Search Foundation Sprint
$3,500–$6,000 CAD
Businesses that need a technically sound search foundation, clear commercial keyword architecture and a prioritized implementation plan.
Answer Engine Optimization · Vancouver and across Canada
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) in Vancouver
Ranking puts you in a list.
Citation puts you in the answer.
When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI for the best option in your category, the reply names a handful of businesses and moves on. There is no page two. Answer Engine Optimization is the work of being one of the names, and of being able to prove whether that changed.
Start with the free 7-day audit →What actually changed
Search grew a layer. It did not replace the old one.
Answer engines now sit above search results for a growing share of questions, and they resolve many of those questions without a click. Ahrefs measured a 58 percent drop in clicks across 300,000 keywords where an AI Overview appeared. That is a real change and it is worth acting on.
It is also routinely oversold. Whitespark’s 540-query study found AI Overviews on roughly 15 percent of pure local-intent searches, against roughly 93 percent for the local pack. If your customers type “near me”, your Google Business Profile still matters more than any of this. We will tell you which of the two you actually need, and it is often not the one you came in asking about.
If the local pack is your real problem, the honest answer is local SEO and Google Maps, not this page.
The mechanism
How do answer engines decide who to cite?
No engine publishes its selection rules, so anyone describing an algorithm is guessing. What can be observed across engines is that four conditions keep showing up in the businesses that get named, and their absence reliably explains the ones that do not.
- 01
A machine-readable entity
An answer engine has to know what you are before it can decide you belong in an answer. That means consistent naming, address and contact details everywhere you appear, structured data that states the business plainly, and a Google Business Profile that agrees with your own site. Where these contradict each other, systems tend to resolve the conflict by leaving you out.
- 02
Content shaped like an answer
Models retrieve passages, not pages. A section that opens with a direct answer and then supports it can be lifted whole. The same information buried three paragraphs into a sales narrative usually cannot. This is why AEO rewrites tend to change structure and opening sentences more than they change facts.
- 03
Permission to read the site
AI crawlers are separate from Googlebot and are frequently blocked by accident, through a robots.txt rule, a firewall setting or a bot-protection default nobody chose deliberately. A site that blocks them cannot be cited by them, no matter how good the content is. This is the cheapest thing on the list to fix and the one most often broken.
- 04
Corroboration somewhere other than your own site
Systems weigh what others say about you, not only what you say about yourself. Reviews, directory listings, editorial mentions, community threads and industry pages all feed the picture. A business that exists only on its own domain is a single unverified claim, and answer engines treat it accordingly.
Where you stand today
Nine checks, before anyone quotes you anything.
The same nine run in our free tool and in the first day of any engagement. They are live API calls, not estimates, and you can run them yourself right now without talking to us.
- Schema markupWhether structured data on the site states what the business is
- Google Knowledge GraphThe entity record that grounds Gemini
- Brave SearchThe index behind Claude’s web search
- AI citationWhether ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity name the business
- Google AI OverviewsPresence in the AI answer above Google’s results
- AI crawler accessWhether AI bots are permitted to read the site at all
- On-page SEOFoundational page-level signals
- PageSpeedCore Web Vitals on mobile
- Google Business ProfileThe listing that feeds Maps and Gemini
Run them on your own domain with the free AI visibility checker. No signup, and the result is yours whether you hire us or not.
Scope
What’s included
Five pieces of work. Which of them a business needs comes out of the nine checks, and it is common for only two or three to apply.
- 01
Entity and structured data
The machine-readable statement of what the business is, written as JSON-LD against what the pages actually say, then validated. Naming, contact details and service areas are made to agree across the site, the Google Business Profile and the places you are listed, because a contradiction is usually resolved by leaving you out. Background: entity and trust.
- 02
Content built to be quoted
Models retrieve passages, not pages, so sections are restructured to open with the answer and support it underneath. In practice this changes structure and opening sentences far more than it changes facts, and it is why an AEO rewrite often reads as an edit rather than a new page.
- 03
Third-party listings and mentions
A business that exists only on its own domain is a single unverified claim. We work on the record elsewhere: directory and industry listings, the review profiles, and the places customers already discuss the business. Where that record is genuinely thin, the honest first job is the record and we will say so.
- 04
Bing and Brave indexing
Different assistants read different indexes, and Brave does not simply mirror Google. Being absent from one is a common and invisible reason a business never appears in a particular assistant. We check presence in each, fix crawler access where a robots rule or bot-protection default is blocking it, and submit what should be there. The detail is in Claude and Brave Search.
- 05
Measurement with the AI visibility score
The nine checks run as a baseline before any work and again on the same schedule afterwards, alongside a fixed set of real buying prompts against each engine. The metric is share of citation against a named competitor set, per engine, not a rank. You can run the checks yourself at any time with the free AI visibility checker.
The same thing, three names
GEO, AEO and “AI SEO” are the same service.
Generative Engine Optimization, Answer Engine Optimization and “AI SEO” are three names for one job: making a business findable, readable and corroborated enough that an AI assistant is willing to name it. The industry has not settled on a term, so buyers search all three and get told they are different products.
They are not. If you arrived here searching for a GEO agency or an AI SEO service, this page is the one you wanted. We use “answer engine optimization” because the thing being optimised for is an answer, but the work under any of the three labels is the five components above.
What is worth distinguishing is the measurement, because that is where the three names actually produce different work. Ours is set out in the GEO measurement framework, and it is a share-of-citation baseline repeated on a schedule, not a rank and not a screenshot.
Organic rankings on your own site are SEO, and the local pack is local SEO. Those are genuinely different services, and this page is not either of them.
Proof
How is any of this measured?
By asking the engines the questions your buyers ask, recording what comes back, doing the work, then asking again. Not by a rank number, because an answer has no ranks.
Before. We agree a set of real buying prompts and a named competitor set. Each prompt runs against Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. We record which brands are named, which URLs are cited, and where you are absent. That baseline is written down before any work begins.
After. The identical prompts run again on the same schedule. The metric is share of citation against that competitor set, per engine, plus which of your pages the engines chose to quote. Engines disagree with each other and answers vary between runs, so the baseline is repeated rather than sampled once.
The part most pages leave out
What this cannot do.
- No guaranteed recommendation. Any agency promising that ChatGPT will name you is selling something they do not control. Selection rules are unpublished and change without notice.
- Answers are not stable. The same prompt can return different businesses to different people on different days. This is why measurement is repeated, and why a single screenshot proves very little.
- It will not fix a weak business. Corroboration comes from reviews, coverage and what customers say elsewhere. If that record is thin, the honest first job is the record, not the markup.
- It is slower than paid. Entity and citation signals accumulate. If you need enquiries this month, paid acquisition is the correct tool and we will say so.
Price, before any work
Fixed scope, quoted up front.
Local + Organic Growth Build
$6,000–$10,000 CAD
Businesses requiring implementation across commercial pages, local relevance, technical structure and measurement.
Ongoing Search Growth
$1,800–$4,500 CAD / month
Competitive or evolving markets where content, authority, local visibility and search performance require continued work.
The 7-day audit is free and written, and it is yours to keep whether you hire us or not. Full detail on pricing.
Questions buyers ask
Answer Engine Optimization, answered plainly.
What is Answer Engine Optimization?
Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, is the work of becoming a source that AI systems cite when they answer a question. It is also called Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO. Classic SEO competes for a position in a list of links. AEO competes to be named inside an answer, where there is no list and often only three or four sources get mentioned at all.
Is AEO different from SEO, or just a new name for it?
They overlap and they are not the same. Both depend on a crawlable site, clear content and a real entity behind the business. They diverge on the target: SEO wants a rank, AEO wants a citation. A page can rank first on Google and never be quoted by ChatGPT, and a page ranking on the second page can be cited repeatedly. We have measured both outcomes on our own domain.
Can you guarantee ChatGPT will recommend my business?
No, and nobody honestly can. Answer engines do not publish their selection rules, the answers vary between users and sessions, and the models change without notice. What can be done is to remove the reasons a system has to skip you, then measure the same prompts before and after so the change is visible rather than claimed.
Do AI Overviews actually matter for a local business yet?
Less than most agencies imply. Whitespark's 540-query study found AI Overviews appeared on about 15 percent of pure local-intent queries, while the local pack appeared on about 93 percent. If your customers search "near me", your Google Business Profile is still the bigger lever. AEO matters most for research, comparison and B2B questions, which is where AI answers are already common.
How is AI visibility measured?
By running the buying questions your customers actually ask, in each engine, and recording what comes back. We capture which brands are named, which URLs are cited, and whether you appear at all, then repeat the same prompts after the work. Share of citation against a named competitor set is the metric that matters. Position is not, because an answer has no positions.
What does it cost?
The 7-day audit is free and written, and it is yours whether you hire us or not. Paid work is quoted at a fixed price before anything starts. A Search Foundation Sprint runs $3,500 to $6,000 CAD and a Local and Organic Growth Build runs $6,000 to $10,000 CAD, both one time. Ongoing Search Growth is $1,800 to $4,500 CAD a month and is optional, month to month.
Which engines do you work across?
Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. They do not behave alike. Perplexity cites sources heavily and openly, Google AI Overviews lean on established entities and their own index, and ChatGPT and Gemini draw on both training data and live search. A business can be visible in one and absent from the rest, which is why all five get tested separately.
Selected work
Optimised for the old search and the new one.
Web · SEO · Local Visibility · AI Search · Strategy
XXL IT Services
Delivery built trust. Trust became partnership.
A website rebuild that grew into a mutual delivery partnership: MOST handles XXL's digital strategy; XXL handles cybersecurity for MOST and its clients.
In the client's words: XXL IT Services
In the client's words
“They also improved our Local Pack position and made sure the site was optimized not only for traditional search but for the new way people are searching through AI chat platforms. Gaining AI visibility was one of the biggest wins.”
Start here
Find out whether AI names you.
Tell us the questions your customers ask and we will run them against every major engine as part of the free 7-day audit.
Prefer to talk? (250) 581-0523 or [email protected]
Insights
Read the thinkingbehind this work.
AI Search
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Generative engine optimization: the 5-layer measurement frameworkCitation count is the new domain authority. Defensible in a slide, disconnected from pipeline. Here is how an honest GEO program actually measures whether AI search is moving revenue, not just vanity numbers.8 min readTrust Signals
What an entity is, and how the internet measures trust in 2026A webpage is no longer enough. Google and AI tools want to know your business is a real thing, with a real owner, a real address, and a track record. Here is how that gets measured, and what to do if your business is currently a ghost.7 min readBrowse the full library:The Field GuideBuyer GuidesAI by Industry