---
type: "WebPage"
title: "AEO & AI Search"
description: "A unified program that rebuilds your content, authority, and proof for the way language models actually retrieve and cite sources. Not a “GPT-optimized” checklist bolted onto last year’s SEO."
resource: "https://toddmorourke.com/services/ai-search/"
status: "stable"
generated:
  by: "okf-publisher/0.3"
  at: "2026-06-20T01:31:55+00:00"
verified:
  - by: "human:todd-orourke"
    at: "2026-06-20T01:31:55+00:00"
stale_after: "2028-06-20"
timestamp: 2026-06-20T01:31:55+00:00
---

# AEO & AI Search

A unified program that rebuilds your content, authority, and proof for the way language models actually retrieve and cite sources. Not a “GPT-optimized” checklist bolted onto last year’s SEO.

## The problem

Most “AI SEO” offers are a settings change and a schema plugin. AI search decides which brands to surface from signals built over months: extractable content, real citations across the web, and entity authority. If those are not rebuilt deliberately, you stay invisible in the answer, no matter how well you rank in the blue links.

## What's included

### AI visibility baseline audit

Where you surface today across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, and exactly where competitors are cited instead of you.

### Content rebuilt for extraction

Direct-answer structuring, schema, and entity coverage on the pages that actually decide whether a model can lift and cite your content.

### Off-site citation plan

The mentions, references, and third-party signals language models lean on, mapped and sequenced into a real execution roadmap.

### Proprietary prompt tracking

Monthly monitoring of which prompts surface your brand versus competitors, so the work targets measured gaps instead of guesses.

### Reporting tied to revenue

Visibility, citation share, and referral trends reported against the business outcomes they move, not vanity dashboards.

## Three layers, one program

On-page, off-site, and measurement run as a single system. Each layer feeds the next.

### 01 — On-page extraction

Structure, schema, and answer patterns that let models pull your content cleanly and attribute it to you.

### 02 — Off-site signals

Citations and brand mentions built deliberately across the sources models already trust and quote.

### 03 — Visibility tracking

A live read on which prompts cite you, feeding the next round of work with evidence.

## Who it's for

- Mid-market and enterprise brands, roughly $30M+ in revenue
- Already earning organic traction you want to defend in AI search
- Treating AI visibility as a channel to own, not a one-off experiment

## Who it's not for

- Looking for a one-time technical quick fix
- No existing content or authority foundation to build on
- Need measurable results inside 30 days

## Track record

- $300M+ — annual revenue scaled
- 500M+ — website sessions delivered
- 12 — years in SEO & search

## Questions I get asked

### What is answer engine optimization (AEO) and how is it different from SEO?

AEO is the work of getting your brand surfaced and cited inside AI-generated answers: AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini. Traditional SEO optimizes for a ranked list of links. AEO optimizes for being the source a model extracts, summarizes, and attributes. They share a foundation, but AEO adds extractable content structure, entity authority, and off-site citation signals that ranking alone does not earn.

### How do you measure AI search visibility?

I track which prompts surface your brand across the major AI engines, how often you are cited versus competitors, and how that citation share moves month over month. That baseline is the first deliverable, so progress is measured against real prompt coverage rather than a generic rank report.

### How long before AEO shows results?

Extraction and schema fixes can shift citations within weeks. The authority and off-site citation work compounds over months. This is a program, not a campaign, which is why I set a measured baseline up front and report movement against it.

### How much does an AEO program cost?

It scales with the size of the content footprint and the competitiveness of your space. The discovery call is where we size the opportunity and the work against it, with no obligation to proceed.

## Related services

- [Off-site strategy](/services/off-site/) — The citation and link layer that feeds AI visibility.
- [Design & content](/services/design-and-content/) — The production engine behind extractable, citable pages.
- [Competitive intelligence](/services/competitor-research/) — See which brands AI is citing instead of you, and why.