When Someone Asks an Assistant Who to Hire, Is It You?
More buyers now start with an assistant instead of a search box, and it names two or three firms rather than ten blue links. We find out what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot currently say about your business, then fix the reasons you are not being named. Manchester based, working across the UK.
Four Reasons an Assistant Names Someone Else
Ranking on Google and being named by an assistant are different problems. A page can sit on the first page of search and still never be quoted, usually for one of these four reasons.
Being retrievable at all
An assistant can only cite a page it can fetch, parse and quote. We fix the things that quietly prevent that — blocked crawlers, content that only exists after a script runs, pages with no clear answer to quote.
Answers, not brochures
Assistants quote the sentence that answers the question. We rewrite your pages so the answer comes first and the supporting detail follows, which is also how a buyer in a hurry reads.
Facts a machine can read
Schema markup that states plainly what you sell, where you work and how to contact you, so an assistant does not have to infer it from your homepage and get it wrong.
Turning up in the sources they trust
Assistants lean on a small set of directories, industry bodies and reference sites. We get your details onto the ones that matter for your sector, and make sure they agree with each other.
Where We Get You Ranked and Cited
Each assistant retrieves and cites sources differently. We optimise for all of them at once, because a buyer asking for a recommendation rarely tells you which one they used.
ChatGPT search
Cites pages it can retrieve and quote directly. Answer-first content and clean structure win the citation.
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode
Draws on the same index as classic search, so technical health and schema still decide whether you appear.
Perplexity
Shows its sources openly. Pages that answer one question completely get cited and clicked.
Microsoft Copilot
Favours clearly structured, factual pages with the claim and the evidence close together, and reaches business users through Office.
Bing Copilot
Leans on the Bing index, which many UK businesses never submit to. We fix that.
Knowledge graphs and directories
Consistent business facts across the sources assistants trust, so your name, services and location never conflict.
How each assistant weighs sources is not published, so parts of this are informed inference from testing rather than documented behaviour. We test your visibility with real prompts every month and report what actually changed.
How We Get You Found by AI
We ask the assistants about you
We run the questions your buyers actually type — best in Manchester, who does this near me, alternatives to a competitor — and record what each assistant says, who it names instead of you, and where it got that from.
You get a list, in priority order
Not a strategy document. A list of what is stopping you being named, ordered by how much each one costs you and how quickly it can be fixed, with the ones you can do yourself marked as such.
We fix the ones you hand us
Content rewritten so the answer is quotable, schema corrected, crawler access unblocked, business facts made consistent everywhere an assistant might check.
We re-run the same questions monthly
Same prompts, same assistants, so the comparison is honest. You see whether you are being named more often than last month, and we say plainly when something has not worked.
What the monthly report looks like
The Assistants Your Buyers Actually Use
Frequently Asked Questions
What is AI SEO, in plain terms?
Work that makes an assistant more likely to name your business when someone asks it for a recommendation. In practice that means three things: making sure your pages can actually be fetched and quoted, writing them so the answer is the first thing on the page rather than buried, and making your business facts consistent across the sources assistants check. Some people call it GEO, generative engine optimisation. It is the same job.
How is this different from the SEO we already pay for?
Traditional SEO competes for a position in a list of links, where being tenth still gets a click. An assistant names two or three firms and stops, so there is no tenth place. The technical groundwork overlaps — a site that is fast, crawlable and properly marked up helps both — but the content work is different. Search rewards a page that covers a topic thoroughly; an assistant rewards a page that answers one question in a sentence it can lift.
How would we know whether it is working?
We run the same set of buyer questions across the same assistants every month and record what comes back: whether you were named, who was named instead, and which pages were cited. Because the prompts do not change, the month-to-month comparison is honest. You get that report whether the numbers moved or not, and we say plainly when something we tried has not worked.
How long before anything changes?
Technical fixes such as crawler access and schema can be reflected within weeks, because they change what an assistant is able to read. Being named more often is slower and depends on how competitive your sector is and how established the businesses currently being named are. Anyone promising a specific position by a specific date is guessing: none of these platforms publish how they weight sources, and we will tell you what we are inferring from testing rather than presenting it as documented fact.
Do you work with businesses outside Manchester?
Yes. We are based in Manchester and work with businesses across the UK remotely, with on-site visits around Greater Manchester and the North West where they help. Assistant visibility is not a local problem in the way map listings are, so where you are matters far less than which questions your buyers ask.
What a Project Looks Like
Every project is scoped and quoted after a free discovery call, so you get a fixed price for your situation rather than a number that assumes someone else’s. These are the shapes most engagements take.
AI Visibility Audit
Finding out whether AI assistants mention you, and why not.
Typical timeline: 1–2 weeks
- How ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI see you
- Technical and schema gaps
- Competitor citation analysis
- Prioritised action plan
GEO Programme
Businesses who want to be the one an assistant recommends, not the one it skips.
Typical timeline: Ongoing, 3-month minimum
- Everything in the audit
- Structured data and llms.txt
- Citation and content plan
- Monthly AI visibility report
Multi-Brand or Enterprise
Several sites, locations or brands needing coordinated visibility.
Typical timeline: Ongoing
- Several sites or locations
- Digital PR for AI citations
- Custom monitoring dashboard
- Quarterly strategy reviews
Timelines are typical and depend on how many systems are involved and how ready your data is. Tell us what you need and we will give you a fixed price and a date.
Read before you buy ai seo & geo
- AI SEO & GEO
How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT: A 12-Step Plan for UK Businesses (2026)
How ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot actually choose which businesses to mention, a 12-step plan a UK business can follow, prompts to test your own visibility, realistic timelines, and what an AI search agency charges in 2026.
- AI SEO & GEO
What Is GEO? Generative Engine Optimisation Explained for UK Businesses
What GEO actually is, how it differs from SEO, how assistants really retrieve and cite sources, and what it costs to get your business into AI answers.
- AI Development
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Employing an AI engineer, bringing in a contractor and hiring an agency are three different commitments with three different risks. What changed in UK employment law in 2026, and how to decide.
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AI Development Cost UK: The Real 2026 Pricing Guide
What actually drives AI development cost in the UK for chatbots, voice agents, automation, integration, web apps, mobile apps and MVPs — plus offshore comparisons and the questions to ask before you sign a quote.
Is AI Recommending Your Business?
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