ai search optimization
Get your business found, and quoted, in AI search.
People now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers for recommendations. Those tools can only cite what they can reach and understand. We make sure yours is a site they can crawl, parse and quote.
what keeps a site out of ai answers
The crawler can't get in
Firewalls and bot protection often block AI crawlers without anyone deciding to. On our own site, Cloudflare's Bot Fight Mode challenged Perplexity's verified crawler 26 times in one week before we found it and switched it off.
The facts aren't machine-readable
AI tools lean on structured data to know who you are, what you do and where. Without it, they guess, or they cite someone else.
The answer is buried
AI answers quote passages that answer a question directly. Pages that bury the answer under an introduction rarely get quoted.
this is for you if
- Your customers ask AI tools for recommendations in your field and you don't know whether you show up.
- You already rank in Google and want that visibility to carry into AI answers.
- You want the crawler-access side checked by someone who can read your firewall settings, not only your robots.txt.
it's not the right fit if
- You want a guaranteed mention in ChatGPT. No one controls that, and anyone selling it is overpromising.
- Your site's basic SEO is broken. Fix that first; AI search builds on it.
how to start
Start with a teardown, or make it part of a monthly retainer.
3-5 days
Site & Stack Teardown
The low-risk way to see exactly what's holding your site back, before you commit to anything bigger.
$197
one-time, credited toward any build or Fix Sprint
recurring
Growth Retainer
For organizations that don't just want their site maintained, they want it to keep getting better.
Month to month
A monthly block of senior growth work, scoped to your goals and quoted after a short call. Cancel anytime.
what we've measured
This is our newest service, and we don't have a client before-and-after to publish yet. What we do have is our own measured data. In October 2026 we checked 100 Houston-area websites: none blocked an AI search crawler in robots.txt, and 29 published an llms.txt file. That's the rules side. Our own site shows the other side: a firewall setting can still block a crawler the robots.txt welcomes, which is why we check both.
common questions
What's the difference between AEO and SEO?
SEO gets a page ranked in a list of links. AEO (answer engine optimization) gets your information used inside an AI-written answer. They share a foundation, a crawlable, fast, well-structured site, but AEO puts more weight on structured data, direct answers and whether AI crawlers can reach you at all.
Can you guarantee we'll appear in ChatGPT?
No. No one controls what an AI tool says. We make your site reachable, readable and quotable, and we check the crawler side, which is the part you can actually control.
What's an llms.txt file?
A plain-text file at the root of your site that summarizes who you are and points AI tools to your most important pages. 29 of the 100 Houston-area sites we checked publish one. It's quick to add, and we include it.
Do we need to block AI crawlers to protect our content?
That's a business choice. You can allow AI search crawlers that cite and link to you while blocking crawlers used only for training. We set that up deliberately instead of leaving it to a default.
Related: SEO services / The Houston website check / AEO vs traditional SEO
start the conversation
Want to know whether AI tools can see you?
Tell us what you're working with. You'll hear back within one business day, with the right next step, even if that's not hiring us. Prefer to talk? book a call instead.