you stay subscribed. That is $1,200 a year saved.
Get startedComplete
Presence, Voice and Proof together, plus the traditional SEO layer. The Ghostwriter drafts your posts daily, and the same desk handles your review asks, your printable review QR code and your replies. The SEO layer covers technical fixes, keyword work, on-page improvements, Google Business Profile and monthly reporting. One invoice instead of two.
Founding rate: join by September 15 and pay $349 a month for as long as you stay subscribed. That is $1,800 a year saved.
Get startedAI-Ready Site Build
A fast, clean website built from the ground up for AI-era visibility. 20 to 40 pages generated from your intake, structured so engines can read, trust and quote you.
Site clients get the monthly plan for $199.
Get startedAdd-on: The Ghostwriter
Daily X and LinkedIn drafts in your voice. You copy, edit and post by hand, nothing is ever auto-posted. One desk carries both Voice and Proof: the post drafts, your review asks, your printable review QR code and drafted replies to reviews. $99 a month with any plan or on its own, included free in Complete.
Honest comparison
Three ways to buy this, and what each one really is
Cheap AI writing tools advertise hard right now, and the price gap between one of those and an agency invoice is real. It is a gap in what you are buying, not a discount on the same thing.
| The option | Typical price | Who does the work | What it aims at |
|---|---|---|---|
| An AI writing tool | Under $200 a monthA software subscription | You do. It generates drafts. Somebody still picks the topics, checks the facts and decides what goes live. | Volume of articles on your own website. |
| An SEO agency | $3,209 a monthTop of the range for agencies in the Ahrefs survey | They do, on a retainer, often with a minimum term. | Traditionally your position on the Google results page. Some now add AI visibility as a line item. |
| What The AI Says | $199 a monthFounding rate through September 15, then $299. Or $349 with the SEO layer and the Ghostwriter included, then $499. | We do, and every month you get the list of exactly what was done, in plain words. | Whether ChatGPT, Grok and Claude name your business when a customer asks them who to hire. |
Two caveats, because you would find them anyway. That $3,209 is the top end of the Ahrefs numbers: it assumes every provider surveyed charges the highest price in its bracket. Across all 439 providers, agencies, freelancers and consultants together, the most common retainer is $501 to $1,000 a month. We quote the agency figure because an agency is the thing most owners are weighing us against, and we would rather you heard the caveat from us. Second: if what you want is a pile of blog posts, a writing tool is the cheaper answer. If you want posts in your own voice on the channels the engines actually read, that is the Ghostwriter at $99.
Prices in USD. Monthly plans cancel anytime, no contracts. The founding rate applies automatically at checkout through September 15. Every monthly plan carries our 14-day guarantee: cancel within 14 days of your first charge and we refund it in full. Details.
Common questions
Asked and answered
- What is GEO in plain English?
- GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. It is the work of making sure AI assistants like ChatGPT, Grok and Claude actually mention and recommend your business when customers ask them for suggestions. Think of it as the new layer on top of the SEO you already know about.
- How is the free scan different from an SEO tool?
- SEO tools look at your Google rankings. Our scan asks the AI engines themselves the questions your customers ask, in real time, and records the answers word for word. You see exactly which businesses each engine recommends for your category, and whether you are one of them.
- There are AI SEO tools for $20 a month. Why would I pay more than that?
- There are two different products at that price and neither one does this job. Trackers tell you whether the engines mention you, which is the part we give away free. Writing tools generate drafts that you still have to check, publish and keep up. Both of them leave the work with you, which is fine if you have the time for it. We do the work ourselves, and it is aimed at whether ChatGPT, Grok and Claude name your business when a customer asks them who to hire. That is a different job, and it is the one that decides whether the customer ever reaches you.
- Do you guarantee my business will be recommended?
- No, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does. AI answers change and nobody controls them. What we guarantee is the work: a specific list of fixes delivered every month, and an honest re-scan that shows whether your visibility moved. If it has not moved yet, the report says so plainly.
- Will this replace my staff or my marketing person?
- No. There is no GEO person on your staff to replace. This is work that simply was not being done, usually because nobody knew it existed. If you have a marketing person, we make their work more visible to the AI engines. Most clients use us instead of an outside agency invoice, not instead of a person.
- Why do you check Grok as well as ChatGPT?
- Because different engines give different answers about the same business, and almost nobody else measures Grok at all. We have measured the same business scoring 68 out of 100 on Grok and 19 on ChatGPT on the same day. If you only check one engine, you only know half the story.
- What do I have to do myself?
- Some things only an owner can do: approving access to your Google Business Profile, asking happy customers for reviews on the platforms the AI actually reads, and posting now and then on X or LinkedIn. We tell you exactly which actions matter for your business and why, and we handle everything else.
Sixty seconds to find out
The businesses in AI answers today are meeting customers their competitors never see
No account, no card, no obligation. Just what the AI says, word for word.
Run the free scan