Generative engine optimisation
Your buyers ask ChatGPT who to shortlist. This is the work that gets your firm named in the reply.
> containerised battery storage system supplier UK
The top results are an analyst note naming three global cell manufacturers, two distributors, a hire fleet, three container fabricators and an overseas manufacturer's own product page.
ObservedNo UK engineering integrator is named. The answer is made of manufacturers, distributors and box builders.
Search results sampled 9 Sep 2026; assistant answers draw on these sources; full method on /how-we-measure. Firms described, not named.
AI search visibility is whether AI assistants name your firm when a buyer asks them a buying question. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot or Google's AI answers (AI Overviews) who repairs, supplies or refurbishes something and the reply is a short list of named firms. Being on that list is visibility. An AI search visibility agency, also called a generative engine optimisation (GEO) agency, does the measuring and the work that gets a firm onto the list.
Not because the work is worse. Because the assistant has nothing to quote: a specialist of twenty years typically has eight pages, none of which answers a question in a form a machine can lift.
The gap is not authority. It is legibility. The mechanics are in the six reasons firms are invisible and in AI search visibility for B2B engineering firms.
No, but it is not a separate universe either. Assistants search the conventional web, so a page nobody can find will not be cited. What changes is emphasis: direct answers under question-shaped headings, extractable structure, entity data that agrees with itself, corroboration.
The practical difference is what gets reported. Rankings tell you where a page sits. A mention tells you whether a machine named you. Only one maps onto an enquiry, and the method page defines it.
What the programme does
Built from what your engineers already know. Each cell says what lands on your desk.
01
Five buyer questions in UK phrasing, fixed for your firm, run through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers on a fixed date each month.
What you receive: the baseline, then a monthly report with every screenshot and the sources behind each answer.
02
Question-shaped pages built from interviews with your engineers: failure modes, obsolete part numbers, commissioning constraints. The answer first, the evidence under it.
What you receive: published pages on your own domain, in the order the audit set, each with FAQPage markup.
03
Markup across the site, then the unglamorous work of making your name, sector and location agree on LinkedIn, Companies House and every directory that lists you.
What you receive: validated structured data, one canonical description of the firm, and a crawler access check with each fix logged.
04
A claim on your own site is marketing. The same claim on a trade title, an association listing or a supplier register is evidence.
What you receive: live listings and mentions, each linked in the monthly report, and a record of the sources behind your prompts.
How the retainer runs
Nobody is sold a retainer cold. The fixed-fee audit sets the baseline and the order of work, and it is credited against month one.
Five prompts is a battery, not a census, and a run is a sample rather than proof of what any single buyer saw. The full list of what the method cannot show is on how we measure.
Firms with no genuine specialism, firms wanting guaranteed placement, and any firm without an engineer who will talk for two hours a month. The fit list, and what has to be true first, is on who we work with.
Straight answers
AI search visibility is whether AI assistants name your company when someone asks a buying question. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI answers who supplies or repairs something and the reply is a short list of named firms. Being on that list is visibility. Your Google ranking is upstream of it.
It overlaps but it is not the same. Assistants search the conventional web, so a page nobody can find will not be cited either. The difference is emphasis: direct answers, extractable structure, consistent entity data and corroboration. And what gets reported is not where a page ranks, but how often a machine names you.
No. There is no advertising product and no submission form for citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI answers. Anyone selling guaranteed placement is selling something that does not exist. Citations are earned by being the clearest, best-corroborated answer available.
For the specific, low-competition questions engineering buyers ask, weeks rather than months is realistic once a page is indexed. Broad category questions take months. Nobody can promise a date, which is why the programme has a quarterly exit.
With a fixed battery of five buyer questions in UK phrasing, agreed before the baseline and run through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers on a fixed date each month, every answer screenshotted. Each is recorded as a mention, a citation, named first or absent. The full rules are on the how we measure page.
Both, recorded separately. A mention is your firm's name in the answer text. A citation is a page on your domain linked as a source, named or not. Named first is recorded on its own, because a buyer reading a shortlist often stops there.
Both, in that order. Two of the four workstreams land on your own site: answer pages built from your engineers' knowledge, and the entity and schema data. The third is what other sites say, and assistants trust corroboration more than self-description.
It works best for the specialist. Broad questions are fought over by everyone. The questions a specialist's buyers ask, about obsolete equipment, unusual tolerances or discontinued ranges, have almost nobody competing for the answer. Genuine depth with a thin web presence is the ideal starting position.
Not if you want to be visible in AI answers. Blocking GPTBot or PerplexityBot in robots.txt keeps your content out of the systems your buyers are asking. The content is public marketing material, and being quoted is the point.
Related: what the audit costs and includes · how we measure · how a business gets cited by ChatGPT
Start here
Tell us what you make, build or fix. Three working days later you have the screenshots. If you are already winning, we say so.