//SEO
Generative and answer engine optimization:
be the answer AI gives.
GEO and AEO are generative and answer engine optimization: the work of being cited inside an AI answer. A growing share of searches now end in one, naming two or three businesses and never showing a list of links. We do the work, we measure it, and we tell you plainly what it can and cannot do yet.
Your buyers still check Google, and increasingly they ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or the AI Overview at the top of the results page instead. Those answers are assembled from sources the models trust, and they cite a handful of them. Answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization are the disciplines of becoming one of those sources: clear, specific, well-structured passages, real authority, consistent business information, and a presence on the pages the models actually read. It leans on the same foundations as classic SEO, with new work on how content is written, structured and corroborated.
We are one of the few teams in Orange County shipping GEO and AEO work rather than talking about it, and we track it the way we track rankings: which prompts mention you, which sources get cited, and what changed month to month. We will also tell you the honest part. The measurement is younger than the discipline, the platforms change monthly, and anyone promising a guaranteed spot in an AI answer is guessing. What we promise is the work, done properly, and a straight report.
//What you get
What AI search optimization includes.
AI visibility audit
How the major assistants answer the prompts your buyers ask, who they cite, whether you appear, and what the cited sources have that you do not.
Citable content
Passages written to be quoted: direct answers, specific claims, clear structure, sourced facts. The pages the models pull from look different from a sales page.
Entity and consistency work
Your business described the same way everywhere the models read: the site, the Google profile, directories, reviews and structured data.
Authority signals
Coverage, citations and mentions on the third-party pages assistants trust, because models corroborate before they cite.
Technical readiness
Crawlable pages, clean structured data, and the access settings that let AI crawlers read what you want read.
Prompt tracking and reporting
A tracked set of buyer prompts across the major assistants, reported monthly: mentions, citations and share against competitors.
//What is usually broken
Why the assistants do not mention you.
Your site describes what you do in marketing language, and the models cite pages that state things plainly and specifically.
Your business is described five different ways across the web, so the models cannot confirm what you are or where you are.
Nobody has checked what ChatGPT or Perplexity say when a buyer asks for what you sell, so the gap is invisible.
A competitor with a worse product has a Wikipedia-clean footprint of consistent mentions, and the models trust it more.
Want this for your business?
Sound familiar?
Most owners recognize at least one of these. The fix is usually smaller than the problem looks, and the first conversation costs nothing.
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//How we work
How we earn the citation.
Audit the answers
A set of real buyer prompts run across the major assistants. Who is cited, from where, and why. That gap sets the plan.
Fix the foundation
Consistent entity data everywhere the models read, clean structured data, crawl access, and a Google profile that agrees with the site.
Write to be quoted
The pages that answer the prompts directly, with specific, sourced, well-structured passages, plus the corroborating mentions off-site.
Track and report monthly
The same prompts, re-run on a schedule, with mentions, citations and competitor share reported alongside classic rankings.
Want this for your business?
That is the process.
Nothing exotic, just done properly and in the right order. Want it run on your business?
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//Receipts
What this work has produced.
Method of Beauty
406 keywords ranking from zero in three months
A med spa with page one for its name and page two for most of what it sells. Search impressions rose 46%, and 138 non-brand terms landed in Google's top three, including the near-me searches that bring people through the door.
Read the case studyWheelhouse
From page 3 of Google to top rankings
New users on the website up 236% and total users up 232% once the site was rebuilt around what buyers actually search for.
Read the case studyWant this for your business?
Want the same rigor on your account?
Every number above has a case study behind it, and a founder who can walk you through how it happened.
Not ready? Keep reading
//Two-minute quiz
Is AI search optimization your next dollar?
Four questions. At the end you get our honest read, including when the answer is “not this, not yet.”
Question 1 of 4
Do your buyers research before choosing?
//Why trust us with it
Honest about a young discipline.
We ship it, we do not just talk about it
GEO and AEO are built into our SEO programs and offered on their own. We have tracked AI visibility for clients and for ourselves since the answers started appearing.
No guaranteed AI placements
The platforms change monthly and nobody controls what a model cites. We promise the work and the tracking, not a spot.
Built on real SEO
The models trust the same authority and clarity signals Google does. We do not sell AI search as a separate magic, because it is not one.
Measured, in writing
You see the prompts, the answers, and the change month to month. If nothing moved, the report says so.
Want this for your business?
This is how we work.
If it sounds like the way you would want it done, the next step is a ten-minute conversation with a founder.
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//What you can count on
How we operate.
//Learn the work first
The thinking behind the work.
How GEO and AEO actually work, and how to tell if you are showing up.
What they do and where they fall short.
How the results page, AI answer included, is assembled.
What changes when people talk instead of type, and it overlaps with AI answers.
The specificity and authority that models cite.
Writing that ranks, reads and can be quoted.
Including the AI-search tracking section.
The profile is one of the sources assistants read for local answers.
The corroborating mentions that make a model trust you.
//Related services
The work this connects to.
Technical, on-page and content SEO that turns into calls, forms and booked revenue.
Map Pack, near-me searches and location pages for businesses that serve an area.
Optimization and management of the listing that is your real homepage now.
Pages and articles written to rank, to be cited by AI, and to be read by a buyer.
Authority earned through real coverage and relationships, never bought in bulk.
Search built for one location and one owner, not an enterprise budget.
Pages and articles written by operators, for the searches your buyers run.
Paid search and paid social run as one account, measured by booked customers.
Messaging, friction and proof, fixed in the order that moves the number.
Welcome, nurture, win-back and newsletter flows to the people who opted in.
Design and engineering as one job: fast, crawlable, on brand, built to convert.
Every Door Direct Mail: the offer, the piece, the routes, the printing and the drop.
Press releases, local features, awards and the outreach to the outlets that matter.
Practices, med spas and clinics: local search, ads that clear policy, and trust.
Who to win, why they pick you, what to run first, and how you will know it worked.
Every service we offer, grouped the way buyers look for them.
The receipts, with the numbers and how they happened.
Local help if you are in our home county.
//Our work
See this work in the wild.
Four businesses we have grown, including our own. Every number on these pages is one we can show you.
Body Juice
We built a juice bar that fought human trafficking and went viral
600% customer growth, on a founder's budget.
Read itMethod of Beauty
We put a med spa on the map
80+ guests from one campaign, 406 new keywords from zero.
Read itRomée
From a name to a brand, four cans and a store
A whole brand, live before launch day.
Read itWheelhouse
From page 3 to the top 3 for 300+ keywords
Five Dispensary of the Year wins came with it.
Read it//Plain English
What the initials actually mean.
Defined in a sentence, with a link to the organisation that owns the term.
Being cited inside an AI answer instead of a list of blue links. The term comes from a 2024 research paper at the ACM SIGKDD conference, which studied what makes a generative engine quote one source over another.
Source: Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD 2024Being the direct answer to a question, in a featured snippet, a voice result or an AI Overview. Google documents how its AI features choose and link the pages they surface.
Source: Google Search Central: AI features and your website//Common questions
Things we get asked first.
What is GEO, and how is it different from AEO?
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is about being the direct answer to a question, in featured snippets, voice results and AI answers. Generative engine optimization (GEO) is about being cited inside the longer answers assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity generate. In practice they overlap heavily and we run them as one program with classic SEO.
Can you guarantee we will show up in ChatGPT?
No, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. The platforms change monthly and nobody controls what a model cites. We can audit where you stand, do the work that makes citation more likely, and track the result honestly.
How do you measure AI search visibility?
With a fixed set of prompts your buyers would actually ask, run across the major assistants on a schedule. We record whether you are mentioned, whether you are cited as a source, and how that compares to competitors, and we report it monthly alongside rankings.
Does this replace SEO?
No. The models trust the same signals Google does: authority, clarity, consistency and corroboration. AI search optimization is SEO with extra work on how passages are written and how your business is described across the web. A site with no SEO foundation will not be cited either.
Which assistants matter most?
Google AI Overviews, because they sit at the top of the results page your buyers already use, then ChatGPT and Perplexity for research-style questions, with Gemini and others tracked as they grow. The mix depends on your buyers, and we set the tracked set with you.
How long does GEO take?
Foundation fixes, entity consistency and citable pages can change answers within weeks on some prompts and months on others, because models refresh on their own schedules. We set expectations from the audit and report the actual movement, not a forecast.
Want this for your business?
Still have a question?
Ask a founder directly. No call center, no sales guy, and no obligation.
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About Mining Wells
We're on a mission to fix bad marketing.
Maybe:
- You are spending thousands on marketing tools, ads, and your website, with zero revenue increase to show for it.
- Every campaign you have tried gets minimal results.
- You have a great product that nobody seems to find.
- You are getting interest, but it never converts to a sale.
- You have a low retention rate.
- You have been paying a marketing agency for over a year and have not seen results.
You are not alone. Many founders and leaders live with the results of bad marketing without ever finding the reason.
And often that is because it can be many reasons. Sometimes it is the wrong ICP, sometimes the wrong messaging, sometimes the wrong targeting chasing impressions.
We are here to take the hard guesswork out and provide that clarity before it is too late.
At Mining Wells, we help founders and leaders grow their businesses the right way.
Tired of bad marketing?