Show up where buyers now start: AI search

AI search optimization services work to get your company cited in the answers that Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity give buyers. Google’s AI Overviews alone had more than 2 billion monthly users in July 2025. Growigami writes 200 pages a month for those answers from what your experts know. It costs $1,999 a month, with a monthly check of which answers name you.

What is AI search optimization?

AI search optimization is the work of making your pages easy for AI search products to find and quote. Google said in July 2025 that AI Overviews had more than 2 billion monthly users, and that AI Mode had passed 100 million monthly users in the US and India. ChatGPT reached 900 million weekly users in February 2026.

B2B software buyers use these products to pick vendors. In G2’s March 2026 survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers, 51% started research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google. ChatGPT was the most used chatbot for software research, at 63%. 45% named citations from software review sites as the signal in an AI answer that gave them the most confidence.

Most of the firms that rank for this search sell the same parts. They audit how AI answers treat you today, check that AI crawlers can reach your site and write or rewrite pages so they can be quoted. Then they work on mentions elsewhere and track the results.

What else is AI search optimization called?

Firms use at least five names for overlapping work, and the pages that rank for this search do not agree on how they fit:

• GEO, generative engine optimization. The name comes from a 2023 research paper accepted at KDD 2024. WebFX writes that AI search optimization services are “also called GEO services”.
• AEO, answer engine optimization. The older term, from voice search and featured snippets. Zelst describes AI search optimization as a blend of AEO and GEO, and Ignite Local sells both under the one label.
• AI SEO. Optimist titles its list “The 7 Best AI SEO Agencies”.
• LLM SEO and ChatGPT SEO. The same work, named after the language models or after one product. Thrive’s list is about “ChatGPT SEO”.

We use AI search optimization for the channel as a whole, with AEO and GEO as two jobs inside it. Our answer engine optimization page covers being the quoted answer to a question. The generative engine optimization page covers being named when a buyer asks AI for a shortlist. The GEO vs SEO comparison sets GEO next to classic SEO.

How does AI search choose its sources?

Each product documents part of it. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode can run several related searches across subtopics and data sources, a technique it calls query fan-out. AI Mode then answers with links to supporting pages. To be eligible, a page must be indexed and able to show in Google Search with a snippet. Google’s July 2026 guide adds a requirement: a site must be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console. It also says Google Search ignores llms.txt files and needs no special markup.

Ranking for the query itself now accounts for a minority of citations. In Ahrefs’ study of 863,000 search results and 4 million cited URLs, updated March 2026, 37.9% of the URLs cited in AI Overviews ranked in the top ten for the same query. In July 2025 the share had been about 76%. Another 31.0% ranked outside the top 100 for that query.

ChatGPT and Perplexity send their own crawlers. OpenAI uses OAI-SearchBot to surface sites in ChatGPT’s search features, and says sites that opt out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Its GPTBot crawler is a separate setting, for training. Perplexity uses PerplexityBot for its results and recommends allowing it in robots.txt.

How do you optimize for AI search results?

Work in this order. The first two steps decide whether AI search products can read your site at all:

1. Let the crawlers in. Check that robots.txt and your CDN allow Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot. Google lists crawl access, in robots.txt and in “any CDN or hosting infrastructure”, first among its practices for AI features.
2. Put the facts in text. Google asks for important content in text form, and for structured data that matches what the page shows.
3. List the questions buyers ask. Run them in ChatGPT and Perplexity and on Google. Record which vendors each answer names.
4. Write a page for each question you lose. Comparisons, integrations, use cases and plain definitions, each answering its question first, with every figure sourced. Google warns that pages made for every variation of a query, mainly to sway its rankings or AI answers, break its scaled content abuse policy.
5. Get mentioned where the answers look. Review sites, comparison lists and trade press, since G2, which runs a software review site, found review-site citations carry the most weight with buyers.
6. Measure the same way each month. Ask the same questions, count AI referral visits in your analytics and read the Generative AI performance report in Search Console.

Pull sourcesSource · Cold chain trade feeds

Write the storyAgent · One story per item

Done

Check every figureAgainst the source

Passed

Open a pull requestGitHub · dockmere/dockmere-web

Growigami’s search process covers steps 3 and 4: it asks your buyers’ questions in ChatGPT and Perplexity, then writes the pages from your expert’s call notes and the list of pages already live, so each new page covers new ground. It asks the same questions again each month, as in step 6. Trade press mentions come from our PR and awards process, which writes your releases and award entries and pitches reporters, from $1,999 a month. The AI search and SEO service page lists what each size of the search process includes.

Which agencies specialize in AI search optimization?

These are the firms with pages in Google’s US top eight for “ai search optimization services” at Ahrefs’ check on 2 November 2026, read on 4 November 2026. Position 1 was Google’s AI Overview. Three of the pages are lists of the best AI search agencies, and each list ranks its own author first, so the table shows the author’s entry.

Firm (Google position)	Published price	Output or scope	Approval step	Term stated
WebFX (2)	From $3,000 a month; seven priced tiers to $68,250, then one by quote	3 to 90 “assets” a month; 50 to 5,000+ prompts tracked	None stated	6-month commitment
Thrive (3, its own list)	None	AI SEO and GEO, SEO, PPC, content, reputation	None stated	No long-term contracts
Trefoil Group (4)	None	Audit, technical readiness, content, tracking	None stated	None stated
Canesta (5, its own list)	None	Audits, question research, technical SEO, content, site work	None stated	None stated
Optimist (6, its own list)	Audits from $2,500; advising from $3,000 a month	AI SEO and AEO strategy and advising	None stated	None stated
Zelst (7)	None	AI SEO strategy, technical SEO, AI reporting	None stated	None stated
Ignite Local (8)	None	AEO and GEO for local businesses, listings, reviews	None stated	None stated
Growigami	$1,999 a month, or $3,498 with a monthly CRO review	200 pages a month and a monthly answer check	A person on your team approves and merges each batch	three months, then 30 days' notice

WebFX is the only firm here with a full published menu. Its “assets” cover content, PR, social, video, syndication and schema work, so 3 assets a month at the entry tier is a different unit from a page. Optimist’s list puts AI SEO agency pricing between about $2,500 a month at entry and $12,000 or more for full-service retainers.

How do you compare AI search optimization tools?

AI visibility tools measure where you appear, and Profound’s plans also include an AI writer it calls AI Marketer. Optimist names Profound and Peec as monitoring tools, Canesta describes Americaneagle.com using Scrunch, and WebFX bundles its own OmniSEO with its service. On their pricing pages, read 4 November 2026, Peec starts at $95 a month for 50 prompts, Scrunch at $250 for 125 and Profound’s paid plan is by quote. Compare them on what they track:

• Which assistants it covers. WebFX’s plans track 10 AI engines. Peec’s plans let you pick 3 models, and Scrunch’s entry plan covers 4.
• How many questions, and who writes them. WebFX’s entry tier tracks 50 prompts on each of those engines.
• How often it re-asks. Peec’s plans check daily. WebFX prices more frequent checks as add-ons, each per 50 prompts: $75 a month for twice a month, $150 for weekly and $850 for daily.
• Which competitors it names. WebFX tracks 5 at every tier.
• Whether the data is yours. Ask if you can export the answers prompt by prompt. Ask too whether you keep access after a contract ends.

The simplest setup needs no tool: a fixed list of buyer questions, run by hand in the assistants your buyers use and logged in a spreadsheet each month. Answers vary between runs, so the trend over several months matters more than any single check.

How do you hire for AI search optimization?

Put the same questions to every firm you consider, and get the answers in writing:

• The price and the term. WebFX publishes both. Four of the seven pages publish neither, so ask.
• What one deliverable is. A page, an article and an “asset” are different units. Ask for a live example of each.
• Who makes the technical fixes. Canesta’s own guide says a proposal should name who owns implementation.
• Who approves before anything publishes. None of the seven pages mentions an approval step.
• What gets measured. Mentions, citations, the accuracy of what the answer says about you, referral visits and leads are separate numbers. Ask which ones you will see.
• What is promised. Ignite Local says no company can guarantee that ChatGPT recommends a business. Hold firms to the work and the report.

When is another AI search firm a better fit?

Some buyers will do better elsewhere:

• You serve local customers. Ignite Local’s service is built around listings and reviews for local businesses.
• You sell online from a storefront. Canesta’s own entry points to its Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce work.
• You want paid search and AI search in one month-to-month contract. Thrive’s list entry covers AI SEO, PPC and reputation work with no long-term contract.
• You want tracking across 10 engines and thousands of prompts. WebFX’s top tier, priced by quote, tracks 5,000 prompts or more.
• Your team writes, and wants a plan. Optimist’s advising starts at $3,000 a month.
• Nobody can review pages. A batch of ours goes live only when a person on your team merges it, so without a reviewer the work stalls.

CapOut’s search traffic grew 10x after its new pages went live

CapOut turns insurance estimate PDFs into Xactimate files for roofing and restoration contractors. Weekly workshops pulled product knowledge out of its CEO, Matt Fruge, so the pages said what only CapOut knows. After the new pages went live, its estimated search visits grew more than 10x by their September 2026 peak, and the number of terms it ranks for grew 12x between April and September 2026.

Those are Google figures from Ahrefs, and they do not measure AI answers. CapOut’s revenue grew nearly 5x by Matt Fruge’s own count, but we also ran its outbound and its website, so that figure is not search alone. In all, we have built more than 3,600 indexed pages for clients.

Talk to sales. Give us read access to your CRM, and within a week we show you the first process we would build and what it would produce.