More of your buyers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI answers instead of working through a page of links. Those answers name two or three businesses. This page explains how that naming happens, and how you find out whether it includes you.
Illustrative reconstruction, not a recorded answer.
For B2B teams, the usual pick is a competitor, which handles enrichment at scale.
Every number below says where it came from and how we got it, including two we are still holding back.
Being cited means your link sits in the list of sources under the answer. Most people never open that list. Being named means your business appears in the sentence they actually read. Only the second one gets you on the shortlist.
More than a third of the time, the AI uses your page to write its answer and leaves your name out of it. Your content did the work. Someone else got the credit.
Your settings look fine. Your security tools turn AI away anyway. Nobody spots it, because nobody tries more than once.
The answer is on your page, halfway through a long sentence about something else. AI can't pull out what it can't find cleanly.
AI takes the useful paragraph. Your name is in the byline or the footer, so it stays behind. The answer reads like nobody wrote it.
The three engines rarely pick the same sources. Watching one of them shows you a third of the picture.
Every month you don't measure this, you keep paying for content that is technically there and doing nothing. Our measurement data, ungated, shows exactly where that gap opens for a given query set and how it moves over time.
What happensBuyers ask the category question before they ever open a form.
Why it hurtsIf the AI names a competitor instead, the shortlist gets made without you.
What you seeYour team sees fewer enquiries, but not the reason why.
What happensCitations climb on a report while enquiries stay flat.
Why it hurtsContent aimed at the wrong part of the problem keeps getting published.
What you seeNobody raises it, because the headline number still looks good.
What happensTracking tools add and drop engines whenever they like.
Why it hurtsSo the number can move without anything changing on your site.
What you seeBudget gets decided on a number nobody has checked.
There is no ranking report for AI answers. If you can't say how often you are named, on which engine, and against what you looked like last month, there is nothing to improve against. Three things make that harder than it sounds.
Ask the same question twice, minutes apart, and you get different sources and different businesses named. One screenshot shows you one moment. It doesn't tell you what usually happens.
ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews rarely use the same sources for the same question. Measuring one of them covers a fraction of where your buyers are looking.
Tracking tools add and drop engines between reports. When a number moves because the list of engines changed, that is not progress.
Security tools usually let the first request through and block the ones after it. So we try five times as each AI crawler before we say anything is working.
One question, answered in full, in its own paragraph, in the same words people use to ask it.
Nobody has a reliable formula for this, and anyone selling one is guessing. What we do know: your name has to sit inside the paragraph itself, not in the byline.
Question by question, engine by engine, measured against where you started. Our measurement data, ungated, shows the method.
"There are several considerations when evaluating an approach here, including structure, access and attribution, among other elements."
"An AEO audit checks four things: whether AI can reach your page, whether the answer sits in one clear paragraph, whether that paragraph names your business, and whether results are tracked on every engine over time."
Read how to evaluate an AEO agency before you contact us. It is written to be used on us too.
Written to answer one exact question, not to hit a keyword count.
ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews, not just the one that looks best.
If a number doesn't add up yet, it stays out of the report.
We publish our prices, so you know what this costs before you talk to us.
A one-off review. Shows where you are missing from AI answers and why, before any monthly work starts.
About 16 pages a month built to be quoted, tracking across all three engines, and a monthly review.
About 24 pages a month across several topics, with a strategy review every fortnight.
Every engagement starts with the Blueprint. Read more on AEO pricing in Australia, or on hiring in-house instead.
Four things: makes sure AI can reach your pages, writes answers it can quote cleanly, keeps your name attached when it quotes them, and tracks what happens on each engine over time.
SEO is about ranking in a list of links. AEO is about being the answer, and being named in it rather than listed underneath it as a source.
Two names for much the same work. GEO is the term we use internally; AEO is the one buyers search for. Read more on generative engine optimisation.
Ask any agency three things: how many times do they run each question, how many engines do they check, and will they tell you about a number of their own they don't yet trust.
Intelligent Resourcing is based in Melbourne and works with B2B clients across Australia. Compare Australian AEO agencies before you decide who else to talk to.
Changes to what AI can read usually land within one to three weeks. Changes inside the answers take longer, six to twelve weeks, because a change has to hold up over many checks before anyone can honestly call it real.
$2,500, paid once. You keep everything it produces, whether or not you work with us afterwards.
