What is AI search optimisation?
AI search optimisation is the work of making your business more likely to be named, described accurately and cited when people ask AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews for advice. You will also see it called generative engine optimisation (GEO), LLM SEO or AI SEO. The labels differ; the goal is the same.
For a premium Cotswold business, the questions that matter are easy to picture. “Where should we stay for a quiet anniversary weekend in the Cotswolds?” “Which farm shops near Tetbury are worth the drive?” “Who are the best interior designers for a listed house in Oxfordshire?” If an assistant answers without mentioning you, a customer you would have loved may never reach your website at all.
We approach AI search optimisation as a PR agency first, because the evidence says that is where most of the influence lies.
How AI assistants decide who to mention
AI assistants build their answers from sources they consider trustworthy, and a large share of those sources is journalism and other independent coverage. Muck Rack’s analysis of more than 25 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini found that earned media accounted for 84% of citations, with journalism alone at 27% and paid or advertorial content at just 0.3%.
The pattern holds when you look at brands rather than links. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found that branded web mentions correlated with AI visibility at 0.656 to 0.709 across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT, against 0.266 to 0.326 for Domain Rating, a measure of link authority. Mentions on YouTube were stronger still. Ahrefs is careful to say that correlation is not causation, and so are we. But the direction is clear: being talked about in the right places matters more than any single technical trick.
That is why you cannot buy your way into these answers in any straightforward way. You have to be written about, reviewed, recommended and quoted by sources the assistants already trust.
Why it matters, and why we keep it in proportion
Search behaviour is changing. When Google shows an AI summary, people click through to a website far less often. The Pew Research Center tracked 68,879 searches by 900 US adults and found users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits when a summary appeared, against 15% when it did not. They clicked a source inside the summary in just 1% of visits. Being named in the answer is becoming as important as being the link beneath it.
We also want to be straight with you about the UK. The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2026 found that weekly use of AI chatbots for news rose to 10% globally, but in the UK it was 4%, the lowest of any market surveyed, and UK trust in chatbot answers stood at just 6%. News is not the same as choosing a hotel or a kitchen designer, but it is a useful reality check.
So we do not sell AI visibility as a replacement for Google, the press or word of mouth. We sell it as a growing channel that the same good work feeds. A feature in a national travel section builds your reputation with readers today, earns a link that helps your rankings, and gives AI assistants a credible source to draw on tomorrow.
How our AI search optimisation works
Our work falls into four parts, and the first carries the most weight.
- Earned media in the right places. We run digital PR campaigns, expert comment and launches aimed at the publications and guides that AI assistants cite in your category. For a hotel that might be national travel sections and respected hotel guides. For an interiors studio, design and homes titles.
- Consistent facts everywhere. Assistants get confused by conflicting information. We check how you are described across listings, guides, review sites and directories, and correct what is out of date, from opening hours and room counts to the name of the head chef.
- A site that answers questions. We advise on the pages that should answer your customers’ real questions plainly, with clear facts, names and places, so an assistant can describe you accurately. We work alongside your web team or SEO agency on this rather than replacing them.
- Genuine third-party recognition. Credible awards, editorial round-ups and guides that assess businesses independently. We pitch for inclusion on merit. We never pay to be placed in a “best of” list.
The links this work earns also support your Google rankings, which is where our digital PR for SEO service picks up.
How we track AI visibility
Measurement is where most agencies go quiet. Muck Rack’s July 2026 survey of PR professionals found that 39% do not measure AI search success at all, and 29% said nobody owns it. We think you should see exactly what is happening.
At the start, we agree with you a set of customer-style prompts: the questions real people ask when they are looking for what you offer. For a country-house hotel that might include “best boutique hotel in the Cotswolds for a weekend away”, “dog-friendly hotels near Burford with a spa” and “where to stay for the Cheltenham Festival”. For a farm shop, it might be “best farm shops in Gloucestershire” or “where to buy local lamb near Cirencester”.
Every month we run those prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews and record:
- Whether you are mentioned, and where you appear in the answer.
- How you are described, including any facts that are wrong or out of date.
- Which sources are cited, so we know which publications and pages are shaping the answer.
- How you compare with the competitors you name, as a simple share of voice.
AI answers vary from one run to the next, so we look at trends across the prompt set over several months rather than celebrating or panicking over a single result.
You see the evidence, not just our summary of it. Each report includes the answers themselves for your most important prompts, so you can read exactly what a customer would read. Where an assistant gets something wrong, such as an old opening time, a chef who left two years ago or a description that undersells you, we trace it back to the source it came from and work on correcting that source.
What we will not do
Some tactics sold as GEO are a waste of money, and a few could harm a premium brand. We do not stuff pages with prompts, publish thin articles written for machines, create fake reviews, pay for placement in listicles or promise a set number of AI mentions. The fastest route to being recommended by an AI assistant is also the oldest one in PR: be worth recommending, and make sure the right people are talking about it.
If you would like to know what AI assistants say about your business today, book a discovery call and we will run a handful of your customers’ likely questions before we speak. You can also read our guide on how to get mentioned in ChatGPT.