Straight Answers
AI Search Questions
The questions we get asked most, answered without the sales layer.
How AI search works
How do AI systems decide which businesses to recommend?
They assemble an answer from sources they can find and verify. Businesses that are clearly described, consistently represented across multiple sources, and easy to extract facts about are easier to include. Businesses that are ambiguous or contradict themselves across surfaces are harder to justify including.
Is there a ranking in AI search?
Not in the way a results page ranks. Engines synthesize. The measurable equivalent is citation frequency, expressed as a rate out of a number of asks.
Why does the same question give different answers?
Because retrieval is not deterministic. We measured this directly: in a pilot, ChatGPT changed its answer between run one and run two on two of three prompts. This is why any serious measurement uses repetition.
Do all the engines behave the same way?
No, and the differences are large. In a single run we have seen three engines cite a business at a similar rate while a fourth never cited it at all, despite returning hundreds of citations to other sources.
Does my website matter at all?
Yes, but less than you would expect and less than most agencies imply. In our measurement our own website was the third most-cited source about us, behind LinkedIn and Reddit.
Can I pay to appear in AI answers?
Not in the organic answer, no. Advertising products are appearing alongside AI results, but that is a separate placement and it should be labelled as one.
Should I block AI crawlers?
That is a real decision with a real trade-off. Blocking them protects your content from being used and also removes you from the answers. If being recommended matters to your business, they need to be allowed to read you.
Is there a file or schema that gets me in?
No. Google's documentation is explicit that no special markup is required for AI Overviews. Structured data helps machines verify what you claim, which is worth doing, but it is not a switch.
How would I know if any of this worked?
Only by measuring the same queries the same way before and after, with enough repetitions to be a rate rather than an anecdote. If nobody measured your baseline, no later claim about improvement can be checked.
What is the single highest-value fix for most businesses?
Usually making the profiles that speak for you agree with your website, starting with LinkedIn and Google Business Profile. It is unglamorous and it moves more than a homepage rewrite.
Find out what AI says about you
Sixty minutes. We look at what AI currently says about your business, and I tell you whether the audit is worth your money. If it is not, I say so.