Get Your Business Cited by AI Search
More and more buyers ask AI before they Google. We make sure your company is the one AI recommends, and the one they trust before they've even reached your site.
Search is Changing. Your Visibility Should Too
More of your buyers are asking an AI tool before they ever reach a search results page. If ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, or Copilot do not know who you are, you are missing from the conversation entirely. And with no click to track, your analytics will never show you it's happening.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) are how you earn a place in those answers. We work on both: being the clear answer to the questions your buyers ask, and being the trusted name that independent sources back up.
AI search work in the wild
Where we have helped brands show up in AI answers. Have a look at what this turns into.
People Like You Who Asked Themselves “What IF ?”
"I approached Isaac on behalf of our organisation after we were experiencing bandwith issues that resulted in large bills each month. Isaac quickly identified the problem and sorted it out for us immediately, resulting in our monthly bills being cut in half."
"The What IF Web team are a great asset to help our business achieve our website goals. They provide timely insight and advice and are proactive in getting projects done. Would recommend them to anyone looking for website design or development resources."
"Creative legends. We didn't want a boiler plate template, but someone who could take our brand guidelines and raise them to the next level. Tom was great to work with, communicated well, and understood what we were after first time. Highly recommended!"
"I've been very impressed by the team at What IF web. They have completely smashed it, giving us a website design that is streets ahead of what we had."
"They produced A+ outcomes within the timeline and budget agreed upon. I highly recommend them to anyone needing a Webflow build or redesign."
"The team did a great job delivering a great website experience. They are very responsive and great to work with."
"I highly recommend What IF Web to anyone seeking a professional service and a finished product that effectively attracts the right users to your platform."
"I can confidently recommend the What If Web team to any business looking to stand up a modern, great looking and well crafted site."
AI Visibility Done Honestly, Not with Hacks
The field is full of quick fixes being sold as magic: schema tricks, llms.txt files, content chunking. The controlled evidence says most of them do very little. We would rather tell you that than sell it to you.
Getting cited by AI comes down to two things that actually hold up under scrutiny. First, answer the real questions your buyers ask, in a clean structure that an AI can extract: proper headings, direct answers, real tables and lists. Second, build the off-site authority and entity recognition that make the models trust you, which is the slower, higher-ceiling half of the work.
We measure where you currently stand across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, fix what actually moves the needle, and track it over time.
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Why go with What IF Web for AI Search
We are early to this in New Zealand, we keep up with a field that changes monthly, and we will always tell you what actually works rather than what sounds impressive.
We tell you what actually works
The field is loud with people selling schema tricks and llms.txt files as miracle cures. We keep up with the actual evidence, which changes monthly, and we will tell you when something is a waste of your money. Even when it would have been an easy upsell.
A free audit, not a sales call
You start by seeing exactly where you stand, scored and in plain English, before you spend a cent. If the honest answer is that you are already in decent shape, we will say so.
You watch the numbers yourself
We set up a live report on your AI visibility and traffic, wired to your own analytics, that you can open any day of the month. No waiting for a polished slide once a quarter to find out how it is going.
The Tech Stack
Take a peek inside of some of the tools we use.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) is about being the clear, extractable answer in features like Google AI Overviews, featured snippets, and voice results. It is mostly about structure. GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) is broader: being known, trusted, and cited by generative tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude when they compose a response, which depends as much on your off-site reputation as your page. They overlap heavily, and as search shifts toward generative answers they are collapsing into the same job.
Does schema markup get me cited by ChatGPT?
Honestly, less than most agencies claim. Google and Bing have confirmed they use structured data for rich results and extraction, so it is worth having. But neither ChatGPT nor Perplexity confirms using it, and a controlled 2026 study found adding schema moved their citations close to zero. We recommend schema because it is cheap, low-risk, and helps traditional search, not because it will get you cited by ChatGPT. Anyone promising the latter is ahead of the evidence.
What gets a business cited by AI?
The biggest thing is original content: your own data, first-hand expertise, and a clear point of view, structured so AI can read it easily. Clear headings and proper tables make that easier. Being mentioned on other sites the AI already trusts matters too, so your story matches up wherever it looks.
Is AI search a one-off project or ongoing?
It behaves much more like SEO than a one-off project. Visibility decays, freshness fades, competitors move, and the engines constantly re-weight what they cite. Keeping traction means an ongoing rhythm: fresh content, steady authority building, monthly measurement, and a re-audit each quarter as both your site and the AI landscape change. That is why we run it as a retainer rather than a set-and-forget job.
How do you measure AI search visibility?
With a fixed set of real buyer-question prompts, run every month across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot. For each one we log whether you were mentioned, whether you were cited with a link, how prominently, and which competitors showed up instead. We baseline before making changes and re-measure after, so we can actually prove what moved. Checking a single engine misses most of the picture, since the engines barely agree on who they cite.
How long does AI search optimisation take to work?
It is the slower half of the work, so expect a few months rather than a few weeks before the off-site authority side compounds. On-page fixes that improve how you are extracted can show up faster. This is why we measure from day one and work to a rhythm: you can see progress in the tracking well before it fully matures.
Is AI search the same as SEO?
No. Traditional SEO still matters and shares a lot of the same foundations, but AI search is a different game. Domain authority and backlinks carry less weight than they do in classic SEO, especially on Perplexity, while things like entity recognition, extractable structure, and presence on the right third-party platforms matter more. We treat it as a related but distinct discipline.
What technical setup do I need to be found by AI?
The unglamorous but essential first step is making sure the AI crawlers are actually allowed in. If your robots.txt blocks bots like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot, you are invisible to them no matter how good your content is. Beyond that, fast server response and lean code matter, since AI crawlers time out quickly. Chasing a Core Web Vitals score, though, is not the lever people think it is.
