The Engines Quote Sources. The Job Is To Be One Worth Quoting
What No Agency Can Promise You
Eight Things An AI Engine Reads Before It Names A Brand
Whether It Can Reach The Page
The strongest factor of all. A page blocked to OpenAI's or Perplexity's search bot cannot be cited whatever it says. We audit the robots rules and confirm access bot by bot.
Mentions On Other Sites
How often the brand appears elsewhere, linked or not, correlates with AI visibility about three times as strongly as backlinks. Directories, lists, press, and forums all count.
Search Rank, Still
Ranking helps but decides less than it did. Under four in ten AI Overview citations now come from top ten pages, so a page can be cited without ranking first.
A Passage That Stands On Its Own
The engines lift paragraphs, not pages. A forty to sixty word answer under a question heading, with no pronouns pointing back up the page, gets lifted far more often.
Clear Entities
Named people, places, products, and companies, roughly four to six per page, so the engine knows what the page is about without guessing.
Freshness
Cited pages run about a quarter newer than the organic top ten. Dated figures and updated claims keep a page in the running.
Third Party Lists And Directories
For any best agency or best product prompt, the engines cite roundups and directories first and company pages almost never. Getting into the right lists is most of the job.
Schema, As A Tiebreaker
Organization, Service, and FAQ markup help the engine parse who you are and what you claim. Useful, but last on this list, and no substitute for the seven above.
Want To Know Which Engines Already Name You?
ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews And AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, And Copilot
Google AI Overviews And AI Mode
The largest surface by far. AI Mode has passed one billion monthly users. Both run on Google's core ranking systems, so SEO carries the weight here.
ChatGPT
Sends about three quarters of all AI referral traffic. It cites lists, directories, Reddit, and pages its search bot can reach, and favors passages that answer cleanly.
Gemini
Second for referrals and growing. It draws heavily on Google's index, so the same signals apply, with brand entity consistency mattering more.
Perplexity
Citation first by design, so every answer shows its sources. Smaller audience, higher quality referrals, and the easiest engine to audit.
Claude
Small overall, but far stronger in B2B. It reads sources through its own search bot and rewards clear, evidenced pages.
Copilot
Bing's index, Bing's rules. Bing Webmaster Tools now reports which pages get cited, which makes it the most transparent engine to measure.
Which Engines Matter For Your Buyers?
What Is AI Search Optimization? GEO, AEO, And AI SEO Explained
This service runs from Austin, Texas, with a presence in New York City and Reykjavik. AI search is usually run beside an SEO program with us, and one lead holds both, so the foundation gets built once.
AI Search Visibility For B2B And SaaS, Ecommerce, Kitchen And Home Brands, And Professional Services
Audit The Prompts, Fix The Foundation, Build The Sources, Then Track By Engine
Audit The Prompts
Twenty to thirty buyer prompts run across the engines, the sources behind each answer logged, and your position against the brands that get named.
Fix The Foundation
Crawler access confirmed bot by bot, entity facts made consistent everywhere, schema corrected, and the SEO basics handed to the SEO plan rather than sold twice.
Build The Sources
Answer blocks on your own pages, the right lists and directories worked, reviews and community presence earned, and the content the engines keep choosing refreshed.
Track By Engine
Citation share per engine and per prompt, trended, beside AI referral sessions and the leads they produced. Direction over absolutes, and the gaps reworked each cycle.
See Who The Engines Name Instead Of You
Get A Free AI Visibility Audit
- Buyer prompt set for your category
- Citation share by engine
- Sources behind every answer
- Crawler access, bot by bot
- Entity consistency check
- First ten citation gaps, ranked
- 1Tell us about your business
Your product, who buys it, and the questions they ask before they choose.
- 2We run the prompts
No access is needed for the first pass. Nothing gets changed, and an NDA is available on request.
- 3You get the scorecard and a call
A written scorecard ranked by impact, then a call to walk through it.
Ready To See Which Engines Know You Exist?
How AI Search Optimization Pricing Works
What Clients Say About Working With Komplex
The Komplex team helped us reach new audiences and drive higher conversions.
Strategies that delivered results beyond our expectations.
Their expertise helped us scale efficiently, attract more customers, and drive measurable growth.
Komplex played a key role in growing our user base and optimizing our marketing efforts.
Common Questions About AI Search Optimization
Is AI search optimization a real service or SEO with a new name?
About a third of it is new and the rest is SEO with a sharper purpose, and we say which is which on the scope. The new parts are prompt research, brand mentions worked as a program, entity consistency, and tracking by engine. Crawlability, content quality, and schema are SEO, and we do not charge for them twice.
What is the difference between GEO, AEO, and AI SEO?
GEO, generative engine optimization, is about the answers ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Mode generate. AEO, answer engine optimization, is about direct answers such as AI Overviews and featured snippets. AI SEO is what most buyers call the whole thing. The work overlaps almost entirely, which is why this is one page and not three.
Can you guarantee we get cited by ChatGPT?
No, and nobody can. The engines personalize by user and location, change without notice, and disagree with each other on the same question. What we guarantee is the work and the visibility: the prompt set, the sources behind every answer, the gaps ranked, and the trend reported by engine. Be suspicious of any page that promises more.
How do you measure AI visibility?
By prompt and by engine. A fixed set of buyer prompts is run again and again. We log which brands are named, in what order, and which source each answer cites. That gives a citation share we trend over time, beside AI referral sessions and the leads they produce in Analytics. Tools differ in method, so we report direction rather than one absolute number.
How long does it take to show up in AI answers?
Nobody has reliable data on this yet, and we say so. Crawler access and entity fixes can change an answer quickly. Earning mentions and list placements takes longer and depends on the category. We report leading indicators first: bots reaching the pages, facts consistent, sources earned, then citations.
Should we block AI crawlers from our site?
Block the training bots if you want to, since Google has confirmed that has no effect on rankings. Do not block the search bots, because a page they cannot reach cannot be cited. OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and Google each run separate bots for the two jobs, and we set the rules bot by bot.
Do we need an llms.txt file?
Not for Google, which has said its search does not use it, and studies of hundreds of thousands of domains find no lift from it. Perplexity and some assistants read it, so we ship one as a low cost extra where it is harmless. It is never the plan.
Why does a competitor get named when they rank below us?
Because citation and rank have come apart. Under four in ten AI Overview citations now come from top ten pages. The competitor is probably mentioned on more sites, listed in the roundups the engine trusts, or written in passages that lift cleanly. The audit shows which of the three it is.
Does schema markup help with AI search?
It helps the engine parse who you are and what you claim, and we ship Organization, Service, and FAQ markup on every page. It is a tiebreaker, not a lever. Google has retired FAQ rich results, so the markup now earns its keep in extraction rather than on the results page.
How does this fit with our SEO program?
The SEO program owns the foundation: crawl, content quality, technical health, and the measurement that ties organic to revenue. AI search owns what gets said about you elsewhere, the entity facts, the prompt tracking, and the citation work. The same lead holds both, so nothing gets built twice. Our SEO services page covers the first half.
Who owns the prompt set, the tracking, and the reports?
You do. The prompt set, the tracking account, the entity fixes, and every report sit under your business. We work through access you can remove at any time. If we part ways, you keep everything, including the source logs.
Do you work with companies outside Austin, Texas?
Yes. Komplex is based in Austin with a presence in New York City and Reykjavik, and most clients work with us remotely. The engines answer differently by country and language, so a company selling in more than one market gets a prompt set for each.