Sample layout. Not a real client.
Trade, city: the problem in one line
- Starting point
- Rank grid before any change
- What changed
- The one or two changes that moved it
- Result
- Rank grid after, and the change in calls
When a homeowner asks an AI assistant who to call, the reply has room for only a few companies. I measure whether yours is one of them across the cities you serve, then test what changes it.
No long contracts. You talk to Simon.
Who is the best AC repair company near me in Chula Vista?
Here are companies I would look at:
Scientific SEO
AI visibility is a measure of how often AI assistants and AI search features name your business when a local customer asks who to call, along with where in the answer you appear and how favorably you’re described. You can measure it the same way you measure a map pack position. The industry has filed the work behind it under two acronyms.
Each acronym names a place an answer can appear. Answer engine optimization (AEO) aims to make your page the source that answer boxes, featured snippets, voice assistants and Google’s AI Overviews quote. Generative engine optimization (GEO) aims to get your company named and cited by generative assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot.
Owners also ask by name about Google AI Overviews, the AI-written summaries at the top of some Google results, and about LLM SEO, which deals with how the large language models (LLMs) behind these assistants get their information about a local business in the first place.
An AI answer is short. A Google results page shows a map with three businesses and a page of listings under it. An assistant asked for the best AC repair company in Chula Vista replies with a few names and a sentence about each. A homeowner who trusts that reply may call one of those names without looking further.
Google’s map pack and regular results are still where a San Diego home-service company should expect to be found. There’s now one more place where a customer forms a short list, and most owners have never looked at what it says about them. The first check is whether the facts are right: a current phone number, and services you still offer. The second is whether a competitor from the next city over is named in your place.
I word each prompt the way a customer would ask it (a trade and a problem, in a named city) and run the set through each assistant. The table shows what I record for every run.
| What I record | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Which businesses are named | Whether you’re on the short list, and who else is |
| Where you appear in the answer | Whether you’re the first name or an afterthought |
| Which sources are cited | The pages and listings the answer was built from |
| What is said about you | Whether the facts are right and the description is fair |
Then I change one thing and run the same prompts again. An assistant can name different companies on different days, so one run proves little and I read the pattern across repeated runs.
The first measurement is the AI visibility audit. Repeating it on a schedule is AI visibility tracking, and the results go in the same plain-English report as your rankings and calls.
No agency controls what an assistant says, so no one can guarantee a recommendation, me included. My AI SEO services consist of the measurement and a short list of changes, followed by an honest account of what moved and what didn’t.
An assistant can only repeat what it can find and trust about your company. For a local business, that comes from the same foundations as good local SEO:
Structured data is one part of entity and schema work, which also deals with how a machine identifies your company as one distinct business. Your reviews and citations work as signals for an assistant as well as for Google. If your local SEO is already in good shape, much of the AI visibility work is already done.
The assistants don’t agree with each other. The same question can produce one set of names in one product and a different set in another, so I keep a separate record for ChatGPT, for Gemini and for Perplexity. Where a company is named in one and missing in another, the cited sources are the first place I look for the reason, and that becomes the next thing to test.
Every engagement starts and ends with the same measurement.
Sample layout. Not a real client.
No. A home-service company should still expect to be found through the map pack and the regular Google results. AI answers are one more place to measure.
It depends on how your customers ask. Questions about cost, repairs and timing tend to produce a quoted answer, which is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). Requests for a recommendation produce a short list of company names, which is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). I run both kinds of question for your trade and cities before deciding where the first change goes.
Ask them. Type the question a customer would ask, with your trade and a city you serve, into two or three assistants. Read who is named and whether the facts about you're right. That gives you a rough picture. The names can change from one day to the next and with how the question is worded, so a proper baseline uses a fixed list of questions asked more than once, with a separate record for each assistant.
A separate program is usually unnecessary, and I'll tell you which part you're paying for. Most of what helps an AI assistant name you is local SEO work: your Google Business Profile, consistent business facts, real reviews and clear pages. If those are in good shape, the AI-specific part is measurement plus a small number of targeted changes.
With your trade and the cities you serve, I can run the questions your customers ask and show you which companies get named.
Prefer to talk? Call (619) 675-7678, 9am to 6pm.