AI search consulting helps leadership teams decide which visibility questions matter, what can be improved, and how to assess progress without treating an occasional AI mention as a business result.
I’m Chuck Price, a senior SEO and AI search consultant and Founder of Measurable SEO. The work connects AI discovery with your SEO priorities, buyer questions, and qualified-demand goals.
Start with the decision, not the acronym
The useful questions are specific: do buyer prompts surface your organization, what do the answers say, and which sources support them? Then ask where the information is incomplete or inaccurate.
For a law firm, that may involve how an answer describes relevant services. For a B2B SaaS business, it may involve how a product category or use case is explained. These are diagnostic examples, not findings about a client or a promise of inclusion.
Separate four different signals
Mention
An answer names your organization, person, or product.
Citation
An answer links to a source supporting part of its response. That source may be yours or a third party’s.
Recommendation
An answer presents an organization or offering as a candidate for the user’s need.
Referral
A person follows a link to your site and the visit is observable in the available measurement data.
These signals should not be combined into an unexplained score. A mention is not necessarily a recommendation, and a citation is not evidence that a qualified buyer visited or converted.
A diagnostic approach, agreed in scope
The following is a proposed assessment framework, not a report of completed AI search results:
- Define representative buyer questions and distinguish discovery, comparison, and decision intent.
- Record the platform, search mode, prompt, date, and visible response for each observation.
- Separate mentions, citations, recommendations, source URLs, and observable referrals.
- Review your pages, technical access, and public identity information alongside the cited sources.
- Prioritize changes, then repeat a comparable set of observations while recording differences in conditions.
A small prompt sample describes that sample. It does not establish your visibility across all buyers, locations, sessions, or future answers.
What can be reviewed and improved
The controllable work can include making information accessible, clarifying page purpose, supporting claims with evidence, improving internal links, and keeping relationships consistent.
Structured data should accurately describe visible information. It is not a substitute for useful content or a guarantee that an assistant will cite or recommend your business. Changes to third-party sources depend on the publisher. They are not under your direct control.
Treat each answer experience separately
Platform documentation reviewed and this section updated September 7, 2026. The descriptions below reflect the linked documentation at review time. Features and access controls can change.
Google Search: Google’s current guidance says existing SEO practices apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode. Pages must meet its eligibility requirements, but inclusion is not guaranteed. Google’s AI-feature guidance.
ChatGPT: OpenAI currently identifies OAI-SearchBot with ChatGPT search results and documents its setting separately from GPTBot’s training control. Review the applicable search-access settings rather than treating every AI crawler as the same. OpenAI crawler documentation.
Claude: Claude’s current help documentation describes web search as an enabled capability that uses live web sources and includes citations in search responses. An assessment should record whether web search was used rather than assume every answer came from a live search. Claude web-search guidance.
Perplexity: Perplexity currently describes PerplexityBot as a way to surface and link websites in its search results, with documented access controls. Those are technical access considerations, not a formula for being recommended. Perplexity crawler documentation.
Platform documentation informs the assessment. Observed answers must still be dated and checked. There is no single universal assistant ranking to optimize against.
Measure what the evidence supports
Keep sampled answer visibility separate from observed website referrals and business outcomes. Record the query set and conditions so that a later comparison can be interpreted.
At the September 7, 2026 review, Google documents dedicated Search Generative AI performance reports, including impressions for AI Overviews and AI Mode, while those impressions remain part of overall reporting. Keep the report’s scope and denominators explicit. It is not a measure of every AI answer, referral, or business outcome. Google’s reporting announcement and rollout update. For a reproducible counting approach, see the AI search visibility measurement guide.
Referral and conversion data can inform the business picture where available, but they do not account for every answer exposure or establish that a particular content change caused a result. The objective is useful evidence with clear limits.
Use the engagement that fits the need
Strategic Search Review: I lead analysis, priorities, recommendations, and the leadership readout. Implementation is separately scoped.
Focused Improvement Project: I lead diagnosis, strategy, implementation direction, QA, and reporting. Execution may be performed by me, Measurable SEO resources, approved vendors, or your team according to scope.
Fractional Search Leadership: I own strategic priorities, decisions, team and vendor direction, QA, measurement, and reporting. Measurable SEO, client teams, agencies, or other approved resources may execute.
Compare the engagements, review SEO consulting, or explore ongoing search leadership. Scope and pricing are proposal-based.
Questions about AI search terminology
What are AEO and GEO?
Answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) are labels commonly used for work intended to improve visibility in answer and generative search experiences. On this site, they sit within AI search consulting rather than functioning as separate services.
Can you guarantee a citation or recommendation?
No. Technical access, better information, and consistent identity do not guarantee selection by an AI system. This page describes scope and a proposed assessment approach, not verified AI search outcomes.
Does this replace SEO?
No. The work should connect with the existing search program. Google explicitly retains its SEO foundations for its AI search features (see Google’s AI-feature guidance). Other platforms require their own assessment.
Discuss AI search visibility
Tell me what you need to understand about your visibility, the buyer questions that matter, and what evidence you already have. Discuss a Project. You can also review my background and published work.