Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)

Be the brand recommends.

We're the agency that gets your brand recommended across the AI answer engines your customers now ask first. Not another dashboard, but a team that makes the data make sense and does the work.

Start with an AI Visibility Audit See how it works

Fixed scope · Two-week turnaround · No commitment

Where ~90% of AI search actually happens

The shift

Your buyers stopped scrolling. Now they just ask.

Search is moving off Google and into AI, and it's moving fast. Buyers who used to scroll a page of links now ask an assistant and act on the few brands it names. ChatGPT alone already handles close to a third of Google's search volume, from a standing start three years ago, and it's only moving one way. We get your brand ahead of it: named in the answer while your category is still up for grabs.

0M+

ChatGPT product searches a day

80%

Mentioned

Cited

AI retail traffic +393% YoY

A brand can be mentioned in 80% of AI answers yet be the cited source in under 2% everywhere in the conversation, but rarely what the model actually trusts. That gap is invisible in normal analytics. It's exactly where we go to work.

How it works

Tools can tell you you're invisible. We make you the recommendation.

Anyone can buy the dashboards. The advantage is in the interpretation and the execution: the strategy, the content, the outreach. One repeatable loop, run for you end to end against the four engines that actually decide who gets named.

Diagnose

Map the citation supply chain behind every answer in your category who the engines trust, and why it isn't you.

Prioritise

Rank every topic by visibility and citation gap, then call each one: attack to win, or defend to hold.

Produce

Create content written in the engines' own language structured to be fetched, chosen, and quoted.

Amplify

Earn placements with the publishers the engines already cite, so the trusted sources start naming you.

Report

Track visibility, citation share, and rank movement per topic one topic, one fix, every week.

Why us

A specialist team for a specialist problem.

Getting recommended by AI isn't a setting you switch on, or a box your SEO agency ticks. It's a fast-moving discipline of its own, and it rewards focus. This is the only thing we do.

Specialists, not generalists

We don't spread across ten channels. AEO is the whole practice, so we see the patterns and the openings that others miss.

Only the engines that matter

We work where roughly 90% of AI search actually happens, and filter out the noise that muddies everyone else's picture.

AI-assisted, human-shipped

Our agents draft and detect at scale. Every recommendation you see, and everything that ships, is signed off by a strategist.

The offering

Three ways to work together.

Start where you are. Move up as the category gets contested.

Establish

Get visible and start climbing.

Monitoring and diagnosis across the four engines, monthly fix sprints, and four extractable content pieces a month.

Most chosen

Compete

Win category share.

More topics, eight content pieces a month, active outreach to the publishers AI already trusts, and competitor tracking.

Dominate

Own the category, always-on.

Broad coverage, high-volume content and PR, competitor-displacement sprints, and a supervised always-on agent layer.

Questions

The questions we get asked most.

Answer Engine Optimisation: getting your brand surfaced, cited, and recommended inside AI answers, the way SEO got you found on Google. Different mechanics, same goal: be the brand that gets named.

That's exactly what people said about SEO. The brands that moved first owned the top for years. Buyers are already asking AI for recommendations today, so the real question is whether it's naming you or a competitor.

Traditional SEO optimises for blue links and clicks. AEO optimises for being the cited, recommended source inside an AI's answer, which runs on different signals. Most SEO teams simply aren't set up for it.

A clear read on where you stand across the four engines, content and outreach built to get you cited, and reporting on visibility, citation share, and rank you can actually watch move. Delivered by a team, not a dashboard.

Early signals often show within the first few weeks as fixes land. Meaningful, compounding movement builds over the following months, much the same way SEO does.

With a fixed-scope AI Visibility Audit. It shows exactly where you're invisible and the highest-leverage fixes, and it's the fastest way to see how we work before committing to anything.

Start here

See exactly where you're invisible.

The AI Visibility Audit is our expert read on where your brand stands across the four engines, who's being recommended instead of you, and the highest-leverage fixes to close the gap, delivered in two weeks.

Your visibility and citation share, engine by engine
The publishers winning the citations you want
A prioritised, attack-or-defend fix list

Prefer to talk first? Email hello@firstmention.com and we'll point you in the right direction.