Your customers ask AI. We make you the top recommendation
Google gives your customers ten options. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews give them one or two names. Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the work of making one of those names yours. We proved it on a Melbourne workshop: five AI platforms tested, five name it, often first.
What AEO is
AI engines don't recommend whoever asks loudest. They recommend businesses they can verify: specific work, real numbers, consistent details, published somewhere they can read. AEO is publishing that proof, structuring it so engines can quote it, and testing every month whether they do. Nobody can promise what an AI will say. The inputs it draws on can be built deliberately, and that's the job.
of consumers used AI to find local business recommendations in the past year. Twelve months earlier it was 6%.
BrightLocal consumer survey, 2026AI platform tests where our reference client is named, often first.
Live retrieval checks, Jul 2026AI visitors enquire at 7.1%, against 3.1% from Google search. Fewer visitors, better buyers.
GA4, revzone.com.au, May to Jul 2026How we make you the answer
- The baseline
We ask the engines your buyers use the questions that bring customers through your door, and record who gets named. That's your starting position, on record before we touch anything.
- The proof
Your real jobs published with dates, numbers and outcomes. Engines quote evidence, so the client with the most verifiable published work wins the recommendation.
- The structure
Schema on every page, an llms.txt for AI crawlers, answers written so an engine can lift them whole. Built on a site fast and clean enough to be worth crawling.
- The retest
The same platform questions re-run every month and logged, so "does AI recommend us yet" gets a dated answer instead of a shrug.
The guarantee runs on this log: named by an AI engine on the agreed questions within 90 days of a hub going live, or the next month is free until you are.
AEO and SEO are the same work
AI Overviews sit on top of Google search, and ChatGPT reads the same web Google ranks. The published proof that earns a page 1 spot is the published proof an engine quotes, so we run SEO and AEO as one system and report both in the same monthly numbers.
Questions we get
- Is AEO the same as GEO?
Same practice, different names. GEO (generative engine optimisation), LLM SEO and AI search optimisation all describe making a business the answer AI engines give. We say AEO.
- Can you control what ChatGPT says?
No one can, and anyone claiming to is selling something. What can be controlled is the published record engines draw on, and the monthly tests show whether it's working. The 90-day guarantee means the risk of "what if it doesn't" sits with us.
- Why one client per specialty per city?
An AI engine gives one answer. We can't make two competing businesses both be it, so we don't take both. First in, locked in.
- Is AI referral traffic actually worth chasing?
The volume is small and growing; the intent is the point. On our reference client, AI visitors enquire at 2.3 times the rate of Google visitors (GA4, May to Jul 2026). Someone who asked "who should I use" and got your name arrives ready to book.
Hear what AI says about you now
We run your business through the same platform questions before we talk, then walk you through it on a free twenty-minute call: who gets named today, why, and what the fix looks like. Yours to keep either way.
- hello@ardendigital.com.au
- 0418 242 850
- Melbourne, working Australia-wide