What Actually Works in AI Search
Most of what is sold as AEO, GEO or LLM SEO is either standard SEO with a new name on the invoice, or a tactic the documentation says is not needed. Below is the full list, each row linked to its source, then what genuinely changed and a method you can run yourself to check every claim on this page.
Work directly with Chris and the team
Meet the team →The position in a sentence
AEO and GEO are SEO under new names. We sell a measurement diagnostic that tells you whether you have a problem, with the scope published, not a new discipline with a new budget line.
AI Overview
AEO and GEO are new names for SEO. What changed in AI search is presentation, measurement and phrasing: answers are summarised above the links, visits arrive with less usable referrer data, and people type longer questions. What did not change is the work. There is no llms.txt requirement, no AI-specific schema vocabulary, no chunking rule, and no way to guarantee a citation, because citation selection is probabilistic and varies by phrasing, session and model version. Loudachris publishes the scope of a free AI search diagnostic and folds any resulting work into standard SEO from $1,500+GST/month, with no separate AI fee.
The Teardown
Every tactic being sold, and what the documentation says.
These are the 7 items that turn up most often in AI search proposals. Each row links to the primary source rather than a summary of a summary, so you can read the wording yourself before you sign anything. We are not naming the firms selling these. The tactic is the problem, not the letterhead.
| Sold as | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|
| ✕llms.txt file | Google's AI features guidance states it is not needed | Google Search Central |
| ✕AI-specific schema vocabulary | No such schema.org vocabulary exists for generative AI | Google Search Central |
| ✕Content chunking "for AI" | No requirement to break content into small pieces | Google Search Central |
| ✕Writing specifically for AI | Not required. Write for people | Google Search Central |
| ✕Speakable schema as an AI lever | Limited availability, news publishers only | Google Search Central |
| ✕HowTo rich results | Retired from Google Search | Google Search Central |
| ✕Guaranteed AI citations | Citation selection is probabilistic and varies by phrasing, session and model version | Google Search Central |
Sources checked 9 August 2026. If any of them change, this table changes with them and the review date at the bottom of the page moves.
There is a fair reading of some of these. An llms.txt file costs nothing to publish, and clear section headings are good writing on their own merits. The objection is not that the tactics are dangerous. It is that they are priced as a new discipline, on a monthly retainer, with an implied outcome nobody can deliver. Charge only for what the documentation supports and the invoice looks very different.
What genuinely changed.
Something real did happen. It is just not the thing being sold. Here are the 3 shifts that survive scrutiny.
How answers are displayed
A generated summary now sits where a list of 10 blue links used to be. For a question with a factual answer, the reader can finish the task without clicking anything. For a question that ends in someone being hired, the click still has to happen, because a summary cannot quote a price for your job or answer the phone. That split, informational versus commercial, decides how much any of this matters to you.
How you measure
A visit that started inside an assistant often arrives without a referrer you can segment cleanly, and a generated summary does not report the way a ranking position does. The result is a blurrier picture, not a broken one. The fix is measurement discipline: track enquiries and calls per query family rather than chasing a single number, and be honest in reporting about which parts are estimates.
How queries are phrased
People type fragments into a search box and whole sentences into an assistant. A query that used to be 2 words now carries a suburb, a constraint and a budget in a single sentence. Pages that state plainly what you do, where you do it, what it involves and roughly what it costs answer more of that sentence. Same advice as always, with a sharper reason behind it.
The Unchanged Part
What did not change: the work itself.
Presentation moved. Measurement moved. Phrasing moved. The task list did not. Everything below was the job before any of this arrived and it is still the job now, which is the whole reason we do not sell a second retainer beside the first. Put plainly: this is SEO.
Being crawlable and indexed
Nothing can quote a page it cannot fetch, render or index. Blocked resources, broken canonicals and pages stuck outside the index are still the first thing to fix, and still the least glamorous item on any proposal.
Genuinely useful, specific content
A page that states what the service includes, which areas it covers, what it involves and roughly what it costs gives a summary something concrete to draw on. A page that says quality service, competitive prices gives it nothing.
Accurate, consistent business data
A single version of your name, address, phone number, hours and service list across your site, your Google Business Profile and the directories that mention you. Contradictions are the cheapest reason to be left out of an answer.
Real reviews from real customers
Volume, recency, and the actual words customers use. Reviews are the raw material any summary about a local business reaches for, and they are the signal a competitor cannot fabricate on your behalf.
Standard schema.org markup
Correctly implemented, honest markup describing the organisation, the services and the pages. Not because it is an AI lever, but because it has been part of competent technical SEO for years and is still worth doing.
Links and mentions from real sites
Earned coverage from sites that would exist whether or not you paid them. This has survived every algorithm reshuffle so far, and it survives this one too, because it is the hardest signal to manufacture.
Verify It Without Us
The 5-minute method: check any claim on this page yourself.
You should not take our word for this, and you should not take anyone else's either. This takes 5 minutes, needs no software, and produces a number you own rather than a screenshot somebody sent you.
Write the question the way a customer would say it
Not your keyword. Their sentence, with the suburb, the constraint and the urgency in it, because that is how people actually type to an assistant. Start with a single question.
Open a brand new session, signed out if the tool allows it
Chat history and account personalisation both change what comes back. A test run in a session that has already discussed your business is not a test, it is a mirror.
Ask it, and write down what you get
Record 2 things only: which businesses are named, and which URLs are cited. Ignore the prose. The named list and the source list are the parts that matter.
Repeat the identical prompt at least 3 times, fresh session each time
Same wording, new session. Then, if you have 60 seconds spare, run it once on a second assistant. You now have a small sample instead of an anecdote.
Count, do not conclude
Your result is a fraction: named in 2 of 4 runs, cited in 1 of 4. That fraction is the honest output. It is not a ranking, it has no trend yet, and it should be re-run before you spend money on the strength of it.
Now point the same method at a sales pitch
When a provider shows you a screenshot of an AI answer naming a business, ask 3 questions. How many times was the prompt run? Were the sessions fresh? And can you re-run the identical prompt right now, in front of them? A claim that survives all 3 is worth listening to. A claim that fails the first was never a measurement.
The Variance Principle
The same prompt, 3 times, can give 3 different answers.
This is the load-bearing idea on the page, and most of the dubious claims in this category collapse the moment you hold on to it. Generated answers are not looked up from a table. They are produced, and the production varies with how the question was phrased, what else was in the session, which model version is serving you, and what got retrieved at that moment.
So a binary claim is unsound in both directions. A provider who says you do not appear in AI answers, on the strength of a single check, has not measured anything. A provider who shows you an answer naming your business, on the strength of a single check, has not measured anything either. The unit of evidence here is a frequency across repeated runs, not a yes or a no.
A single check is not evidence
A single run tells you what happened in that run. Treat it the way you would treat stopping 1 person on a street corner to ask for the best cafe in town: interesting, not conclusive, and dangerous if you budget against it.
Frequency is the honest metric
Named in 3 of 10 runs is a statement you can defend, act on, and re-measure next quarter. Visible in AI search is not a statement at all. Insist on the first shape and most of the noise in this market disappears.
Comparisons need identical conditions
Before and after only means something when the prompt, the session state and the assistant are held constant, and when both sides used the same number of runs. Change any of those and you are comparing 2 different tests.
What we are deliberately not putting on this page
We have not published the results of a study we have not run. No percentages, no growth curves, no client outcomes attributed to AI visibility work. The method above is here so you can generate your own numbers, on your own business, and hold anyone who quotes you a figure to the same standard. If we ever publish numbers on this page, they will arrive with the prompt, the run count, the dates and the assistant used.
What we sell instead: a diagnostic, not a discipline.
If the tactics are hollow and the work is unchanged, the only honest product left is measurement: a read on whether you have a problem worth solving, run the way the method above describes, with the scope published before you ask for it. That audit is free. Whatever it turns up is ordinary SEO work, and it belongs inside an ordinary SEO retainer.
Free
The AI search diagnostic
Repeated prompts, recorded frequencies, and a plain read on whether any of this is costing you enquiries. The full audit scope is published, so you know what arrives.
From $1,500+GST/month
If there is work to do
Our published SEO pricing, month to month, no lock-in. The same figure whether or not the letters AI appear anywhere in the conversation.
None
The AI surcharge
There is no second line item, because there is no second discipline. If a quote in front of you carries one, ask which deliverable it buys that standard SEO does not already include.
The rest of this silo argues the same case from different angles: the AI search visibility hub, the case against answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation as separate products, what to ask an AI search agency, and how any of it applies here in Adelaide.
Read This Before You Spend Anything
Who does not need to think about this yet.
Most businesses asking us about AI search have a bigger, duller problem sitting in front of it. If any of the 5 below describes you, this page is interesting reading and nothing more. Fix the thing in the way first, because it will move revenue further and cost you less.
Your site is not properly indexed
If Search Console shows your key service pages sitting outside the index, no answer engine can reach them either. Indexing is a quality and crawl conversation, and it comes before every sentence on this page.
Your Google Business Profile is thin or wrong
Incomplete categories, missing service areas, an old phone number, a handful of ageing reviews. For a local business this is the highest-yield work available, and it happens to be the same data any summary about you would draw on.
Your enquiries come mostly from referrals and repeat customers
If search is not yet a meaningful channel for you, optimising a slice of search is optimising a slice of nothing. Build the channel first, then worry about how it gets presented.
The traffic you already have is not converting
Sending more visitors to a page that does not turn them into calls is an expensive way to make the same problem bigger. Conversion work is cheaper, faster, and fully within your control.
You cannot yet name your top 10 commercial queries
Without that list there is nothing to test, because the method above starts with the question a customer would ask. Get the list, run the method, then decide whether there is a problem at all.
None of that describes you? Run the method, get your fraction, and bring it to the free audit. We will run it independently and tell you whether the 2 sets of numbers agree.
Who wrote this
Chris Lourenco, Director, Loudachris Digital Marketing
Loudachris is a Google Partner agency at 21-22 Greenhill Road, Wayville SA 5034, working with Australian service businesses on SEO, Google Ads and the websites that support them. This page exists because we kept being asked to quote for AEO and GEO packages, and the honest answer was that we would be billing twice for work already inside the retainer. Everything here is sourced or testable, and anything we could not source has been left out rather than softened into a claim.
Disagree with something here, or found a source that has since changed? Send it through the contact page and we will correct the page and move the review date.
Straight answers about LLM SEO and AI search.
Is LLM SEO a real discipline, or is it just SEO?
Does SEO still matter for AI search?
What actually changed, then?
Do I need an llms.txt file?
Is there a schema type that AI systems reward?
Should I chunk my content into small blocks for AI retrieval?
Should I write pages for AI instead of for people?
Can anyone guarantee my business gets cited in ChatGPT or an AI Overview?
Why does the same question give me a different answer every time I ask it?
How do I check whether my business appears in AI answers?
What does your AI search audit cost?
Who should ignore AI search for now?
The rest of the argument
Same position, applied to the specific question you arrived with.
AI Search Visibility Hub
The overview for this whole silo: what AI search visibility is, and why it sits inside SEO rather than beside it.
The Free AI Search Audit
The published scope of the diagnostic, including how many runs we do and exactly what comes back to you.
Website SEO
The retainer all of this already lives inside. From $1,500+GST/month, month to month, no lock-in.
Find out whether you actually have a problem.
Run the 5-minute method yourself, then have us run it independently and compare. The audit is free, the scope is published, and if the answer is that nothing needs doing, that is the answer you will get.
Call 0403 454 199
Start at the AI search visibility hub or read the SEO pricing guide.