Services / Search Marketing / AI Search

Get Found and Cited in AI Search

AI tools now answer many of the questions your prospects used to search for, and they pick which sources to cite. We work on how those tools find, understand, and cite you, and we track AI answer engine traffic and visibility so you know what it’s producing. You may have heard this work called generative engine optimization (GEO), answer engine optimization (AEO), or LLM optimization (LLMO).

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The AI search shift

Before a human evaluates your firm, a machine already has.

A lot of the vetting that used to happen through search engines and long visits to your website now happens inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Google’s AI features. When buying leans on reputation and third-party validation, showing up in their answers matters as much as (if not more than) ranking.

Search isn’t shrinking. It’s changing. Industry research shows search volume holding strong even as more and more Google searches show an AI Overview. AI tools also build their own shortlists. When our CEO ran the same hiring question through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode, each tool returned a different shortlist, and only one firm showed up in all three.

That changes your website’s job too. For many buyers, it’s where they confirm what an AI tool already told them about you.

What it’s called

AI search goes by a few names.

Whatever your team calls it, the goal is the same. Here’s how we use each term.
AI search

Our umbrella term for search experiences where AI writes the answer, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.

GEO (generative engine optimization)

Optimizing for generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, so they find your content, understand it, and cite or recommend you.

AEO (answer engine optimization)

Grew out of featured snippet work, and focuses on AI Overviews, voice search, and other places that give a direct answer instead of a list of links.

LLMO (LLM optimization)

Focuses on how large language models describe your organization and which sources they draw on when they do.

What we do

We work on how AI tools find, understand, and cite you.

We do this work for B2B professional services firms, with deep experience in AEC, logistics, and commercial real estate, and for right-fit organizations in many other industries, including nonprofits and consumer brands. AI search work can come out of a broader Digital Marketing Success Plan®, start with an audit, or stand on its own.
Technical foundations

We make sure AI tools and search engines can crawl, read, and understand your site. That includes checking that AI crawlers aren’t blocked by accident, keeping key facts in the page’s HTML (many AI crawlers read the raw HTML without running scripts), and pointing your sitemap to the pages worth citing.

Topics you can own

We find the overlap between what your firm is credible on and what buyers search for and ask AI tools. Then we build a list of questions to track, with input from the people closest to your buyers.

Content built for two readers

Pages that work for people and AI alike, with the answer up front, headings written as full thoughts, clear tables and schema where they help, and real questions and answers in your buyers’ words.

Create what AI can’t

Generic content is easy for AI to replace. Original research, named frameworks, earned points of view, and first-hand project proof are harder to copy, and your own experts as named authors add trust.

Reputation and third-party signals

AI tools lean on what others say about you, and they often use a source without crediting it. We find the directories, reviews, associations, and publications AI tools trust in your space and work on how you show up there.

One clear page per topic

When several pages, locations, or domains cover the same topic, AI tools have to guess which one to cite. We help consolidate them so each topic has one clear source.

How we think about AI search

We don’t chase algorithms. We build on what lasts.

What ranks in search engines and what gets cited by AI come from much of the same place, which is helpful, original, well-structured content on a site machines can read. So we skip the shiny objects, like expecting schema markup or an llms.txt file to do the work on their own, and we stay out of the debates over whether they matter at all. Our effort goes where it moves results. Generating visibility without a business outcome is a newer way to waste time and actual dollars.

We also check more than one AI tool. Answers vary widely from one tool to the next, and the tools buyers use keep shifting. AI shapes paid search too, through Google’s AI-driven ad types and targeting, so we plan SEO, paid search, and AI search as one search strategy. We love to manage all of it together, but many right-fit clients come to us for one channel, and that works too.

How we measure

We lead with qualified leads and revenue, then track visibility.

Clicks only tell part of the story when AI tools answer questions without sending a visit. So we stop leading with clicks, impressions, and rankings, and start with qualified leads, sales, revenue attribution, search visibility, and brand mentions.

We set up AI tools as their own traffic source in GA4, so you can see which tools send visitors and what those visitors do. Share of voice (how often you’re mentioned compared with competitors) is our steadiest visibility metric. Prompt tracking helps too, but we treat it as directional, since the same question can get different answers from one tool, or one day, to the next. Search Console adds clues, like pages with high impressions and few clicks, which can be a sign that an AI Overview is answering the question.

“VOLTAGE’s expertise, particularly around AEO has been invaluable.”
Jerry Gennaria, President & CEO, TOKY, via Clutch
Why firms trust us

We teach this, write about it, and test it.

We write about AI search for Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land and speak on it at industry conferences. That includes “Writing for Robots (and Humans),” a session our CEO co-presented with Jerry Gennaria of TOKY for AEC marketing and business development leaders.

Further reading: SEO vs GEO vs AEO vs LLMO · How to track LLM traffic in Google Analytics · I asked three AI tools who to hire

What happens next

No sales process. Just a real conversation.

You won’t be put into a sales process, talked at, or pitched with slide decks when you talk with us. You’re not getting handed off to a sales team and will be talking directly with our senior level staff and leadership. Our focus is on understanding your goals, culture, and making sure that we fit what you’re looking for. We are as good at working ourselves out of a deal as we are demonstrating that we are the right partner. We want mutual wins that start with a solid strategy that leads to ROI.

When you fill out our form to reach out to us, we’ll prepare for our initial conversation. We do our homework to prepare as we’ll ask a lot of questions, give you the opportunity to do the same, to get a sense for how we think, and to also fairly evaluate the fit of us for your team. No pressure, no obligations.

01 You fill out the form
02 We do our homework before we talk
03 A real conversation, with no slides and no pitch
04 We both decide if it’s a fit
FAQ

Questions about AI search.

For the most part, yes. Generative engine optimization (GEO), answer engine optimization (AEO), and LLM optimization (LLMO) are all names for helping AI tools find, understand, and cite you, each with a slightly different emphasis. We use “AI search” as the umbrella term, and we’re happy to use whichever term your team already uses.

Yes. We double down on the SEO things that matter for both search engines and LLMs, including technical factors, on-page optimization, and quality content. We also have methods for tracking AI answer engine traffic in GA4 with server-side tagging, third-party tools, and other measurement approaches. We don’t put you into tools or tech that you don’t need.

We set up AI tools as their own traffic source in GA4, so you can see which tools send visitors and what those visitors do, and we connect that traffic to leads and revenue. We also track share of voice and how often you’re mentioned or cited, and we treat prompt tracking as directional.

No one controls what an AI tool says, and anyone who promises it is overselling. We improve the odds by strengthening the signals those tools rely on, and we show you what’s changing as we go.

Yes. Many of the signals AI tools use come from SEO fundamentals, and search volume is holding strong. As we often say, SEO isn’t dead, but the way we used to approach it is. AI search changes the mix and the measurement more than it replaces the work.

That’s a business decision, and it’s worth making on purpose. Blocking AI search crawlers like OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot can remove your site from those tools’ answers. Some sites block them without meaning to, through security or firewall settings, so we check what your site allows and help you decide.

Yes, mostly indirectly. Schema makes your pages clearer to search engines, and many AI answers draw on search results. We use it where it fits, but it’s one piece of the work, and we don’t treat it as a shortcut.

Strategy and audits are fixed-fee projects, so you know the investment up front. Ongoing AI search work is a monthly retainer, on its own or combined with SEO.