AI Search Optimisation

If your customers ask questions before they buy, yes. A growing share of those questions now go to ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Overviews and similar tools, which answer with a few sources rather than a list of links. If your content is not structured and connected well enough to be one of those sources, you are invisible in that answer, however well you rank in classic search.

GEO is optimising your content and brand signals so generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity include and cite you when they write an answer. It overlaps almost entirely with AI SEO and Answer Engine Optimisation; the names differ, the work does not. Our GEO vs AEO vs AI SEO explainer goes through the differences.

Traditional SEO targets rankings on a results page. AI SEO targets being read, understood and cited by a language model, which cares more about clear structure, direct answers, consistent entity data and authoritative mentions than about exact keywords. The foundations overlap heavily, which is why we run them as one programme rather than two.

They are best done together. Language models lean on the same signals Google does: crawlable pages, authority, clear content. A site with weak SEO is unlikely to be cited by AI, and most of the AI work improves Google rankings as a side effect. If you already have an SEO programme with us, AI search optimisation extends it rather than replacing it.

Through AI referral traffic in Google Analytics, monthly citation checks across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot using a fixed set of prompts for your services, structured data and entity health, and your Google rankings and organic traffic. The AI platforms do not provide analytics of their own, so we measure consistently and report trends rather than promise a number they cannot show.

Structural improvements, schema and answer-first content can show up in AI answers within weeks because the tools re-read pages often. Building the authority and entity signals that make a brand the default citation takes months, like SEO. We review monthly and expect the first measurable movement inside the first quarter.

Yes. Clear structure, answer-first content, schema and authority signals are also what Google rewards, and the same pages that get cited in AI Overviews tend to rank in the classic results beneath them. We track both so you can see the overlap.

Especially well. When someone asks an AI tool for a plumber, a dentist or a web designer on the Gold Coast, it answers with a short list drawn from businesses whose online data is consistent and whose pages answer the question. Local businesses with clean entity data and well-structured service pages are easier to recommend than big brands with messy ones.

We structure content so a model can process it in sections, write direct answers to the questions people ask, add schema markup, connect the brand to trusted data sources such as the Knowledge Graph and major directories, keep business data consistent everywhere it appears, and make sure nothing technical stops AI crawlers reading the site.

Monthly, in the same report as your SEO: AI referral sessions and what they did, citation checks with examples of where and how you were mentioned, structured data status, and rankings. You see the trend and the work done, in plain English.

Because the work is about your brand, your market and the exact questions your customers ask, and that is easier to get right with a team you can sit across a table from. Thrive has run SEO for Gold Coast businesses for over twenty years and brought AI search optimisation into the same programme as the tools emerged.