What is AI search visibility?
It describes whether and how your brand or pages appear in AI-generated answers: a brand mention, a cited source, or a recommendation. These are different observations and should be recorded separately.
When buyers ask AI, give them a reason to find you.
Build a practical discovery plan around clear information, credible evidence and the questions your customers actually ask.
Check your page foundations ↗Where do GEO and AEO fit?
Generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) describe overlapping efforts to make information discoverable and useful in generated answers. Their definitions vary; start with specific platforms, customer questions and observable outcomes.
For Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, existing SEO fundamentals still apply. Special AI markup is not required. Read Google’s guidance ↗
BUILD THE FOUNDATIONS
Make your business easy to understand. Make your claims possible to check.
Make key pages accessible
Review search directives and preferred URLs, then check live access and indexing separately. Ensure important information is available as text and reachable through internal links.
Answer the buying question
Describe who your product serves, its limits, and the tradeoffs. Use precise service details, useful comparisons and original examples instead of general claims.
Show where the evidence comes from
Make authorship, dates, sources and relevant first-hand evidence easy to find. Keep business details consistent and ensure structured data matches the visible page.
Build a manual visibility baseline.
Use the same small set of questions so your observations are comparable.
- Choose five questions a customer might ask before buying.
- Record the platform, model if known, language, date and exact question.
- Save the response and distinguish brand mentions from linked citations.
- Repeat over time and note changes to prompts, platforms or your website.
Start with decisions, not your brand name.
“Which project management tool suits a five-person agency?”
“What should I check before hiring a local cleaning service?”
“How do manual and electric coffee grinders compare?”
Example research prompts, not measured search-demand data. Adapt them to your buyers and market.
A mention is an observation, not a guarantee.
Answers vary across models, sessions, locations and time. A few prompts do not measure market-wide share of voice. RankTend currently provides this guide and a separate HTML checker; it does not query AI platforms, monitor citations or guarantee recommendations.
Start with a page you already own.
Check the markup, review the evidence, then plan the next page around a real customer question.